Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.06.2005, Blaðsíða 44

44
BATMAN + SIN CITY
Movie R
eviews
First the new Star Wars, now Batman
Begins, I can’t help wondering when did
the entertainment world get so ridiculously
literal and genuine? A little sincerity and
skill is refreshing, especially as pumped into
the dead and decaying Star Wars series. But
Christopher Nolan has attacked the Batman
series with a blunt adherence to Freud and,
as is proudly revealed in the dialogue, Jung,
in a put on kind of manner. The result is an
overstated belief in rudimentary psychology
that one usually only sees among 19-year old
men in small campus coffee houses at 1 in
the morning trying to seduce more attractive
women who have just broken up with their
jock popular guy boyfriends.
Yes, review Batman Begins on the merits
of its storytelling or script and you don’t exactly
come away with a winner. Yet one can still
recommend the new Batman movie more
highly than any other superhero feature, based
entirely on the performance of its actors. First
of all, there are outstanding performances
by all the European actors involved in this
most American of stories—yes, Christopher
Nolan, an Englishman, has placed Brits and
an Irishman in key roles, and they have all
demonstrated that they are far better at being
gutsy and charming Americans than Katie
Holmes or anyone of her ilk. Charisma-
despite-lines performances by Cillian Murphy
and Gary Oldman continuously drive the film,
and when those two are on the screen, the
movie goes well.
Christian Bale, playing the title character,
is not quite so fortunate—he has to be on the
screen during some dull moments, especially
during a surprisingly lame plot sequence
with Liam Neeson. Still, Bale’s Batman is
a commendable, if Sisyphean, performance.
Not only does he throw heaping gutfulls of
psychological depth into the character, not only
does he genuinely seem like a man who would
put on a black cape and beat the crap out of
you, but he also pulls off humour and wit.
Bale’s ability to portray the bored billionaire
alter-ego of Bruce Wayne and make him
entertaining—even moreso than when he is
Batman—is remarkable. There are two decisive
moments in the film that should have been
throwaways in which Bale is asked to entertain
the audience and the actors on screen simply by
being nonchalant; one can’t imagine what the
direction on this was, other than “We’re going
to hang you out to dry here.” Instead of being
hung out to dry, these moments when Bale has
no gadgets or even decent lines prove to be the
most memorable of the film.
This is a case of a film saved by fearless
actors, but Nolan will probably get a lot of
credit for reviving the Batman franchise. He
shouldn’t. Nolan co-wrote the script, which
leaves no heavy-handed clichéd psychological
observation on fear or power unstated. He
also must have had something to do with
the camera placement, which, during the
many fight sequences, shows only Mr. Bale’s
wrists, teeth and eye-liner. When Nolan
has to deal with the obligatory explosion, he
seems completely out of his element—which
makes Iceland’s opening role in the film
disappointing. Iceland’s Svínafellsjökull and
Vatnajökull are the site of ninja fights and a
random series of explosions so lame, that in the
audience full of proud Icelanders with whom
I watched this film, I counted three people
SMSing out of boredom, and two more got up
to take a bathroom break, though the film had
only been going thirty minutes.
The truth is that Christian Bale, Gary
Oldman and Cillian Murphy, with help
from Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman,
could stand in front of a camera and read the
Lawrence Kansas phone book and make it
interesting. Nolan didn’t give them much more
than this.
Sin City, which has a late release date
in Iceland, is essentially the product of the
same writer: Frank Miller revived the Batman
series, though the films he inspired have never
given him due credit. The new film of his
non-superhero series credits him as much as
possible, and keeps every quality the comics
boasted: ambiguity, guts, style. Whereas
Christopher Nolan presents an obvious good
guy overcoming psychological turmoil in
Batman Begins, Frank Miller presents crazies
as less logical, and problems as less solvable.
And yet, Sin City is not a rewarding film
because it is only a comic book on the screen.
Whereas Nolan features his actors overcoming
bad lines and bad camera angles, Miller and
co-director Robert Rodriguez show actors
as stylized and two-dimensional. Without
allowing the actors to charm the screen, you
basically get a Xerox of a comic on the big
screen.
To understand the possibilities of comic
books on the big screen, it may be best to
take a good look at a collection of Batman or
Spiderman comics, and listen to some jazz.
Batman and Spiderman origins get retold
almost yearly, drawn over and over again
with different artists. As the melody, or story,
becomes more and more familiar, artists have
stretched the possibilities’ representation.
This is what we have to look for in films
of comic books: a familiar story with either
a director like Tim Burton, or actors like
Christian Bale and Gary Oldman, who throw
some life into the melody. The enormous
number of constraints that a comic book movie
forces on its creators can make for stylized and
impressive acting or directing. But it doesn’t
look like complete films will be coming out of
this genre.
Superhero Actors, Supervillain Script:
Batman Begins
Also, Sin City and Successful Comic Book Movies
by Bart Cameron