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A
lot going on under the cowl: Bale in Batman Begins.
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The
Dark Knight
By
Ann Morrow
Batman
Begins
Directed
by Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins exists in world of
its own, outside of the realm of other comic-book flicks,
and above and beyond all the Batman movies. Starring
the unconventionally talented Christian Bale and a stellar
supporting cast, this Batman is more of a crime drama
with terrific action sequences and a hero who, for perfectly
good reasons (such as hiding high-tech listening devices)
wears a hooded mask with ears. Batman Begins emphasizes
its hero’s flesh-and-blood vulnerabilities—he bungles his
first attempt at descending a skyscraper—along with his tortured
psyche, which ups the ante in a plot that is unusually rich
in emotional connections and convincing moral struggles. This
Prince of Gotham has more in common with the Prince of Denmark
than with the other big-screen Caped Crusaders.
Struggle is the very soul of young Bruce Wayne, who is floundering
in a Chinese prison when the film opens. In dreams, he reexperiences
his defining childhood trauma, at the bottom of a bat cave,
and the murder of his parents, which is indirectly related
to his fearfulness, and for which he is consumed with guilt
and anger. Flashbacks also reveal Bruce’s tender relationship
with his good and generous father (Linus Roach). His father’s
teachings are kept alive by their loyal butler, Alfred (a
marvelous Michael Caine). Bruce is rescued from the prison
by a mysterious warrior-philosopher named Ducard (Liam Neeson,
old enough to play very wise, yet still imposing enough to
convincingly throw Bale around like a rag doll). Ducard shows
him the path to the League of Shadows, an all-powerful secret
society headquartered in Tibet. Ducard teaches Bruce the martial
and other arts, including the use of theatricality and deception
to psyche out the enemy, but there is a price to pay for his
instruction.
Bruce’s objective is to “turn fear against those who prey
upon the fearful,” giving the film an intelligent recurring
theme—conquering fear—that resonates throughout: When a mysterious
contingent of evil envelops Gotham, it chooses widespread
panic as its weapon of mass destruction. But by then, Bruce
has become Batman, a fearsome, crime-fighting persona he creates
with the assistance of the astute Alfred, and a scientist
from Wayne Enterprises (Morgan Freeman) who supplies the military
prototypes that become his costume. (In one topical bit, the
bat suit is customized from advanced infantry body armor that
was never put into production because its cost was deemed
higher than the value of a soldier’s life.)
This a very human Batman, albeit one who has been ever so
slightly twisted by the long, painful years before he found
“the will to act.” Still boyishly handsome, Bale is both subtle
and effective in all of Batman’s incarnations: His shit-eating
grin when Bruce is letting loose as a billionaire playboy
turns into a demented sneer while battling bad guys. He also
has a warm banter with Caine and Freeman that is one of the
film’s greatest pleasures—as is watching the two old pros
make the most of their droll dialogue. Among several other
delectable performances is the Irish hunk Cillian Murphy cast
against type as a creepy criminal psychiatrist. The only disappointment
is Katie Holmes as a DA and Bruce’s childhood friend; she’s
stiff and uncomfortable instead of authoritative, and she
also seems too intimidated by Bale for their characters to
project any closeness.
Batman’s real costar, of course, is Gotham, a thinly veiled
New York City that is set both in the near future (shades
of Fritz Lang via Tim Burton) and the recent past; Nolan draws
on the economic crisis of the 1970s and the crack epidemic
of the 1980s to create a believably hellish landscape of fear
and loathing (the film could’ve easily been terrifying). But
not to fear: This Batman may be a loner, but he’s willing
to ask for help, to be rescued, and to recognize the hidden
strengths in others. Despite the beautifully nightmarish combat
scenes (which sometimes mimic the motions of frenzied, flying
bats), perhaps the most rousing moment comes when the last
good cop (Gary Oldman) asks, “You’re one man alone?” And Batman
answers: “Now we’re two.”
Unstable
Character
Palindromes
Directed
by Todd Solondz
Forward or back, a palindrome is the same: like “a man, a
plan, a canal, Panama,” “ten animals I slam in a net,” or
Aviva, the lead character in Palindromes, Todd Solondz’
most recent contribution to the cinema of rubbernecking. It’d
be too much to say that Solondz invented the genre, but he
does operate within it as if it’s his natural element. His
earlier films (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness
and Storytelling) present a steadily increasing coldness
of observation, a coldness that borders on misanthropy and
the cynical exploitation of his characters. Unlike more conventional
filmmakers, Solondz does not seem to believe that character
development means character growth: There are no redemptive
epiphanies in his films; his characters are richly imagined
but in some ways static, unlearning—almost classically fated
(that is, doomed). Solondz is the Sophocles of suburbia.
The gimmicky irony here is that, despite the fact that in
Palindromes Solondz has a character state explicitly
to Aviva that character is unchanging, she is played by seven
different actresses—and one actor (albeit an androgynous one).
It’s a commendably confident bit of stunt flying on Solondz’
part to create such tension, but it drums up other problems:
By destabilizing the film’s center, Solondz forces the viewer
to cling more tightly to peripheral characters, and though
the performances to be found there are, by and large, very
nicely done, the effect is to highlight the sometimes mean-spirited
freak-show aspect of Solondz’ work. Palindromes is
a picaresque with no hero and no authorial point of view.
Given the plot, it’s no wonder Solondz is reticent: Aviva
is a 13-year-old New Jersey girl intent on having “as many
babies as possible” so that she will “always have someone
to love.” After she is forced to have an abortion by her well-intentioned,
slightly hysterical mother, she runs away from home by stowing
herself in the back of a tractor-trailer headed for Kansas,
where she falls in with an ad hoc family of multiethnic and
multisyndromed born-again Christians: There’s the blind albino
girl, the deaf midget, the Latin-American epileptic, the Down’s
Syndrome boy, the boy who nightly “needs the mucous sucked
out of his lungs” and, of course, Cuddles, the dog. Aviva
is warmly received here—she is even invited to join the Sunshine
Singers, the family singing group—but she is surprised to
discover that members of the family are planning to kill the
very same doctor who performed her own abortion (what are
the odds?), and have hired the driver of the tractor-trailer,
with whom Aviva had a sexual relationship, to do the job.
Aviva is eager to help.
Solondz avoids an even implicit statement on the issue of
reproductive freedom; the contrasts between Aviva’s liberal,
“organic,” biological family and her adoptive evangelical,
right-to-life clan are clearly rendered, but without judgment.
Nevertheless, Solondz’ natural morbid sense of humor will
out. So, while he avoids the political, he cannot help but
make fun of his characters: Aviva’s introduction to the assembled
Sunshine family is a cartoonish parody of sickly sweet Christian
love. It’s a setup, of course, for the grim plans later revealed,
but Solondz can’t wait that long. As the children all gleefully
describe the ways in which they pitched in to help with the
meal, the blind albino girl defers praise. When the others
point out that she did cut open the bacon package, she modestly
acknowledges the appreciation with a handful of bandaged fingers.
The blind girl. Funny.
The absence of moralizing in the film is brave and refreshing;
the absence of a moral center, however, is disorienting. Solondz
offers up only fleeting purchase on the film in the form of
two speeches by Mark Wiener (Matthew Faber), a character brought
back from an earlier film. We are given first the lesson of
palindromes and the immutability of character; then, a soliloquy
on the absence of free will and the ultimate pointlessness
of ambition or hope in the face of genetic programming and
undeniable nature.
Apparently, Solondz just can’t help himself.
—John
Rodat
I
Put a Spell on You
Howl’s
Moving Castle
Directed
by Hayao Miyazaki
Trying to convey the story of a Hayao Miyazaki film is a fool’s
errand. Take the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away:
A young girl’s parents are turned into hogs, and she’s forced
to work in a resort for demons and spirits while being pursued
by a reaper-like friendly ghost that swallows everything in
site.
Come again? What?
It’s easy to dwell on the weird plots and critters in his
movies, as these fantastic creatures and places are so beautifully
imagined and realized; the eye-candy factor is always high.
What makes his films enchanting, however, is their bracingly
honest look at children and the emotions of childhood. In
Miyazaki’s world, children are heartbreakingly able to adapt
to situations that would crush an adult, and face dilemmas
that most humans past puberty would flee from. And, as in
the real world, kids in his world both love and hate
their parents.
Maybe that’s why Disney always finds it so hard to market
Miyazaki’s work: It is so wildly different from their own
product.
In his latest mind-bending anime feature, Howl’s Moving
Castle, almost everyone is under some kind of spell. There
is Sophie (Emily Mortimer), a teenage girl maliciously transformed
into an old woman (Jean Simmons); turnip head (Crispin Freeman),
a helpful scarecrow who must wander the countryside alone;
Calcifer (Billy Crystal), a “good” demon trapped in the form
of fire; the Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall), a self-enchanted
villain; and Howl (Christian Bale), proprietor of the titular
moving castle, under a spell so powerful it’s quite probably
killing him.
Based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, the film is set in
a version of 19th-century England with most of the “Englishness”
drained away. Fantastic, Jules Verne-esque flying machines
soar above grubby industrial landscapes, while, in a sly bit
of ecological commentary, spirits and witches wander a rugged-but-beautiful
countryside derided as “the Waste.” The film has a bleak story,
even for Miyazaki: His spiritually addled characters, on their
journey to have their assorted spells lifted, have the added
burden of avoiding being killed in the middle of a ghastly
war.
Still, as bewildering and grim as the story often is, it’s
Miyazaki’s trademark emotional honesty—and wondrous animation—that
make Howl’s Moving Castle great.
—Shawn
Stone
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