Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Re-Review: Batman Begins
Batman Begins will always stay very much in my mind, although not in the ways I wish it did. Mainly, it was the movie I saw on the first date I had with my fiance, so obviously that sits in my mind. But secondly, and more relative to the subject at hand, it will go down in the same way that Roberto Baggio's spot kick in the USA 94 World Cup did: a surprising miss.
I've just rewatched it for the first time since the theater, and strangely, while some things I didn't like before have grown on me, other things I did like seem more problematic. I'm not sure how to start, really. It was a movie that never really grabbed me with its advertising, and I was looking forward to it purely because I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan, and it had a cast with great potential. However, for me, that potential was never anywhere near realised.
Ironically, one of the things that I really disliked before - the third act - seemed a lot better this time. Maybe better is the wrong word, as it's still very clumsy, but I enjoyed it more. It allowed me to somewhat forget about the stuff that was bugging me, and just let me soak in the film, as it were. However, it was more in a leave-your-brain-at-home action movie style, so maybe that's not so good, at least for a Batman flick. Either that or I have lofty ideals that are too high.
Now, where to start? I might as well start at the beginning. I suppose it has to be mentioned, the film flies by quite fast, and for that reason, so much of it seems so brief. We're barely five minutes in before Liam Neeson's pseudo-Qui-Gon is explaining to Bruce all about his fears and his brand of justice, using lots of heavy dialogue that sounds, like Jim Kelly once said, like it's straight out of a comic book. I think this is more David Goyer than Nolan, but the dialogue is full of meaningful tones as if every line is trying to say something really powerful, but just sounds totally written. In a way, it fits with the frequent artificiality of the film, but as a film itself, it just doesn't gel.As you'll know (you have seen this, right?), the first act is littered with flashbacks. Flashbacks that almost seem arbitrary. We see Bruce fall down the pit in the film's opening dream sequence (dream, flashback, it's kind of the same), we see him and his father, and we see the infamous and foreboding night at the opera that leads to his parents' death. One nitpick I have comes from this, the fact that they leave out the back entrance. Is Gotham that bad that you'd rather walk into a dark and dank alley than maybe leave through the front, which is at least guaranteed to be a bit more of a public place?
When his parents die, again, it all seems so brief. There's no impact, no sense of loss. Sure, we see them die, we see the actor making the pained face expression, but as far as we're concerned, we've just seen two people die in Commando. I don't want to presume about Christopher Nolan's life, and whether he's actually experienced the loss of someone in the first person, but from my viewpoint, this movie doesn't convey that sense of loss, of utter hopelessness. Maybe I'm criticising it too much for that, but as someone who has, it just seems weak. To back up with an example, I'll throw up The Fellowship of the Ring. The scene of Gandalf's death in Moria. In essence, that scene has the right tone to it. Of course, we've been with Gandalf since the start of the film, so there's bound to be a different effect on the audience anyway, but Frodo's response, even Aragorn's response, and the scene on the rocks afterwards. We're not given time to sense the grief, the pain, the loss, and as a result, it doesn't register.
From a dramatic standpoint, the film picks itself up when Wayne is thrown upon the League of Shadows. The fight scenes are well done, and the way it's put together structurally gives a good sense that you're seeing the seeds of what Wayne will become. And again, we flashback to Wayne meeting Katie Holmes at the trial. There's one line just before it between Christian Bale and Michael Caine that almost sums up what this film is trying to do, where Caine's Alfred says 'Will you be returning to Princeton?' Of course, it sounds like an innocence piece of dialogue, but it feels so clumsy, like it's saying "Look, we're in the real world!" which follows with Nolan's insistence in taking Gotham into the world of semi-heightened reality, which as a personal preference, doesn't work with me. The DC comics have always been on a kind of alternate plane, where Metropolis is an alternate Manhattan and Gotham is an alternate Chicago, or Boston. Grounded in a sense of reality, but built upon with a very well constructed fantasy. It would have been less glaring to say 'Will you be returning to Metropolis U?'
The scenes at the trial and around it are well-realized, but unfortunately are unbalanced by the complete lack of chemistry between Bale and Holmes. Again, the dialogue sounds forced and written (especially the 'it's what we do that defines us' spiel), and Holmes' character seems almost shoehorned in to satiate the female demographic and give the film a slight romance aspect. It doesn't work, and the scene would have played much better, especially emotionally, if it was Bruce and Alfred in that car.
So we flip back, and Bruce refuses to execute someone, which leads to him burning down Ra's Al Ghul's place. The scene is well-done, although again it suffers from the same dialogue issues (you almost get the sense Goyer is setting up so many of these lines so they can be repeated later in the film with more meaning, and it's overkill) but overall, it's one of the better scenes. After that, Bruce returns to Gotham to start his crusade, and again, the film starts to go in places that turn me off like naked pictures of Zelda Rubenstein.
It's almost like this section of the film is one of those EPK-type shows where they have a behind-the-scenes of a film and show you all the high-tech gadgetry and wizardry used to make the film. 'The Secrets of Batman Begins!' Here we see Bruce, along with Morgan Freeman's Yoda and Q wrapped into one, as he gathers what he needs to become the Dark Knight, which involves ordering mass parts from China? It's all material that isn't needed, and could have almost been explained away with a line such as:
INT. WAYNE BUILDING - BASEMENT
Bruce walks into the huge warehouse. Lucius Fox sits at a desk, working on some contraption. He's surrounded by boxes, and strange objects covered in tarpaulins.
BRUCE
What's all this stuff?
FOX
Surplus from lost military contracts, prototypes that never went into production.
BRUCE
Can I have a look?
FOX
Take it. After all, it's yours.
What's all this stuff?
FOX
Surplus from lost military contracts, prototypes that never went into production.
BRUCE
Can I have a look?
FOX
Take it. After all, it's yours.
End scene.
At the end of the day, they spend more time worrying about how he creates the ears than the loss of his parents, and for me, that's not a good thing. I'm sure it would work in some other film, but with Batman, at least for me, it's always been about the mystery of the character. He's always been a myth, and the fact that he has these amazing gadgets and the world's coolest car are things that are taken for granted because of the myth. It's not different to Boba Fett. Cool cat who people know little about, but if you maybe for example made him some clone of a bounty hunter along with a million other people, it would destroy the mystery of the character. Hey, wait a second...
And with this, we have some of the supporting characters introduced, such as Jim Gordon, Carmine Falcone, and Jonathan Crane. Gordon probably fares as well as any of the characters bar Alfred; he seems to have some pretty good dialogue, and while there are some clunkers ('I gotta get me one of those'), he pulls the part off very well. Falcone and Crane are another matter. With Crane, I simply feel Cillian Murphy is the wrong actor. Don't get me wrong, he's a good actor, he just seems a tad young for the part, and his method here doesn't work with the character, especially when handling Goyer's dialogue (the 'Bat-Man' line, 'Dr. Crane isn't here right now...) which seems to get especially ludicrous when dealing with Crane. I do like the Scarecrow mask though, and the fear effects are very well done.
Falcone almost seems like he's in a parody of a gangster movie. Tom Wilkinson is an exceptional actor, but he never comes across as anything more than a caricature. There's a scene where Wayne goes into a bar owned by Falcone and speaks to him, and Falcone makes a big speech about being able to kill him despite the bar being full of Gotham's law. The way it's done just sends it into comedy, and Falcone is reduced to this bumbling stereotype as opposed to a man who rules Gotham under a shadow of fear.
However, that is still the funniest thing in the film, despite a whole host of lines designed to make you laugh, but just make you cringe. For example, the scene where the Batmobile is being chased, and a cop radios another cop to say it's coming his way. Cop #2 says 'what does it look like?', we see a shadow scream past and he says 'Nevermind,' taking this movie from serious territory into the realm of Smokey and the Bandit 3. The chase itself seems so artificial, whether it's down to the way it's shot or the effects, but it reminds me of the space fighting scenes in the Star Wars prequels, where there's supposed to be this amazing sense of speed and excitement, but something got lost in the translation. Certain parties will shoot me for this, but Tim Burton's Batmobile chases were more exciting.
And the artificiality of so much of the film kills it. There's a scene where we see the water pipes are bursting in the narrows, and we're given a helicopter shot of the city, and the narrows seem almost pasted in next to the rest of the city, and that's how the film's Gotham feels. And because of that, we're never comfortable with our surroundings and we never really believe in this world. And it doesn't get any better once Bale becomes Batman. Don't get me wrong, there are some great scenes where Bats is taking people out, and what I didn't like in the theater seemed smoother this time, and worked with his movement. But as soon as you hear that voice, it all goes to shit. I don't want to presume what it would actually be like to have to be Batman, and to have to make a fake voice. I'd probably sound worse than Bale. But then I don't have millions of people to satisfy. I think Kevin Conroy has it right in the animated series, where it's a more gravelly and deeper version of Bruce Wayne's normal voice, with the right sense of menace and seriousness. Bale's, well, I'm sorry but it just doesn't work at all. And again, that kills the film. How can you believe in Batman when you snigger or cringe every time he opens his mouth? It's sad, because Christian Bale is an absolutely amazing actor, and I always thought he'd be a good choice.
The next fatal mistake the film makes is something Tim Burton did in the first film. As Ra's Al Ghul appears in Gotham, Neeson gives an excellent speech about the history of the League of Shadows, how they've spent their time razing places such as Rome and London to the ground to fight decadence and corruption, which conjures up all these amazing images in your mind, and then essentially says, 'Oh yeah, we indirectly helped kill your parents too,' once again inextricably linking their death to the major villain of the film, which not only comes across as a weak twist, but changes what Batman is about, at least to me. It doesn't matter who killed Bruce's parents, it's irrelevant. What matters is what Bruce chose to become because of it, not focusing his anger on one aspect of crime, but all aspects. It turns it into personal vengeance, as opposed to the completely open war on crime Batman wages, and just seems an insulting thread made to make us care more the final battle between the two.And the final battle, well, it's something people have talked about a lot. A lot of people have mentioned the fact that Ra's Al Ghul dies, and how this is linked to the whole thematic aspect of Bruce not being an executioner. Bruce says 'I'm not going to kill you, but I'm not going to save you.' That, well, seems a little off to me. A better way of saying it is 'I won't kill you, but I'll happily see you go up in flames.' I remember the end of A Death in the Family, where the Joker is presumed dead but Batman is determined to find his body to bring him to justice, and ends up with Superman holding him back from searching the ocean. That's Batman to me. Letting someone die when you can just as easily swing away and escape it isn't, and personally, puts him more on the side of the dark than the light, and I just can't accept it.
And with a quick coda, and a mention of the Joker, the film ends, and I'm left to ponder why. Christopher Nolan is a wonderful filmmaker. David Goyer... should stick to writing comic books. Bale, Caine et al are wonderful actors. But where everything had so much potential, so much fell short. I'm not sure what I would do if I had the choice to make it. I'd cut out all of the 'making Batman' stuff, I'd excise the Holmes character completely and replace her with Harvey Dent (not the kissing scenes, of course), and I'd spend a lot more time on the death of Bruce's parents. Up until now, only one example of Batman on film has been able to do that successfully, and that was the animated film Mask of the Phantasm, and even that didn't spend a whole lot of time.
Despite this, I'm hopeful of the future. Christopher Nolan's brother - Jonathan - is on writing duties, and having written Memento and also now having gotten past the initial origin story, I'm thinking they might be more successful this time around. I hope so. Because the Dark Knight deserves better.
Read or Post a Comment
I tried re-watching this at Christmas and got about 30 seconds in before getting bored and (I do myself no favours) watching Titanic. The jump-cutting, time-switching editing only works for me if there's a good reason (like memento) and not if it is just the default style setting for a film. It seems like ADD film-making and, oh so ironically, gives me ADD.
I agree with the points about what they choose to spend time on - making batman about his ears rather than his father, or his neurosis or his relationship to justice or, you know, stuff. That said, focusing on those details that does physicalise Batman in a way that really works in a film setting (and also pleases functionally autistic nerds). Plus, if they kept those sequence out, we'd have been denied the best shot in the movie - the boingy-fingers gadget.
I agree, although I don't think it needs to justify him. Like I said, I think of him as a myth - and as long as you establish that he has Wayne Enterprises, and that the company has contracts with the military to develop stuff, that's all you need.
Those boingy fingers were cool though.
Very good re-review, Charlie. I'm pretty much on the same page as you (especially the stuff about his parent's death versus the gadget stuff), though I think I hate the third act more and more every time I see it. It's practically insulting to some of the genuinely good drama focused on in the first act.
Noting Batman's character from "A Death in the Family" is a great point as well.