(NYT) — The darkness in “The Batman”
is pervasive and literal. Gotham City in the week after Halloween, when this
long chapter unfolds, sees about as much sunshine as northern Finland in
mid-December. The ambiance of urban demoralization extends to the light bulbs,
which flicker weakly in the gloom.
اضافة اعلان
Bats, cats, penguins, and other resident
creatures are mostly nocturnal. The relentless rain is not the kind that washes
the scum off the streets, but the kind that makes a bad mood worse.
The Batman — not just any Batman! —
is less the enemy of this state of things than its avatar. On television in the
1960s, Batman was playful. Later, in the Keaton-Clooney-Kilmer era of the ’80s
and ’90s, he was a bit of a playboy.
In the 21st century, through Christopher
Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy and after, on-screen incarnations of the
character have been purged of any trace of joy, mischief, or camp. We know him
as a brooding avenger, though not an Avenger, which is a whole different brand
of corporate IP.
But a modern superhero is only as
authentic as his latest identity crisis. Both the Batman (Robert Pattinson) and
“The Batman” itself struggle with the vigilante legacy that has dominated the
post-Nolan DC cinematic universe. “I am vengeance,” our hero intones as he
swoops down to deal with some minor bad guys. He does not seem happy about it.
He’s grouchy and dyspeptic in his costume, and mopey and floppy in his Bruce
Wayne mufti. Having fed on Gotham’s violence and cruelty for years, he now
finds that the diet may not agree with him.
For nearly three hours, “The
Batman,” directed by Matt Reeves from a script he wrote with Peter Craig,
navigates a familiar environment of crime, corruption, and demoralization in
search of something different. Batman’s frustration arises most obviously from
the intractability of Gotham’s dysfunction.
Two years after the city’s biggest
crime boss was brought down, the streets are still seething and the social
fabric is full of holes. Drug addicts (known as “dropheads”) and gangs of
hooligans roam the alleys and train platforms, while predatory gangsters and
crooked politicians party in the VIP rooms.
This is not only a bum deal for the
citizens of Gotham. It’s a sign of imaginative exhaustion. Fourteen years after
“The Dark Knight,” the franchise and its satellites (including “Joker”) have
been mired in a stance of authoritarian self-pity that feels less like an
allegorical response to the real world than a lazy aesthetic habit.
That’s where “The Batman” begins,
but — thank goodness — it is not necessarily Reeves’s comfort zone. In his
contributions to the “Planet of the Apes” cycle (he directed the second and
third installments, “Dawn” and “War”), he demonstrated an eye for ethical
nuance and political complexity unusual in modern-day blockbuster filmmaking.
Glimmers of that humanism are
visible in the murk (the lowlight cinematography is by Greig Fraser), but for
Reeves, the path out of nihilism is through it. A masked serial killer
(eventually revealed as Paul Dano) is stalking Gotham’s leaders — including the
mayor and the district attorney (Peter Sarsgaard) — leaving behind encoded
messages and greeting cards for Batman. His signature is a question mark, which
even a casual comic-book fan knows is the sign of the Riddler.
Upholding a genre cliché, he sees
himself less as Batman’s nemesis than as his secret sharer, using more extreme
means to accomplish similar ends arising from parallel motives.
The Riddler
exposes the connections between Gotham’s power structure and its underworld,
links that seem to have eluded the Caped Crusader and Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey
Wright), his ally in the police department. The mythology of the Wayne family —
in particular the martyrdom of young Bruce’s parents — is held up to
revisionist scrutiny. What if we are wrong about Batman? What if he’s wrong
about himself?
These are potentially interesting
questions, but it takes “The Batman” a very long time to arrive at them.
Luckily, there are some diversions in the meantime, most notably the arrival of
Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, also known as Selina Kyle. Like the Riddler, Catwoman
is Batman’s self-appointed vigilante colleague, seeking payback on behalf of
women who have been exploited, abused, and killed by members of Gotham’s
criminal and official elite.
The prickly alliance that arises between these
masked, pointy-eared cosplayers adds a much-needed element of romance with a
just-perceptible hint of kink. Maybe there will be a place for fun in the DC
universe.
But not just yet. Don’t get me
wrong. There are things to enjoy here, in addition to Kravitz’s nimble work:
John Turturro, hammy and slimy as a top mobster; Colin Farrell, almost
unrecognizable as the oleaginous Penguin; Andy Serkis as Alfred; a crackerjack
car chase; Michael Giacchino’s eerie score.
The problem isn’t just that the
action pauses for long bouts of exposition, as long-past events are chewed over
by one character after another. Or that Pattinson, in and out of the Batsuit,
is almost as much of a cipher as any of the Riddler’s scribblings. It’s the
ponderous seriousness that hangs over the movie like last week’s weather — the
fog of white-savior grievance that has shrouded Gotham and the Batman for as
long as many of us can remember.
“The Batman” tries to shake that off
— or rather, as I’ve suggested, to work through it. Maybe it should not have
been so difficult, and maybe the slog of this film will serve a therapeutic or
liberatory end. Let’s hope. I can’t say I had a good time, but I did end up
somewhere I didn’t expect to be — looking forward to the next chapter.
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