And the winner is ... a mouthful.

Though the full wingspan of the best-picture favorite at the Academy Awards is usually clipped down to simply Birdman, the movie many think is destined to fly highest at the Oscars is officially titled Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). If it were to win, it would be the longest-titled best-picture winner, as well as the most grammatically dubious.

Oscar night may come down to not only what name is read from the night's final envelope, but also how the winning film is said. Should either name be called, writer-director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu isn't quibbling.

"Better the full title, but honestly I understand we have to be practical," said Inarritu of his preference in a recent interview. "It's more practical to say Birdman. That's fine by me."

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences recognizes the film's full title in all its colorful plumage, even if most multiplex marquees don't. The film's distributor, Fox Searchlight, has regularly fostered the natural shorthand while still honoring the artistic intentions of its filmmaker.

Since lengthy, oddly punctuated dual titles aren't exactly what marketers dream of, Birdman is how it's generally been promoted. But Fox Searchlight also presents the complete title on movie posters (albeit with the second title in much smaller type) and it urged critics reviewing the film to use the full title on first reference. (Inarritu acknowledges Searchlight has been "very cool" about his unorthodox title.)

The redundant parentheses of the title have annoyed more grammatically sensitive moviegoers. But the phrasing, of course, has a tradition: It takes after Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a best-picture nominee in 1965.

Speaking by phone during a day off from shooting The Revenant, an early 1800s frontier thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Inarritu says that he loved Dr. Strangelove, but that the title of Birdman isn't a direct ode to it. Instead, he called the title "a wink to the audience" that suggests the playfulness of his film, a comedy about an actor in paranoid crisis.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a Hollywood star famed for playing a feathered superhero trying to shed his public image by mounting a serious play on Broadway.

"The title itself should reflect how conflicted his mind is," says Inarritu. "I wanted to express that this is the moment this character goes into a territory that is not his, basically that he surrenders to himself."

Though beset by all manner of fears - from a hotshot young actor (Edward Norton) to an embittered critic - Riggan eventually finds peace with his raging ego, his Birdman. The subtitle is uttered late in the film at a moment of serenity.

Just as his protagonist is attempting a transition, Inarritu was, too, in making his first comedy, one stitched together seamlessly by lengthy, flowing shots. It's another dimension of the movie's "meta-reality" to the 51-year-old Mexican director, who compares his own foolhardiness to Riggan's.

"For me, it was jumping into an unknown territory, which is the comedy and shooting it in an unprecedented way," says Inarritu.

"I was jumping into something that I was very ignorant about how difficult it was."

If Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) does triumph at the Oscars on Feb 22, it will usurp The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King as the lengthiest-titled best picture winner. (Argo and Gigi tie for the shortest.)

(China Daily USA 02/05/2015 page9)