“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
I’ve always loved Batman. The character was one of my first passions, if not my first. When I first started getting tattooed, my first were Batman and Joker. When I made that decision, I had more than one conversation where it was implied that other people had more meaningful things tattooed upon their body and I was being silly or something but to me, I feel like Batman means as much to me as anything can mean to anyone. I can trace so much of my life back to Batman. I have tried to absorb everything connected to the character for as long as I can recall. I say with absolute certainty that if I wouldn’t have read comics my whole life if not for the earliest major Batman stuff I was exposed to, that being things like my dad showing me the 60s TV show and culminating at age 6 with Tim Burton’s “Batman,” which I loved. I say that to say this: I would not have read comics my whole life without that, I acknowledge that, but trying to watch it again when I was older…as someone who read comics their whole life up to that point …rewatching that stuff was incredibly painful for me.
Enter “Batman Begins”. This is a film that literally felt like Christopher Nolan asked me personally what a Batman movie should be, opened my skull, and projected it to the world. Words can’t express the joy and awe that I felt sitting in a theater watching that movie for the first time. The original series with Adam West and the other films have their place. I can now acknowledge all Batman stuff has its place. However, it took the satisfaction I got from this film’s existence to lead me to that conclusion. Before this film, I was kind of bitter. I had spent the majority of my teenage years wanting to see something that resembled the comics that opened my eyes to what Batman could be brought to life. Stuff like Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke,” Grant Morrison’s “Arkham Asylum,” Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns’ and especially ‘Year One.” After reading those books and others like them growing up, I was embarrassed by the Batman movies that existed. I was embarrassed as a fan. I was embarrassed for people who proudly liked them. I’m not even just talking about Schumacher’s either. Burton’s films were failures in my eyes as well. The only thing that felt like the character was taken seriously was the cartoon, somewhat ironically. For many, the only exposure they had to the character was those films and that campy original series and it drove me crazy to know that. I wanted everyone to see what I saw.
I was intrigued when I first heard Christopher Nolan, the director of “Memento”, was doing Batman. I really enjoyed that film and it had a gritty noir quality that was exactly what I wanted to see for a Batman film. Despite Burton’s original being described as “gritty”, the character hadn’t had the right quality up to that point. On top of that, when myself and fellow nerds first heard Christian Bale floated to play the Dark Knight, I feel like it was the first (and at this point, maybe the only) time that we were all collectively excited by a Batman casting. That went for all the rest of the casting decisions as well. Pretty much the entire cast of “Batman Begins” is not only name stars but fine actors. Nothing that I read about this movie let me down. I kept trying to learn everything about the movie every step of the way and was never once disappointed. Moreover, it’s the only time I can really remember having really massive expectations and excitement for a movie and having them surpassed.
Seeing as how well known and part of pop culture Batman’s origin story is, I don’t know that I really have to go through the plot of “Batman Begins” except to say that despite growing up devouring every piece of Batman media I could get my hands on …it was the first time I actually understood why a man would dress up as a bat and fight crime. I’d read his origin and other retellings of it over the years and it just never landed for me until “Batman Begins”. I accepted it but I wouldn’t say I truly GOT it. After seeing this, I got it. Having said that, I can’t even begin to verbalize it. All I can really say is to watch the film. Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman’s origin and the less traveled story of the period of time between Bruce Wayne’s parents’ murder and the start of his war on crime is as close to perfect as I can imagine. That’s great for me as an audience member and great for him as a filmmaker too. It was unimaginably important for his career at this juncture that he knock this out of the park and he absolutely did. A piece of modern mythology grounded in realism that has proven to be so influential that I honestly don’t believe that if it weren’t for what Nolan did here, superhero cinema would be where it is today.
More than that, the way that Christian Bale brings the character to life is the first time that I really felt like the different facets of the character were illustrated exactly as I had always pictured. To break it down: I hear a lot of people say that Bruce Wayne is the mask and Batman is his true identity. That puts far too fine a point on it for me. It’s just far too simple. It frustrates me to no end to hear that. Yes, there is a public face of Bruce Wayne that is a mask. I do not deny that fact. The playboy image he presents to the world is as much a mask as the cowl he wears as Batman. However, Batman isn’t who he really is either. Batman is an almost demonic persona he wears to frighten criminals the same way he wears the mask of the playboy to control suspicion. The real identity of the character is somewhere in the middle and Bale brings that to living, breathing life. Bruce Wayne is alternatively legitimately funny and incredibly sympathetic, and Batman is alternatively viscerally frightening and inspiring in the best possible way. It’s everything I hoped for and to me, is still the bar to aim for.
The way that Nolan assembled a cast with as great of actors as he did keeps things grounded and real in a way that was truly ridiculously influential but is maybe never used to such great effect as it is here. It’s not even stunt casting either. Characters like Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox could feel like one-note plot devices disguised as characters but when they’re played by actors the caliber of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, they become not only much more than that but almost characters you’d be willing to watch films of just those characters living their lives. Even Liam Neeson (spoilers, I guess) playing a villain is so well drawn that if Nolan hadn’t spent so much time familiarizing the audience with Bruce and making the audience empathize with him, he’d probably steal the film. It’s probably the best realization of Ra’s Al Ghul in any media. You completely understand why he would mentor Bruce and just as much why he would try to kill him for being in his way. Cillian Murphy’s take on Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow is as much as things ever really get to feeling like traditional comic book blockbuster cinema and even then, that character generally doesn’t feel over the top. He only really gets the occasional bit of standard Scarecrow stuff and it’s so well explained to the audience by the time it’s happening that it doesn’t feel out of place. Tom Wilkinson’s take on Carmine Falcone could just be like every gangster you’ve seen in a movie but as a character to play the kind of villain with a hold on Gotham before everything became operatic combat on a nightly basis, he pulls it off beautifully. Honestly, the only person you can really call a weak link is Katie Holmes as Bruce’s childhood friend turned assistant D.A., Rachel Dawes but I wouldn’t. The problem is that it’s the only character that is more or less one note because her role as Bruce’s (and Gotham’s to some extent) conscience is shared by so many other characters that she doesn’t really have much of a chance to be more than the love interest.
Maybe the best compliment I can give to this film is that it’s made me more accepting of all other Batman media in a way that I wasn’t previously. That is 100% due to how satisfying “Batman Begins” is for me. I finally got the Batman movie I always wanted. If anyone talks about Batman, I no longer have to explain how I feel like a Batman movie should be because this exists. This is a piece of work I can point to as being as close to a perfect realization of a character that means everything to me. Many people point to “The Dark Knight” as being superior, which I can’t really deny. As much as I’ve tried to put into words how much this film meant to me in the moment of its release and every moment since, it might just be too big for me to do so. I say that because it’s not really a film to me. It’s a culmination. It’s just all I wanted for so long finally in front of my eyes, so sure, I may be able to say there are better films but there’s almost nothing that’s more special to me than “Batman Begins.”
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch