*** (out of ****)
Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson, Ken Watanabe, Rutger Hauer, Mark Boone Junior, and Morgan Freeman
Directed by Christopher Nolan & written by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan
2005
141 min PG13
The new “Batman Begins” and Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” exist in separate realities. Aside from differences in mythology, cast, and visuals, the real differences are in the films’ overall tones and the character of Batman himself. Burton’s “Batman” is freewheeling, anarchic, and jazzy, with a barebones plot used to string along setpieces and variations on the themes of Batman and Joker. Burton uses the personae of the eccentric villain and hero to explore his own offbeat persona. Not unlike Burton’s “Ed Wood,” Batman/Bruce Wayne is a kind of cross-dresser: a distracted bumbler unable to function as a normal man and only comfortable in costume.
“Batman Begins” is cut from the same cloth as the recent “Spider-man 2” and will probably appeal to the same audience. “Batman Begins” is a better movie than “Spider-man 2,” but it has many of the same strengths and weaknesses. It’s almost somber, heavy on plot, yammering, an utterly uncompelling romance, and what Sidney Lumet calls “rubber ducky” scenes. To paraphrase, that’s the scene where we find out the hero/villain is the way he is because, when he was little, someone took away his rubber ducky. A man’s character is presented not as a rich tapestry drawn from a lifetime, but the result of a two isolated incidents (bat attack, parents’ death). This type of limiting (reductionism?) is typical of comic books. There’s something comforting about the way art can shrink life down into a frame and make it less threatening.
Anyway, like “Spider-man 2,” “Batman Begins” has to put together a lot of plot and develop Bruce’s character in a way comprehensible to the multiplex. It’s all business, with plenty of ground to cover, and does so in a series of curt, short scenes. One couldn’t imagine “Batman Begins” having the patience or even the time to let Jack Nicholson trash an art museum, dance with Kim Basinger’s photograph, or any of his other solos. Except for the nightmarish third act, “Begins” feels more literary than cinematic; the effect is cumulative instead of a series of great images. Based on a medium driven by violence, the fights in “Batman Begins” are surprisingly not in and of themselves very entertaining. They exist only to determine who is the winner and who is the loser. But, also like “Spider-man 2,” it has at its heart an intriguing quandary about one of the central issues of comic book morality.
Lately I’ve started to feel confused about superheroes who fight crime by beating up petty thugs, who are desperate, hungry, and unemployed men. Why not use all those bat-a-rang and ray gun resources to combat poverty: make more jobs, attract industry, fund public education? Treat the disease, not the symptoms. “Batman Begins” addresses this by putting Bruce Wayne’s moral struggle clearly between the two approaches to crime-fighting. On the one hand we have the League of Shadows, a ninja group from the Far East that teaches Bruce (impassive Welsh heartthrob Christian Bale) how to fight. The League’s approach is a fancy, Asiatic way of saying “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.” On the other extreme is Bruce’s childhood sweetie (Katie Holmes), who has grown up to work for the district attorney of Gotham City. She’s all about putting the crime bosses behind bars, which is a comic book way of saying the economic source of the crime (or maybe I’m just a dirty Red). The result, as Batman confronts the League of Shadows, is not unlike Moses bargaining with God to spare an entire city of sinners for the one good person who lives in it.
When we do find the villain, he is viciously self-composed, dismissive, and self-righteous. This plays off the vulnerability of Batman. With this film and the final “Star Wars” prequel it seems that—even as our culture turns more polarized, self-righteous, sees compromise as womanly flinching, equates “character” with “stubbornness,” and is unwilling to listen to the other side—our villains are, counterintuitively, becoming more and more certain of the justness and rightness of their actions. Our villains are starting to look more like us while our heroes are those who are uncertain of what is moral and right. Someone who does evil because he knows it’s evil—boring. But someone who does evil because he’s convinced it’s good—now that’s drama.
Unlike Michael Keaton, Christian Bale plays Batman and Bruce Wayne as not being that far apart from each other. Both alter-egos are brooding and intense. “Begins” is an appropriate title, as Bruce is surrounded by mentors: Alfred the butler (a terrific Michael Caine), his Far East mentors (Liam Neeson and “The Last Samurai’s” last samurai Ken Watanabe), a young pre-Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), the man who designs a lot of his gizmos (Morgan Freeman), and the man who runs Wayne Enterprises (Rutger Hauer). Even one of the gangsters (Tom Wilkinson, playing an Italian, of course) comes across as somewhat paternal and wanting to help Bruce along his way. No one is a show-off, rather, if you’re like me, you recognize them all and just want to let them do their work, and feel comfortable in their capable hands.
As I said, the fight scenes are all jittery close-ups, grunts, quick cuts, and nothing special, though the fact that Bale’s Batman hasn’t learned all the ropes makes him that much more interesting. The car chases are also pretty sweet. There is psychedelic drug use throughout—part of Bruce’s training as well as villain Scarecrow’s (Cillian Murphy) tactics—culminating in a fearful, if rushed climax as the city is flooded with trippy gases. We see what the people of Gotham see, as faces distort, lights come out of people’s mouths, horses belch flame, and so forth. This leads to one of those great flying finishes where Batman has to do one thing and Gordon has to do another, with lots of cross-cutting in between.
“Batman Begins” is not without a sense of humor. It wants us to laugh at its one-liners, but it doesn’t invite us, the way Burton does, to snicker at how preposterous Batman is. The villain refers to his cronies (and everyone else) as “gentlemen” and Wayne’s mentor barks out fortune cookie wisdom while beating the crap out of him. Things like this are played straight, although I kinda wish they weren’t.
“Batman Begins” is directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan of “Memento,” which is probably the only enormously popular movie of the last five years to deserve its popularity. “Batman Begins” is his fourth film, after “Memento,” “Following,” and his remake of “Insomnia,” and they all follow determined men who mourn that their actions have led them outside both the law and possibility of normal human relationships. It is the largest and most impersonal of his pictures, less like a labor of love and more like that of a professional. But it’s good work.
Finished Tuesday, July 5th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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