Year Another One

So. You hear anything about this new Batman movie...?

But seriously, folks.

Batman Begins has a lot to recommend it, not only to the geeks, all excited at being able to really appreciate the cameo appearance from Zsasz, but even for the everyday moviegoer, interested in little more than an evening's entertainment. If I were a bit more rash, I'd say that it's probably the best Comic Book Movie ever (and by capital-C, capital-B Comics Book Movie, you understand I mean Superman and Spider-Man, not Ghost World and American Splendor). As it is, I feel confident saying that it's at least very good.

Before I start picking nits, I should mention all the good that this movie has going for it, and there's quite a bit of good. This is arguably the most well-rounded Batman to appear in any non-comic media, more nuanced than either the Adam West or animated television versions, more compelling Tim Burton's or, especially, Joel Schumacher's. Director Christopher Nolan and co-writer David Goyer go out of their way to portray a sensible evolution from Bruce Wayne to Batman; contrary to the popular modern concept of Batman as being saddled with some kind of navigable form of insanity, Bruce Wayne's neuroses are more empathetic, more easily visible as having birthed the bat. Despite that explicit mention is made of the idea that Bruce Wayne is the mask, Batman the true identity, Wayne is as important to the story as Batman. Batman isn't an identity Bruce Wayne adopts (or vice versa). The Bat's an ends to a mean, to Bruce Wayne's mean of fighting injustice.

Impressively, this legitimate character development--and while Bruce is the most fully-formed, he's hardly the only character with dimension--is rooted in an exciting, and more impressively, logical, plot. The skeleton of Batman Begins comes from Miller's "Year One"; anyone familiar with that standard will be insucceptiable to at least a few of the movie's surprises. However, the movie manages to be both faithful to that forebear while introducing new elements. For example, while Ra's al Ghul's role in the creation of the Bat has been mentioned before, it's never really been directly inserted into the context of "Year One" (not in my recollection, anyway). And while the addition of the Scarecrow is unnecessary almost to the point of distraction, he's still used effectively and interestingly, in no small part due to the performance of Cillian Murphy.

In fact, the movie owes a great deal of its success to its performers. Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes and Tom Wilkinson all give important performances that both suggest what will be familiar to comic fans while introducing novel elements into this particular legend of the Dark Knight. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman (as Alfred and Lucius Fox, respectively) create a support network for Bruce Wayne that make his transition from playboy to vigilante more plausible, not only practically, but also emotionally. You realize that there's no way Bruce could have become the Bat, let alone remained that way, without support, and you realize likewise what sort of mind would regard this mission as less a fool's errand and more a vocation. (One of my favorite moments in the film, in fact, belongs to Caine's Alfred, when he discusses his devotion to Bruce as an extension of his devotion to the Wayne family. It's been long canonical that Alfred's allegiance to Bruce Wayne is unwavering, but rarely do we remember that this allegiance is born out of the fact that Thomas Wayne trusted the care of his only son to Alfred; in other words, Alfred's devotion is as much to the trust of Thomas Wayne as it is to affection for his son.)

As you might imagine in a film drawn so clearly from "Year One", the story needs to be supported at least as strongly by James Gordon as by Bruce Wayne. Gary Oldman serves the character and the story better than we have any right to expect. Randomly, I found Oldman's performance to be reminiscent of Ewan McGregor's as Obi Wan Kenobi. In Episodes One through Three, McGregor essentially served two masters, one being the need to create a bridge between his performance and Alec Guinness's, the other creating a pocket in the character for his own interpretation, something that I thought he did remarkably well (in fact, I'd point to his performance overall as the high point of the prequels). Although James Gordon's never really had any sort of definitive portrayal onscreen--really, the animated version's is the closest thing we have--Oldman still seems to be channeling some sort of iconic version of the character. There's something intimately familiar about Oldman's Gordon, not just in the way he looks, but even in the way he sounds, even the way he moves. For some reason, the world at large has never seemed to regard Gordon as being as important to Batman as, say, Jimmy Olsen to Superman, or J. Jonah Jameson to Spider-Man (perhaps because Gordon's not a newspaperman?). I wouldn't be surprised of Oldman's flawless performance changes that.

But, of course, as far as this movie's performances go, a dozen of quality can't make it up if one particular performance is found lacking. But--I must admit, a little surprisingly--Christian Bale knocks it out of the park. Every once in a while, you might catch his Bruce Wayne in a shifting of gears, and even though there's no obvious difference in his appearance, you can recognize the moment that Bruce Wayne steps to the back and cedes control to Batman. Even as this happens though, the tether between these two states of mind--and the movie makes it clear that this is not a psychic break; it's two states of mind, not two entirely independent minds--is apparent. And refreshingly--at least for enyone whose been following Batman's adventures in the funny pages for the last decade or so--the "man" is at least as important as the "bat" here. There's a moment when Batman, having been in costume for less than a night, sprints across the rooftops of Gotham, pursued by the cops. He takes a flying leap off the side of one building and slams right into the next, is sent scrambling down its side, clutching at the fire escape. The moment's physical clumsiness was so foreign, predisposed as I am to think of Batman's modern version, the Morrisonian calculator, that I found myself instinctively laughing, despite that for most in the theatre, the moment was of the "will he make it?" dramatic tension variety. Bale's Batman is funny when he's allowed to be, scary when he has to be, and never perfect; whenever he approaches perfection, it's obvious that the approach is only made possible by an incredible amount of training and preparation. He makes this character empathetic--something that, anymore, seems an inherent violation of the character--while still making him undeniably recognizable.

The only identifiable disappointment I could register had to do with the action scenes. When Bruce Wayne enters into the tutelage of Neeson's character, the latter attacks the former, in order to (presumably) demonstrate the extent of his ignorance. As he goes at Wayne with this kick or that punch, he identifies the school of martial arts from which each is derived: "Jujitsu! Karate!" So the film goes out of its way to show that Bruce Wayne has been extensively trained in martial arts, suggesting that his fighting abilities are powered more by grace and speed than by raw force. So when a martial artist of Bruce Wayne's caliber goes up against the man who taught him, you'd expect the fight to be, well, smooth. But the fight scenes are more often than not choppy, blunt, abrupt. They're effective in indicating the role of violence in these goings-on, but not in the particular sort of violence.

If this movie's any good (and obviously, I believe it is), it's because it picks choice elements from the best Batman stories across the various media. Miller's grim-n-gritty Batman--the "Year One" version, not yet as dark as "Dark Knight Returns"--mixes with the pulp fun of the animated series, with dashes of the 60s series's fun, all with the epic scope of Burton's two Batfilms. Overall, this will be familiar territory for anyone with just more than a passing familiarity with the character, but the scenery's been changed just enough to make it worth a second visit.