Batman Begins
Starring:
Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Michael Caine (Alfred),
Liam Neeson (Ducard), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon), Cillian Murphy
(Dr. Jonathan Crane)
Screenplay by: Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer,
from a story by Goyer; based on characters created by Bob Kane
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
“Criminals
are a superstitious, cowardly lot. So, my disguise must be
able to strike terror into their hearts.” - Bruce Wayne, “Origin,”
Detective Comics #33, November 1939 
There
is a beautiful moment during the climax of Christopher Nolan’s
Batman Begins when a small boy, just saved from doom by our
spectacularly revised and revivified superhero, turns to his
companion and says, “I told you he would come.”
Defiantly
corny and old fashioned in the midst of a smart, hip movie,
the moment resonates with the whole world of superhero codes
and conventions, with all previous incarnations of Batman,
and with his successors throughout the 20th century. This
is a movie made by people who care about movies, and who care
more about Bob Kane’s original Batman creation than they do
about how previous films have portrayed him - in some cases,
betrayed him. Long before the moment occurred, I knew I was
watching an authentic rarity, a comic book adaptation that
actually gets it right, but it’s thrilling when it keeps happening
throughout a film, up to and including the closing moments,
and that is the brilliance of Batman Begins - it takes the
time to give us what we’ve always wanted, whether we knew
it or not, even as the pressures of corporate storytelling
bear down, threatening to squash the innocence and the hope.
It’s
a delicate thing to balance, especially in a culture that
is now saturated with comic book movies, where cynical motives
loom all around. The mega-conglomerates, who own the “studios”
that greenlight the films, love the profits to be had from
tie-in video game and DVD sales, now the primary reason many
movies are made at all, but they care nothing about providing
an entertainment experience for paying customers over the
age of thirteen and it would never enter their heads to press
for something higher. They don’t need to; the machine takes
care of itself. Even good directors, battered by careers stuck
on in this merry-go-round, will take on a comic book project
simply for the paycheck and a little piece of the “backend,”
perhaps to make the payments on their house in the Hollywood
hills, or to put their kid in rehab and still keep the bar
stocked, or all of the above. They don't care about the source
material, or those people in the audience who might actually
love the original. In many cases, it has been so long since
these directors were part of real audience, they’ve forgotten
what it’s like to sit with one.
But Christopher
Nolan remembers, and I think it’s pretty obvious the producers
of Batman Begins do, too. They sifted through years of terribly
conceived proposals in their search for a way to bring Batman
back from his box-office grave, where director Joel Schumacher
left him buried in hubris and trendy excess back in ‘97. Among
the ideas they vetoed: an elderly Batman with Clint Eastwood,
which anyone could have told them was not on the wish list
of a single moviegoer, anywhere. Much as I love Clint,...No,
not ready for that.
Then,
they let indie film darling Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for
a Dream) have a crack at development, his name generating
a stir among fans who were hoping to see something good and
dark. But his idea of Batman was to give us something good
and deconstructionist, almost as bad in its own way as Schumacher’s
post-Ambiguously Gay Duo Bat-nipples and Bat-butt close-ups.
There were other proposals, all of which became snagged on
the misperception that Batman himself was outmoded, that the
faults of the past had been in the character rather than the
filmmakers.
At last
the producers listened to Christopher Nolan, another indie
outsider whose primary claim to fame and competence was Memento
(2001), a gripping, experimental thriller which had the distinction
of unfolding backwards. But there was still reason for doubt;
although Nolan is probably a visionary, it’s too early to
know for sure, and the machine has a way of grinding such
people into a hamburger suitable for the masses. Nolan could
have made precisely twenty-seven Mementos with the budget
he was given for Batman Begins.
I went
to the theatre with damp expectations at best, knowing that
money changes everyone and everything. Breaking my own rules
against believing anything in a coming attractions trailer,
good or bad, I was skeptical about the seeming interjection
of martial arts wirework into a story that has never needed
it before and, conversely, the stunning look of the production
and costume design, which often portends a lack of actual
storytelling.
Wrong
on both counts, and many others. Batman Begins is unlike any
superhero film that has come before, except maybe M. Night
Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, which was the first serious attempt
by a filmmaker to apply hardcore realism to the genre’s conventions.
Certainly Spider-Man 2 was an important advance in giving
psychological realism to a movie superhero, which is only
fitting for a Marvel creation, but Batman Begins raises the
stakes for everyone with the sheer quality of its effort.
A brilliant amalgam of Batman’s many faces through the decades,
from Bob Kane to Tim Burton, with generous doses of Frank
Miller’s recent Dark Knight mythos, the film is a richly imagined,
exciting and original exploration of who this character really
is under the mask, set in a palpable universe that is just
over the line between the real world and our darkest fantasies.
Collaborating
with David S. Goyer, the screenwriter of Dark City and Blade
(and former co-writer of DC's Starman and JSA), Nolan has
chosen to focus almost an hour of the film on Bruce Wayne,
the billionaire who spends his nights dressing up and scaring
the bejeezus out of wrongdoers. Unlike previous filmmakers,
who have been content to rely on Batman’s vast cultural profile
as sufficient explanation for his lunatic behavior - c’mon,
let’s face it, the guy is obsessive-compulsive and suffers
delusions of grandeur, even if they are somewhat warranted
delusions - Nolan digs deeply into the death of Bruce Wayne’s
parents, his long apprenticeship (which is where the martial
arts come in), his further self-training, the ideas behind
his conception of Batman, and how he achieves his own transformation
- finding the Bat-cave, piecing together the suit and the
car, choosing his first tactical moves, learning from his
mistakes, trying again. Batman Begins is about the process
of becoming, which is not just one of the core themes in superhero
origin stories, it’s a major concern in the literature of
any society.
Telling
Bruce Wayne’s complete story is a tack that has never been
tried before because the front office is usually skittish
about funding a superhero who doesn’t start banging heads
right away, but it’s a necessary step in humanizing the figure
of Batman and making him a complex, memorable hero. In fact,
what Nolan and Goyer have discovered and put to good use here
is that Bruce Wayne is actually three warring personalities
inside one man - not two, as screenwriters usually assume:
he is a mystic seeker of truth, as well as a billionaire playboy
and rogue crime fighter, and he pits the two public disguises
against each other as multiple distractions, while he acts
out his demons for the greater good. It is a dimension that
has always been there, but Batman Begins establishes its presence
better than any previous film. As a result, when the action
really takes off in the second half, we aren’t just looking
at some clever set pieces with a guy in a cool suit; we are
invested in Batman, and the superbly staged fights and chases
carry a meaning beyond their obvious thrills.
Nolan
writes and directs this film as if no one ever made a Batman
movie before, filling the cast with some of the best actors
in the world. One of the longest kept secrets in English language
cinema, Christian Bale is wonderful in the triple role of
Bruce Wayne-Errant Playboy-Dark Knight, giving the Caped Crusader
a delicious menace that no one else has managed while still
projecting a deeply sympathetic personality. In one respect,
this is definitely Bob Kane’s original concept - we have no
doubt why the guy gives criminals the willies, and he is certainly
one tough sumbitch - but he also chooses his symbolism for
the best of all possible reasons, a man who has faced his
fears and knows how to use them.
Mr. Bale
is surrounded by a first rate lineup of supporting actors:
Michael Caine, the maestro, is a perfect Alfred the Butler,
dignified, eminently charming, and usually right; Cillian
Murphy is a blood-curdling Scarecrow, the most disturbing
Bat-villain a filmmaker has ever tackled; Tom Wilkinson is
almost as frightening, in a more down to earth way, as Gotham
gang lord Carmine Falcone, the essence of power used for mundane
evil; and the great Liam Neeson, as Bruce Wayne’s mysterious
mentor Henri Ducard, is simply dazzling as usual.
Every
now and then, a real moviemaker sneaks in and is able to do
it right. I was reminded of watching The Mask of Zorro (1998)
for the first time, or going a little further back, The Fugitive
(1993), films that presented no outward reason for high expectations,
but that proved their mettle at the beginning and hardly took
a misstep afterward. Zorro needed to be an old-fashioned romantic
swashbuckler, and somehow no one interfered with that; The
Fugitive needed to be a hair-raising, cat-and-mouse chase
movie, no more and no less, and miraculously no one ruined
it with the usual superfluous additions; any new Batman film
needed to return to the roots, to give us Bruce Wayne becoming
Batman, and Christopher Nolan refused to let himself be distracted
from that mission.
There
are quibbles to be made about one detail or another - the
editing occasionally falls into random hyperactivity during
action scenes, for instance, and the Writers Guild needs to
send out a memo about the inadvisability of letting superheroes
give away their secret identities too often - but such things
must be weighed against sheer entertainment value. It may
be that I liked this film so much because my expectations
were low going into the theatre, and Nolan and company exceeded
them early and often. But I also saw Batman Begins with a
sold-out audience of the only critics that matter for this
kind of film, middle class parents, kids, teenagers and assorted
movie fans. I can tell you they laughed and gasped when they
were supposed to, and they applauded at the fade to black.
I’d pay
a lot for that to happen at the movies on a regular basis.
Notes:
ORIGINS: The character of Batman made his first appearance
in the May 1939 issue of DC’s Detective Comics, #27. He was
actually a collaboration between artist Bob Kane (1915-1998)
and writer Bill Finger, who would add many important touches
as time went on, such as the characters of Robin and The Riddler.
The origin story did not appear until six issues later and
was written by Gardner Fox. It was told in a mere two pages.
Batman
had his own magazine by the next year and is currently the
star of five monthly comics in a wide variety of visual styles
and storytelling attitudes. Over the ensuing seven-and-a-half
decades he has proven the most durable of DC’s submyths, next
to Superman, evolving through many incarnations on radio,
in movie serials, live action and animated television, and
most recently, feature films.
Eric has returned to Indianapolis, and lesser internet film
reviewers quake in fear.
|
