A film I love

[fpb]

I think I have seen a good part of all the animation and live action superhero films and TV series ever made, from the beautiful old Superman cartoons of forties to some Smallville and all of Buffy. And with due respect to all the others, I do not think that anyone will ever do anything better than Tim Burton's first Batman movie. Already by the second they had lost the plot, but the first is the perfect superhero film. The reasons are manifold. First, the soundtrack is not only among the musically finest ever composed for any film, but one that evokes from beginning to end all the imaginative content of the superhero genre - the passion, the pursuit and fight, the drama and the darkness. Second, the costume designs - both the Joker's and Batman's. The designers understood that for live action, superhero costumes need to be redesigned from top to bottom, since what looks good in four-colour comics most often looks tacky and pointless in live-action (a bad flaw in all the Superman movies and TV serials, and even worse in the old Wonder Woman serial). They had, however, the sense of keeping the Joker pretty much as he is in the comics; in his case, tackiness actually adds to the sinister hilarity of the character. And there is the heart-stopping moment when Jack Nicholson's face paint slips off and we realize that he is no longer even the thug - a thug, but still human - that he had been so far. The build-up in the Nicholson Joker character is an amazing piece of work: already as Jack Palance's treacherous and half-mad enforcer he is sufficiently scary, but we are progressively shown worse and worse insanity, till he becomes a thing of genuine horror - a conception, to my mind, more subtle and effective than Heath Ledger's. And this leads us to the actors. Nicholson is magnificent in a surprisingly demanding role, developing further and further layers of insanity with a sense of timing and artistic insight that make this one of his best performances ever. Kim Basinger is simply radiant; in a sense, it is not very important whether she can act or not (although her acting is not at all bad, in my view) because her luminous beauty keeps our eyes on the screen in and of itself. Michael Keaton and Robert Wuhl are quite good as two different - and yet oddly similar - kinds of good guy character, and all the minor figures (with the exception of an oddly elderly and lumbering Commissioner Gordon) are beautifully cast and rendered. Anton Furst's urban gothic designs have been universally praised. But at the heart of it, in my view, lies the vision. It is what holds everything else together. Realistically speaking, the story makes no sense; but Tim Burton has allowed the archetypal power of the images to control the narrative, and the result is not only exciting but profoundly convincing. No wonder that the music plays such a large part. This is a story that appeals more to our unconscious, indeed to our collective imaginative heritage, than to our commonsense reason. If you insist on keeping things sensible, or if you have a defensive reaction against the experience of being swept away, you will never get this movie.

Comments

[pomposa.livejournal.com]

Ah, hello! I've just stumbled across your entry, and, along with the others, agree with your sentiments completely. I'm no film buff, and have certainly not seen as many action films as yourself, but I have watched this film repeatedly. I occasionally buy other Batman films in the supermarket, but am invariably disappointed. There's something very satisfying about the first one. You're the first person I've heard enthuse about it!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am more a superhero buff (indeed, I have created my own) than a film buff, and I guess that makes the difference. A lot of film critics will not necessarily get the whole superhero mythology. In particular, there has been far too much emphasis on the tormented nature of Michael Keaton's Batman - a superhero fan will recognize it as part of the self-doubts that have been a standard part of the superhero figure since at least Stan Lee. Conversely, what really does it for me is something that I suspect the average art-house movie lover will find positively toe-curling - the final crescendo from the DA reading Batman's letter to the assembled journalists, to the music swelling and rising as the camera rises up to the sky and takes in the hero looking up at the symbol. That, I repeat, makes no obvious rational sense, but it calls to our image of the hero in our collective memories, and is powerful and comforting.

Incidentally, I have nothing against art house movies as such, or indeed the art of cinema in general. I just think that this particular movie appeals to a taste that most intellectual movies don't.