A negative connotation for a unique characteristic to an advertisement, business, object, person, story, film, etc. that is unique for the sake of being unique or to draw attention.
An alternative definition reads:
A magical leprachaun that gives out free acid.
But this is not the gimmick we are discussing today, thank you.
There is a new movie out in cinemas called Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. It was directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, and it stars Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, and Emma Stone as caricatures of themselves in a story about a very unstable former superhero movie star who tries to make his mark on Broadway. It is an amazing movie for many reasons, one of which is its technical merit, which I keep hearing described as a gimmick.
Though I will certainly be discussing other aspects of the film in the future (It is currently my favorite of the year), today I would just like to briefly defend the movie's shooting style, which is certainly fascinating, but hardly gimmicky. If you haven't already heard, Birdman has been digitally manipulated to appear, with two exceptions at the beginning and end, to be entirely one camera shot. This would not be the first time that such a thing has been attempted, with possibly the most notorious example being Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. There have also been examples of a film actually being just one shot, like Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark.
The photography was done by Emmanuel Lubezki, who also did the similarly exemplary Gravity last year, and the editing was by Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione. Mostly taking place in the backstage halls and rooms of a Broadway theater, a lot of smooth, hypnotic steadicam is used as it encircles, examines, and otherwise intrudes on the characters. There are also some really "whoah" moments, like when the camera very calmly, with no pomp whatsoever, glides past a character, swoops over a second-story railing and down into the ground floor, where the same character from a second ago is already there, because it is later in the day. This all happens in a moment and so seamlessly we have no time to consider how what we just saw was possible before the movie immediately disregards the fact that it ever happened.
It was done with fancy editing, of course. Even the most film illiterate wouldn't think otherwise these days, but it's an extraordinary feat anyway. Just the fact that such long (Up to 15 minutes!) shots were still needed to make up the whole, helps you appreciate what the actors had to go through to make it. Imagine the humiliation of making a mistake ten minutes in and ruining an entire scene!
But I will return to the point, being that Birdman is a lot of things: innovative, funny, chilling, intelligent, crass, alarming, self-important, impressive. But a gimmick? I will close my argument with three reasons why Birdman's photography isn't.
1. By the above definition, a gimmick needs to be unqiue just to be unique, and Birdman is not unique on a technical level, it's just better than other attempts at the same thing.
2. If Birdman were just a gimmick, we would be talking about the photography and nothing else, but it has so many great things going for it that camerawork and editing are just part of the list, not even headlining.
3. And finally, Birdman does not draw constant attention to its methods, actually attempting to hide them as best as possible. How can we call something a gimmick when we're hardly aware of it?
That's it, I'm done.
But I would also like to join in the feeling that the Academy Awards, just as they used to have two cinematography awards for black-and-white and color, should separate the award again for digital and traditional. Just as it wasn't fair in the old days for a black-and-white photographer to have to compete with the spectacle of color, so it is also unfair for True Grit to have to compete with Inception. Or Inside Llewyn Davis with Gravity. Or anything this year with Birdman.
Ok, I' m seriously done now.
*****
What? You've got something to say about it?! Do so in the comments below or let me know personally at beauxmoviemail@gmail.com!
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