IVP - Strangely Dim

Batman Began

Batman Begins launches today, and a particularly geeky theater near me opened at midnight last night to let their particularly geeky constituency have first crack at the film. I did a book signing in the lobby and had a great time.

The movie is delicious. I'm so pleased that the Batman filmography has been restored to fighting shape. My first Internet posting ever was to a chat room soon after 1997's Batman & Robin debacle, directed by Joel Schumacher. I've since read Batman Unmasked by Will Brooker, and I'm willing to concede that there's a parallel history of silliness in Batman that provides balance to the hyperseriousness present in the current film.

My preference, however, tilts toward the hyperserious, so I was particularly gratified by this very grim portrait of a city on the eve of judgment day, and the ethical dilemma of how people committed to justice should relate to such a city. I'm reminded of Abraham's negotiation with God over the fate of Sodom, in which justice and mercy are reconciled. The city is a main character in Batman Begins, just as the city has played a significant part in other recent films such as Sin City. I take some heart that filmmakers and moviegoers are willing to show concern not just for individuals but for the fate of whole communities.

I was also gratified by the exploration of how fear interacts with the pursuit of justice. This is the subject of an article I wrote that I hope to see posted soon on Pop Matters. Fear is a running concern in our own culture, so to see it given proper treatment in such a super-cool movie is reason enough to go see it.

I did find some of the action sequences hard to follow, but my biggest complaint is what passes for wisdom teaching in the film. There are moments of profundity, but there are a lot more moments of people thinking they're being profound. Those people may be characters or they may be writers, but the net effect is that the moral lesson being communicated through this film is confused and confusing. There are reasons rooted in the story that we should not trust anything supposedly wise uttered by anyone in this movie. But maybe the point of such moral ambiguity is that Batman himself is an unsettled question: can a city whose moral compass is guarded by a masked vigilante ever truly find redemption?

Thumbs up. Four stars. Whatever.

As a follow-up to my friendship-straining debate with my longtime friend Steve regarding whether Batman Begins can be accurately described as a prequel, I admit defeat. Steve's the movie expert, and though I don't think continuity is too disrupted between this movie and the 1989 Tim Burton release, they don't completely harmonize and thus this movie is far less a prequel than Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Steve, please forgive me!