Batman Begins

Well, it happened again. Yesterday I made yet another effort to see “Cinderella Man.” This is the third time in the past few weeks. The first time failed because She Who Shall Not Be Named declared that Russell Crowe was a creep, that she didn’t want to see him, and would much rather go to see the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” OK! [read about it here]

Last week I made a second attempt. SWSNBN was finally willing to put up with Crowe for my sake, but then she invited a friend of ours to join us. The friend immediately announced that she really wanted to see the new Brad Pitt film, and SWSNBN joined in. So, instead of Cinderella Man we went to see a horrible flick in which Angelina Jolie looked sexy, Brad Pitt looked goofy, and lots of things blew up real good. Ugh! It didn’t help much that the friend apologized afterward for dragging us to such a bad movie.

Yesterday I tried again. SWSNBN and I drove down to a Cineplex in the nearest town and approached the ticket counter. “Two for Cinderella Man,” I said confidently. “Sir, I’m sorry,” was the reply, “We’ve just changed our schedule.”

“Wha’?”

“’Herbie’ was just released and we had to make room for it.”

[silent] “AAARRRGGGH! Herbie?!?!?”

[calmly] “Well dear, in that case, is there anything you would like to see?”

SWHNBN: “How about ‘Batman Begins? Christian Bale is cute.”

Me: “Oh, OK. [unvoiced: “Damn”]

So, once again I failed. At this rate I may never get to see “Cinderella Man.”

So, how about “Batman Begins”? Was it worth it? Yeah, sorta, if you’re into that kinda thing.

It’s by far the most realistic of the Batman sagas [allowing of course for the fact that it is, after all, a superhero movie]. This was director Christopher Nolan’s avowed intention and he has succeeded. The special effects are prosaic by today’s standards, but that’s all to the good. Batman and his opponents are not super-powered and their exploits do not exceed the bounds of plausibility to such an extent that we lose sight of their humanity.

In place of spectacular wire work and cgi, Nolan substitutes confusion and sound effects. Time and again the screen is filled with chaotic images and quick camera cuts, the aim of which is to confuse the visual senses while thumps, rustles, and bangs, and the reaction of the on-screen characters tell us that something intensely violent and mysterious is taking place off camera. At times I found the technique annoying, but overall it works pretty well and gives the movie a distinctive feeling.

There is a gritty realism too. The Bat Cave is a filthy hole. Bruce Wayne spends a lot of time covered with muck and mud, being brutally slammed around, and painfully healing from his wounds. That works too. The only real sore point in this regard is the Batmobile, which is terribly incongruous, but I suppose necessary in a Batman movie. It looks like the unnatural offspring of a hummer and a dune buggy.

Some reviewers have commented that the film spends more time on Bruce Wayne than on Batman and rejoiced in that choice. Well, “Duh!” It’s an origins story, guys. It has to spend a lot of time explaining where the superhero comes from, and what he was before he became super. Whatever the reason – it works. Let’s face it, Bruce is a lot more interesting than the Batman.

There was a literary conceit (popular in the middle decades of the past century when the Batman first originated) that psychological quirks made characters interesting and that these defining peculiarities were to be explained through childhood trauma. Well, Dr. Freud has long since passed from the scene and his theories have been generally discounted, but the comments of reviewers seem to show that those standards still thrive in the critical community. And in the case of this movie those hoary old literary devices work because in oh so many ways this film is a throwback to those times. The costuming, the technology on display, the architecture, etc. are all [with the exception of the freaky batmobile] redolent of the mid-twentieth century.

There’s not much to the story. The hero is traumatized at an early age, separated from all that he has known, develops an obsessive fixation on justice, suffers horribly and descends to the depths, from which he is raised by a mentor from whom he is soon separated and has to overcome his inner weaknesses to establish himself…, oh what the Hell! You’ve all read Joseph Campbell; you know how it works – standard hero fare.

What about a theme? Fear! The whole thing is about fear – suffering from it, confronting it, overcoming it, using it. Not a very sophisticated or perceptive treatment, but at least it’s better than Spiderman [“with great power comes great responsibility”] and, in the context of a super-hero story, it serves to humanize the Batman. A superhero who gets scared; not bad for a genre work.

The acting? Adequate! Christian Bale makes an excellent Batman and an even better Bruce Wayne. Bale knows very well how to live a life of luxury and privilege and it shows. He’s the first believable Bruce Wayne. He has buffed up and his Batman exhibits a plausible physicality as he performs strenuous stunts. And, most importantly, he expresses well the pent-up rage that animates his character.

There are a lot of heavyweights in supporting roles. Morgan Freeman walks through his wise mentor paces, and Michael Caine is a wonderful actor miscast as Alfred the Butler. Liam Neeson is adequately menacing as the mentor/antagonist. Gary Oldman and Tom Wilkinson are both superb. Ken Wantanbe, Rutger Hauer, and Linus Roach are all also quite good in underwritten parts. Cillian Murphy is not bad, but not very scary, as the “Scarecrow.” The only real disappointment is Katie Holmes who just isn’t believable as the girlfriend/district attorney. She’s a jumped-up TV actress and it shows.

In most ways this effort is vastly superior to earlier TV and movie incarnations of the Batman. The only way in which it doesn’t match up is in the villains. In the past we have been treated to some wonderful, if cartoonish, bad guys; Jack Nicholson as the Joker; Jim Carrey as the Riddler; Danny DeVito as the Penguin; Michelle Pfeiffer as the Cat Woman. All had a ball with their over-the-top characters. Here, in the interest of realism, the villains have been toned down to human proportions and aren’t as interesting as the old gang. As a result the movie suffers a bit, but not too much.

And what about the moral/political dimensions of the film. It’s very traditional, something of a throwback, and an explicit repudiation of the statist mentality that has characterized American elite culture for so long. One might almost call it “Reaganesque.” In Gotham government is not the answer, it is the problem. The institutions of society are thoroughly corrupt and as a result the people suffer as the powerful prey upon the poor. Evil exists and is palpable, but because of corruption society cannot protect its members. There is no hint of class warfare. There are good rich guys, like the Waynes, and bad ones, like Rutger Hauer’s character. There are good street people and bad ones, good cops and bad ones. Good and evil permeate all levels of society and the battle between them is fought everywhere from the boardrooms to the streets.

What is to be done? The only real dispute is between anarchists who want to destroy Gotham completely and reformers [like Batman] who want to “mend it not end it” by surgically removing the evildoers. And throughout the emphasis is on individual, not collective or corporate responsibility.

In a sense “Batman Begins” hearkens back to the old self-reliance themes of traditional westerns [which were at the height of their popularity fifty years ago]. Batman is like the archetypal western hero – the ultra-competent man who knows what must be done and has the will to do it. Its villains are corporate chieftans, a secret society of anarchists, a psychiatrist, and a criminal capo. Batman’s allies are ordinary folk – an assistant DA, a police sergeant, a mid-level corporate manager on a dead-end career track, and of course, his loyal butler, Alfred. In all it is a call for the common people to rise up and to take back their country from the political and professional elites who are plundering it.

So, was it worth it? Yeah, if you like this sort of thing. Judging from the reviews it’s gotten the generation that grew up on comic books will greet it with wild enthusiasm, and it has the benefit of being much, much better than its immediate predecessors. It’s not a bad film; it has some interesting elements; and it looks good in comparison with what has gone before in the super-hero genre.

Check it out.