[Spoilers]
My only exposure to Batman is through Christopher Nolan’s trilogy. Having not read the comics, Matt Reeves’ latest offering exploring the superhero was a wholly different experience to me, especially as an outsider to the character and stories of Batman. It was amusing to experience and read this film as a multi genre and fluidic piece of art.
Writer / director Matt Reeves and co-screenwriter Peter Craig begin their story amidst the crime filled status quo and place the Batman amidst all chaos. The city is already knee deep flooded with crime. The hooded protagonist walks through the crowd, reminiscing his nocturnal duties as the caped crusader. It’s a rainy day with misty glasses, neon lights and damp roads. After a successful encounter with a group of thugs, he says “I’m vengeance” and believes fear is his weapon. This defines the character and his motives. A young billionaire, who lost his parents to the crime creeping in the city, becoming his alter ego to seek vengeance for them. This sets Bruce Wayne to embark on the quest for justice as the Batman. The quest isn’t just another night out to fight crime. It riddles, questions and answers everything. Batman’s motives are tested to the point that even he unlearns his stance about vengeance and to work for a greater good. The city and it’s people are understood, saved and instilled with some hope by him at the end.
It’s a fact that the hero’s thesis becomes mighty after challenging an equally mighty villain’s anti thesis. Batman and the Riddler form two sides of the coin. Apart from the fact that both fight to unmask the crime, it was fitting that both had a degree of symmetry in their character arcs. Bruce Wayne is the billionaire who became an orphan at an young age. The Riddler grew up in a ruined orphanage belonging to the Waynes. Both of them had their lives affected because of the criminal underlord Carmine Falcone. It’s just that the two differ in the part of violence in their pursuit of justice. For an origin story, the Riddler was the perfect villain to challenge the Batman not just intellectually, but also on the moral front. What more do you need in a villain other than making our hero go on a course correction to identify his path?
Paul Dano was unapologetic and menacing as the Riddler. I wish he had more to tell about his character’s backstory which would have been even more comprehensive for his actions. Although the Colin Farrell admirer inside of me was mildly disappointed for making his face almost unrecognisable, the actor made up for it by delivering a curiousity inducing performance as Penguin Oz which was very measured in a way to keep us wanting more in the subsequent films.
Coming to Robert Pattinson as the protagonist, he has managed to internalise the character very much. Not just the external scars, but also the character’s internal ones are gloriously conveyed by him, even underneath the infamous mask and cape. I could feel the pain when his character says he had to see the crimes of the previous night all over again in the morning while journaling. He’s vulnerable, carrying the broken child inside of him, yet gritty. Zoë Kravitz and Jeffrey Wright as the Catwoman and Jim Gordon respectively gave very humane performances as the protagonist’s companions.
DOP Greig Faser and composer Michael Giachhino have made such a comprehensive contribution in creating the neon-infused rustic world of film. Faser has played interestingly with the lights and shadows – a pitch he probably took from the story’s theme. Giachhino’s score (which also coincidentally carries the baseline notes from the Nirvana song used in the film) is majestic and pensive at the same time.
The film unfolds at such a leisure pace that it’s genre shifting never felt jarring. On the surface, it begins as a detective crime drama and then shifts to a dark mob gangster drama involving underworld politics and finally triumphs to shift to the superhero saviour (or origin) film. Some levels inside, this is the story of a young vigilante seeking vengeance by solving and preventing crimes, to fully understand the gargantuan crime network of lies and deceit that persists in the city, to personally overcoming his fears about his family’s past and to finally realising his true purpose as the dark Knight.
Encompassing all the above said, I even read the film as a coming of age drama to an extent; in the sense that both the protagonist and the city grow into something else after encountering the darkness. Upon retrospection, it was brilliant of the filmmakers to bundle all these entities inside the box of a superhero film. It was fulfilling, not just for the art house kind of treatment or reimagining the origin story or being outright bold, it’s because the filmmakers have managed to achieve all the above said things with grit and panache.
