Christopher Nolan, “Batman Begins” (2005)
I admit that getting to watch this film in its entirety took ages – I was put off by its length and the fact that it’s an origin story of a well-known comics superhero. In the end I did manage to see “Batman Begins” from start to finish though it was very arduous! Much of the film’s first half deals with the Batman / Bruce Wayne character (Christian Bale) attempting to deal with early childhood traumas of falling into a well and being spooked by the bats living there, and of seeing his parents shot dead by a robber after they leave an opera performance early when young Bruce sees performers dressed as dancing bats. Years later, when his parents’ killer Chill is let out on parole in return for testifying against Gotham City mob boss Carmine Falcone, Bruce Wayne intends to kill him, but a Falcone hitman kills Chill first.
After confronting Falcone personally, Wayne then goes on a seven-year quest around the world training in methods of combat, immersing himself in the underworld of crime and studying what criminals fear. Wayne’s quest brings him to Bhutan where he is recruited by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) into the League of Shadows, headed by Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). Wayne later discovers that the League of Shadows has targeted his home Gotham City for destruction. After burning down the League of Shadows’ headquarters, Wayne returns to Gotham City and starts taking an interest in his father’s company Wayne Enterprises, about to be made a public company by its shady CEO (Rutger Hauer). Wayne befriends Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), an archivist engineer who introduces Wayne to various prototype defence technologies and projects.
Wayne adopts a secret identity and establishes an underground base for his intended crime-fighting activities. His first job is not long in coming: he discovers that Falcone is running an illegal drug shipment ring and establishes that corrupt Arkham Asylum psychologist Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) is working with him. Along the way, Wayne has to rescue Gotham City District Attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), an old childhood friend of his, and makes his first contacts with police sergeant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). Wayne later learns that Falcone and Crane / Scarecrow have been working for (though they may have been aware) Henri Ducard who reveals himself to be the real Ra’s al Ghul.
The complicated plot is slow with confusing diversions that make no sense within the plot or the overall thematic context of Batman’s genesis and why and how he establishes himself and his operations in Gotham City. The love-interest sub-plot is unnecessary and there is little connection between Bale and Holmes. The film does a fair job of exploring its hero’s psychological development and motivation for becoming Batman, and Christian Bale is very good (in a minimal way) in showing, not telling, Bruce Wayne’s progress from being ruled by fear and thoughts of vengeance to a more self-aware individual willing to sacrifice himself to save Gotham City in amongst the super-villain plot that demands car chases, explosions, arson attacks and much destruction of transport vehicles and urban infrastructure. While Neeson is not very convincing as the ultimate villain, Michael Caine as butler Alfred Pennyworth, Freeman, Murphy and Oldman do well in fleshing out their characters in the limited time and space those characters have.
I suppose the film should be commended in spending considerable time emphasising Bruce Wayne’s search for appropriate father figures and role models who support his personal development and help him overcome his fears and traumas; and trying to balance this theme with being a typical superhero film, with all the plot and other expectations and demands from audiences and Hollywood studio bosses. The result, cumbersome as it is in the format of a feature film, is perhaps the best that could be done at the time of the film’s making. The other major theme of Gotham City (and cities like it) as a corrupt and filthy place worthy only of hyper-violent destruction instead of improvement and slow and steady reform is one that will reverberate through the other films in the Dark Knight trilogy.