This is the first Batman in a long time, maybe ever, that's actually about something. Imagine that.
Batman Begins is probably the most interesting, textured film in the Batman franchise - but it's also the most Taoist. In a genre that casts stark distinctions between black and white, it's the one that finds the gray - or at least the opposites. Maybe that's why I loved it and hated it, often at the same time. Everything I wanted to hate, I found myself enjoying. Everything I loved about it was offered - in such excess - till I ended up wanting to hurl my popcorn into the next row.
We all know how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, or at least we think we do. Young Bruce (Gus Lewis) witnesses the murder of his parents, setting in motion a chain of events that will turn an ordinary billionaire into a vigilante in tights.
But what about that chain of events? This film approaches its subject as if it were giving us the lost years of Jesus, or a trilogy about how Anakin Skywalker went all Darth Vader, or a TV series about how Lex Luther decided to become such a scumbag - and Clark Kent decided to get out of Smallville. What's great about this film is its ability to find the story beneath the story - and to tell it as an epic, rather than just another comic book actioner with yet another nutcake-turned-Messiah.
Christopher Nolan (Following, Memento, Insomnia) gives this installment a gravitas lacking in the previous three sequels. Not since Tim Burton's Batman (1989) has the story been anything but a bloated mess. Burton's vision was darker and possibly more stylistic. Burton wanted to recreate the feel of the classic comic - rather than the campy TV show. The result was a vision of Gotham that borders on the nightmarish. At a time when darkness was an antidote to the stuffy, oppressive, yuppyism of the eighties, Batman was a celebration of darkness, itself.
This film perhaps has reason to return to these classic roots, but it doesn't aspire to copy Burton's twistedness. One would think, in the post-9/11 world of revenge plots, that Batman Begins would be an elaboration of an old two-step: first comes the pain, then comes the payback. Perhaps it's a reflection that Nolan is at the helm (both as director and as co-writer). Perhaps it's a reflection of our changing national mood. Either way, this film is not contended to be yet another revenge plot.
But you wouldn't know that early on. Not long after a fury of agitated bats give way to the opening credits, we find Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a foreign jail, getting into fights with other inmates, and haunted by the memories he carries about. Visited by a stranger who calls himself Ducard (Liam Neeson), Wayne is offered a way out of suffering. It looks strangely reminiscent of another scene, in the 1986 film, The Mission, when Jeremy Irons makes a similar offer to Robert DeNiro. But the differences are stunning.
Ducard's solution is not to withdraw from the world, but to confront his fears - and the oppression of evil men - even by using fear as a weapon against those who ought to be afraid. Compassion, he says, is weakness. Society does itself a wrong when it shows understanding to criminals. It didn't take me long to begin choking on my popcorn. Here's the guy who played Qui-gon Jin, in the Star Wars prequels, essentially teaching Bruce Wayne to come over to the Dark Side. With the last Star Wars film in recent memory (and only a few theaters over), I thought the next two hours were going to become Death Wish 2005, or Bruce Wayne Sith Lord, Revenge of the Billionaire, or The Apprentice: Dark Tights Rising.
"Lord Batman .... ariiiiiiiiiise!"
But I was wrong. Not that this film doesn't play with the dark side. It does. It freely wades neck deep in fascist cinema, dangling death and destruction as the antidote to, well, death and destruction - and in ways that made me crap my pants. If this is what it's all coming down to, we might as well get ready for the next World War. Nationalism will breed more nationalism. Islamic Fundamentalism will provoke Christian Fundamentalism. We could call it The Cruades II. Let rip the dogs of war. Now where did I put that yellow cake?
But this is not that kind of film. Like an even-numbered Shyamalan film, this flick is more than it appears. Action and adventure mask a philosophic argument in progress - and the subject is fear. Our fears of loss - past, present and future - put us into interesting situations. As Ducard teaches Wayne, fear of evil causes all kinds of twisted actions. But one cannot avoid it. One must confront it and control it. It's a message that repeats itself, various times throughout the film, as the players act and react to various crises.
The solution, as one would expect from an Eastern guru, is not control of the world, but control over oneself. We value heroes because they respond to trouble, even if every hydra has a head that keeps "going and going and going." What, however, do we think of heroes who keep "going and going and going" after the danger has subsided? Is it possible to get your shifter stuck in the wrong gear and drive your parade float right into the daycare center?
This film feasts on visual metaphors and plot points that subtly, and not so subtly, reveal why Americans look to - and later abandon - rival solutions of the left and the right. We go back and forth like the pendulum on a giant grandfather clock - but it's not without a reason. The old Preacher of Ecclesiastes says, "To everything there is a season," undoing the idea that "one size fits all."
Even Bruce Wayne has to decide when enough is enough - whether it's the pain in his heart or the advice of others. "Give in to your anger" is not necessarily the answer to every conflict.
When Bruce Wayne finds himself, and comes home from his journeys, it's not quite in the way you might think - not in a film that celebrates the vigilante antics of a guy in a bat suit, kicking butts in darkened alleys at three in the morning. There's more to this tale than meets the eyes.
And so, Batman Begins provides the answers to a lot of "prequel questions" - like why Batman decided to be Batman, why dress like a Bat, how he got his hands on all that hardware, and how he becomes connected to such endearing characters as Alfred (Michael Caine). In the process, it makes some great upgrades to the franchise. In addition to giving us perhaps the most believable Batman yet, it gives us what may be the coolest Batmobile (a Humvee that drives like a tank), the coolest Batman suit (and explanation for its use) and the best Batman action. In this film, when Batman strikes, he looks less like a cartoon character ("Bam!" "Pow!" "Biff!") and more like something out of a slasher film. Batman doesn't just hit the bad guys. He takes them out - in a bone-crushing flash. He doesn't just stand around saying, "I'm Batman." He's Jason Bourne with a Mardi Gras mask.
There are some great performances in this film. As Rachel Dawes, Katie Holmes is perhaps the first love interest in the Batman franchise that wasn't just a horny co-ed attracted to bad boys. It's not a stellar performance but it's not bad, either. Michael Caine is an endearing Arthur and Morgan Freeman, as Lucius Fox - Batman's version of Q - is a lot of fun. It's funny to see Gary Oldman play a good guy, which he does as a prequelized version of Commissioner Gordon. As he has always done with his bad guys, Oldman gives intensity to what is otherwise a throw-away role he could have pencil-whipped in his sleep.
In the bad-guy department, the film makes a possible mistake of having too much of a good thing. It has so many candidates, one wonders if it wouldn't have been better to have "downsized" at least two of them. We have Tom Wilkinson as the mobster, Carmine Falcon. Rutger Hauer plays Earle, President of Wayne Industries - a villain, of sorts, if you think that Batman needs a subplot involving issues of corporate governance. (How exciting!) Ken Watanabe throws in his five minutes as Ra's Al Ghul, leader of an underground ninja gang.
The only one of these villains I really liked was Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a psychiatrist who has never seen a thug, on the payroll of Carmine Falcon, who wasn't "unfit for trial" or "innocent by reason of insanity." Murphy plays the part like a young James Spader, both in terms of his effeminate mannerisms and his grinning sarcasm. This guy may not be that high on the foodchain of evil, but he was certainly the most interesting.
By the way, Memento fans, Jimmy Grantz is back. Larry Holden, whom Nolan also cast in Insomnia, is back as a character named Finch. Oh, you forgot? Way to go, Memory Man.
For me, the biggest problem in Batman Begins is its excessiveness. Everything good about this film eventually becomes poison as Nolan lets it run too long. The Act I setup feels like it will never end. When Wayne finally starts acting like Batman, it's a welcome relief. But in Act III, when Batman sets out to save the day, it feels overcooked - like the last half hour of Con Air. If Shyamalan's every other movie forgets he's really just cloaking his dramas with blockbuster packaging, this film tends to be as bipolar as a billionaire in a Batsuit. The first half spends an eternity on the backstory. The second half goes on autopilot - till every member of the audience gets their forehead stamped with a sign that says, "You're so freaking stupid."
That's too bad. I found myself liking this film more than I ever thought I might, and then hating it for making me wait so long for the next gear to fall into place. My three-star rating is really a compromise between four stars and two, my bipolar rating of a film I loved and hated, then loved and hated some more.
As all prequels must, this film includes its share of perfunctory segways into the Batman films we've already seen - and yet it does so in ways that are endearing. It's not like a Star Wars Prequel, constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to cross-reference itself to the original trilogy, as if its author were doing product placement for the DVD set already on sale at a Walmart near you. The links here are funny and satisfying. I didn't see any that threw off the tone of this film with a mudpie of self-indulgent cuteness.
This is a film worth seeing, provided you know when to hit the bathroom or get that refill on the popcorn. In some films, nature (or the smell of popcorn) pulls me out of the theater. This time, I stayed in my seat, hoping not to miss anything important. Maybe that's to the film's credit. On the other hand, I'm sure my experience would have benefited from a break or two - as its excesses undo some of its magic - like relatives who simply won't go home.
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