It was the night of the "Glom Gazingo." If you remember John Travolta mangling Idina Menzel's name the year prior, 2015 was the year he returned for a strange, touchy-feely redemption arc with Scarlett Johansson. But the real drama wasn't on the red carpet. It was the showdown between a silent, grueling survival epic and a frantic, jazz-fueled meta-comedy about a washed-up superhero actor.
When Sean Penn opened the envelope for the 2015 Academy Award Best Picture, he made a green card joke that aged like milk and announced Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) as the winner.
It felt inevitable. Or maybe it didn't?
Honestly, the 87th Academy Awards were a bit of a chaotic mess. You had Boyhood, a movie filmed over 12 actual years, which seemed like the "prestige" lock for months. Then you had The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson’s most Wes Anderson-y fever dream, and The Imitation Game doing the classic Harvey Weinstein-backed Oscar campaign dance. But Birdman took the top prize, and people still argue about whether it deserved to beat Whiplash or Mad Max: Fury Road (which actually came out the following year, but the 2015 ceremony was a weird transitional time for cinema).
Wait, let's get the timeline straight. The 2015 ceremony honored the films of 2014. That’s a distinction that always trips people up. We’re talking about the year Michael Keaton almost staged the greatest comeback in Hollywood history, only to be narrowly defeated for Best Actor by Eddie Redmayne’s transformative turn as Stephen Hawking.
The Gimmick That Wasn't Actually a Gimmick
Most people remember Birdman for the "one-shot" thing.
Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and legendary cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki decided to film the entire movie so it looked like a single, continuous take. No cuts. No breathing room. Just a relentless, claustrophobic sprint through the bowels of the St. James Theatre.
Some critics hated it. They called it a technical stunt that distracted from the story.
I disagree.
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The long take wasn't just for show; it mirrored the fractured, panicked psyche of Riggan Thomson. Riggan is a guy haunted by his past as a blockbuster franchise star—sound familiar, Batman fans?—while trying to prove he’s a "serious" artist by mounting a Raymond Carver play on Broadway. The lack of cuts means the audience can't escape his anxiety. You're trapped in the dressing room with him. You're stuck in that cramped alleyway when he gets locked out in his underwear.
It’s exhausting. It’s meant to be.
But the 2015 Academy Award Best Picture winner wasn't just a technical marvel. It was incredibly meta. Having Michael Keaton play a guy who used to play a bird-themed superhero while Keaton himself used to be Batman? That’s some high-level casting. It blurred the lines between reality and fiction in a way that the Academy usually eats up.
The Controversy of the "Best" Label
Was Birdman actually the best movie of that year?
If you ask a certain segment of Film Twitter, the answer is a resounding "No."
Many feel Whiplash was the superior film. Damien Chazelle's drumming thriller was lean, mean, and arguably had a more satisfying payoff. Then there’s Selma. Ava DuVernay’s snub in the directing category was a massive talking point that year, fueling the #OscarsSoWhite conversation that would rightly explode in the years following. Selma was a heavy hitter, but it felt like the Academy wasn't ready to give it the top prize in 2015.
Then you have American Sniper.
Talk about a cultural divide. Clint Eastwood’s biopic of Chris Kyle was a massive box office hit—way bigger than Birdman. It tapped into a specific American zeitgeist, but it was far too polarizing for a consensus-based voting body like the Academy.
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Birdman sat in the sweet spot. It was artsy enough for the "intellectual" wing of the voters, technical enough for the "craft" wing (cinematographers and editors), and it was about show business. Hollywood loves nothing more than a movie about how hard it is to be an actor.
Why the Score Was Disqualified (And Why It Matters)
Here is a weird fact that people usually forget: Antonio Sánchez’s incredible drum score for Birdman was disqualified from the Best Original Score category.
The Academy’s music branch ruled that because the film also used a lot of classical music (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Ravel), the drum score wasn't "predominant" enough. It was a bizarre decision. That percussion is the heartbeat of the movie. It provides the rhythm for the long takes.
Without that score, Birdman might not have won the 2015 Academy Award Best Picture. It’s the engine under the hood. The disqualification remains one of the most cited examples of the Academy’s sometimes archaic and confusing rules.
The "Iñárritu Era" Begins
Winning Best Picture for Birdman wasn't just a one-off for Alejandro G. Iñárritu. It signaled a shift in Hollywood power.
The very next year, he went back-to-back with The Revenant, winning Best Director again. He became part of the "Three Amigos"—alongside Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro—who basically treated the Oscars like their private backyard for a decade.
Birdman was the bridge. It moved Iñárritu from the "gritty realism" of Amores Perros and Babel into this heightened, magical-realism territory. Whether he’s having Michael Keaton fly over Manhattan or Leonardo DiCaprio sleep inside a horse carcass, the ambition is the same.
What Most People Get Wrong About Riggan Thomson
There’s a common misconception that Birdman is a movie about a man going crazy.
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Maybe.
But it's also about the desperate, almost pathetic need for validation. In one of the best scenes of the film, Riggan confronts a theater critic (played by Lindsay Duncan) in a bar. She tells him she’s going to kill his play because she hates what he represents: the "celebrity" invading the "artist's" space.
Riggan’s response is a raw, spit-flecked monologue about the difference between a label and the actual work. It’s the soul of the movie. The 2015 Academy Award Best Picture winner is actually a satire of everyone involved: the actors, the critics, the audience, and the industry itself.
It mocks the very people who gave it the award.
How to Revisit the 2015 Nominees Today
If you want to understand the cinematic landscape of the mid-2010s, you shouldn't just watch Birdman. You have to look at the whole class of 2015.
- Watch Birdman and Whiplash back-to-back. It’s a fascinating study in "Artistic Obsession." One is about the ego of the creator; the other is about the trauma of the student.
- Check out The Grand Budapest Hotel again. It’s arguably Wes Anderson's masterpiece and holds up better than almost anything else on that list.
- Analyze the acting. This was a powerhouse year. Look at Edward Norton in Birdman—he’s playing a parody of himself (a difficult-to-work-with method actor), and he’s brilliant. Emma Stone’s "You don't matter" monologue is what cemented her as a future A-lister.
The Lasting Legacy of the 87th Oscars
So, does Birdman hold up?
Visually, yes. The cinematography by Lubezki is still mind-blowing. The performances are top-tier. But as a Best Picture winner, it feels very "of its time." It represents a moment when Hollywood was grappling with the rise of superhero fatigue—ironic, considering the MCU was just hitting its stride then—and the death of "prestige" theater.
It’s a loud, messy, arrogant, and beautiful film.
It didn't play it safe. Usually, the Academy rewards "safe." They like biopics and period pieces. By choosing Birdman as the 2015 Academy Award Best Picture, the voters actually took a bit of a risk. They chose a movie where the main character might be hallucinating a giant bird monster and ends with a deeply ambiguous leap from a window.
That’s gotta count for something.
Actionable Insights for Cinephiles
- Deepen your technical knowledge: If you liked the "one-shot" look of Birdman, watch 1917 or the original Rope by Alfred Hitchcock. Compare how the different directors use the lack of cuts to create different emotional effects.
- Explore the "Three Amigos": Look into the filmographies of Iñárritu, Cuarón, and del Toro. Notice the recurring themes of displacement, fatherhood, and the supernatural.
- Track the "Oscar Bounce": Research how winning Best Picture affected the box office for Birdman versus a more traditional winner like The King's Speech. You’ll find that "artier" winners often see a much larger percentage jump in ticket sales because they rely on the "prestige" branding to find an audience.
- Listen to the "Illegal" Score: Find Antonio Sánchez's Birdman score on vinyl or streaming. Listen to it as a standalone piece of jazz. It changes how you perceive the rhythm of everyday life—which was exactly what it did for the film.