08.28.08
Holy depth of character Batman! (Batman Begins/Dark Knight) *major spoilers*
“They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I’ve looked for it ever since. I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge… Me.”
Ok, so that image isn’t from either of the films, but I felt it went with the quote better than anything I could find.
I think the hype behind Dark Knight and Batman Begins has settled down a bit. People are still talking about it, analyzing it, raving about it. Before going to see a midnight showing myself, I revisited the origins of our caped crusader. Well, I tried. The amount of comic book material is truly ludicrous to try and make something of at this point in time. Thank goodness for the people who are passionate enough to follow and document key bits on the most reliable site for all things particular, Wikipedia. Most noteworthy for now, though I promise links to come, is that as the comic book culture evolved, so to did the Batman we read about. It seems fair to state that the Adam West Batman has changed considerably from those days to where I actually want to start this discussion, the 2005 version Batman Begins. I want to talk about the two as a unit, which I have seen done surprisingly little. I find the two films really amplify what the other is creating. But enough preface.
Batman Begins is all about fear. (Possibly) Duh. While much attention is paid to the training and controlling of fear via Bruce Wayne/Batman, I think the speech by a fairly minor character captures the sentiment best.
The Key Dialogue:
Bruce Wayne: ….I came here to show you that not everyone in Gotham’s afraid of you.
Carmine Falcone: Only those who know me, kid. Look around you: you’ll see two councilmen, a union official, a couple off-duty cops, and a judge.
[points a gun at Bruce]
Carmine Falcone: Now, I wouldn’t have a second’s hesitation of blowing your head off right here and right now in front of ‘em. Now, that’s power you can’t buy! That’s the power of fear.
Bruce Wayne: I’m not afraid of you.
Carmine Falcone: Because you think you got nothing to lose. But you haven’t thought it through. You haven’t thought about your lady-friend down at the D.A.’s office. You haven’t thought about your old butler. Bang! People from your world have so much to lose. Now, you think because your mommy and your daddy got shot, you know about the ugly side of life, but you don’t. You’ve never tasted desperate. You’re, uh, you’re Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham; you’d have to go a thousand miles to meet someone who didn’t know your name. So, don’t-don’t come down here with your anger, trying to prove something to yourself. This is a world you’ll never understand. And you always fear what you don’t understand.
For one, I love the near hypocritical message. Our minor crime lord has just bookended his monologue with opposite sentiments. To start, to know him is to fear him. But in the end, you always fear what you don’t understand. I like it. It speaks to the depth of the human imagination. Falcone makes a case that plays out very fascinatingly in Dark Knight. By the time Bruce has full become his Batman persona, his fear is still driving him to revenge and the sense of justice he wishes to carry out. That fear, in my estimation, is to be left alone. His parents had, after all, died right in front of him, and he did not want to experience that loss yet again. But in Dark Knight, we see a hardened Batman try to choose the side of justice, and (arguably) knowingly sacrifices his beloved. True, he still has Alfred and Lucius, but to make them equivalent to Rachel is to really devalue what I can only imagine Bruce felt.
But where does this leave our Batman? We have seen him go from child scared of bats, to becoming a creature of the night…and an adult afraid of his parents legacy, only to embrace it in an entirely new way. What comes next? How far does it go? Cellphone radar technology that Fox expresses his displeasure with? Will copycat Batman either create more trouble, or give the real Batman a poor reputation? All we know is the sentence that starts him on his real training with the league shadows. When asked what he seeks, Bruce says, “I seek the means to fight injustice, to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.” And the significance in the wording should not go un-noted.
We’ve seen themes of love in film. We’ve seen anger consume, jealousy consume, hopelessness consume, and vengeance consume. But rarily have we seen fear given the spotlight. Fear can stem from any of these things, or fear can lead to any of these things. But fear as a root seems to have not had its time in the sun. And I, for one, am astounded by it. And fear is the primary weapon used by BOTH the good guys and bad guys. Crane/Scarecrow uses his fear toxin for control…and Joker uses his fear for total dischord. Both prove quite effective in their own right. But we also know how effectively “the Batman” uses fear…as we see at the beginning of the second movie and we hear the Joker mention, crime lords are afraid of running their dirty businesses with the Batman around. And what happens then? When you no longer have good vs evil, and you merely have different people with different motivations using the same tools. The Batman cannot conquer the Joker, for the Joker has nothing to fear. And Harvey Dent…Harvey Dent I love. He justifies my own sense of cynicism. That, in a way, I empathize with where Ra’s al Ghul is coming from. Gotham can’t be saved. There will always be villians. No matter how many you lock up, someone will step in or step up to take over. And while I want to see the hope, that were will always be good guys, people attempting to emulate Batman (even if it is poorly) that there is always something good. Ra’s al Ghul may be disobedient, but he still conforms to the same set of rules as Batman insofaras; the world is messed up.
The movie ends on a note foreshadowing the sequel, but more importantly cementing my own cynicism. Gordon points out what we all already know from having lived in the real world. Escalation, as he calls it. “We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds.”
It has been talked about to death, but to jump topics again, let us talk of heroes as symbols. The body and flesh are destroyable, ideas live on. That business. It’s a good business. But with this darker Batman, we are looking for a symbol of fear. As Ducard/Ra’s teaches him, theatrics is key. Superman and many others have it down, in a sense. Stopping a plane from falling out of the sky and the like counts for something, obviously. But Batman is not a superhero. I will argue with anyone who doesn’t call Batman an everyman. No, not every man is a billionaire with the sweet connections he has. And going with the fact that he wasn’t bitten by some radioactive spider is a bit too easy of an argument. I get chills…yes, I said it, chills…during the scene that Bruce nearly kills off the murderer of his parents. Just typing that I needed to re-focus. For one, its still early-Batman, as its very rare to see Batman actually take someone’s life. But compounded with that…I can’t help but think of how that moment would come to define Batman, and the moments I have had in my own life. Premeditated animal instinct, as I like to think about it. It’s nothing to be proud of, and its hard to justify…and yet we’ve all been there.
There is only one clear cut answer that we get from any of this…forget Spider-Man’s “With great power comes great responsibility.” With Batman we get, “With great power comes somebody else to screw with it.” The Joker. He was well written. Ledger did an Oscar worthy performance with it. But the Joker is not given an origin. We get no radioactive experiment gone wrong or mentally unstable patient break out. We are merely introduced to him as the Joker. He is seemingly born into the world to disrupt the order being instilled by Batman.
EDIT: No, I can’t leave it at just that. Dark Knight is so intertwined…(sigh). So let’s keep going. The Joker’s thesis… The Joker: You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.
The players may change, but the game will remain the same. The rules may change, but the game remains the same. And that is the discomforting but real dark feeling Dark Knight leaves us with. Heck, in the long run, all we really know is Batman is about to take a hit for being the bad guy. That’s it! The Joker is on the loose, the justice system will take a hit in losing their one beacon of shining hope, and now their masked symbol of hope is also going to be tainted. So what are we left with?
The prisoner’s dillema, of course. The ferry scene, in other terms. That, even under the most extreme circumstances, people are capable of doing the unexpected. And not just any people, the unexpected among us can do the unexpected as well. Ok, that sounded very wordy, but the sentiment certainly remains. The Joker and Batman have reached an impasse. Throw out the outliers. We know that people will not always do what is right, and will often do what is in their best interests. But we also see that one is fully capable of overcoming these shortcomings to do what is moral in a corrupt society.
The Joker: You’ll see, I’ll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh… civilized people, they’ll eat each other.
So while the above statement was true; Gotham will always need a Batman and Gotham will always have its bad guys…we are not left to despair. Villains of Gotham? You will never fully corrupt a city. No matter what depths your corruption goes, the city will never fully bend to you. That is why we press on, that is why we fight the good fight. One can listen to the cynics…Harvey put it best I think: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” And while we see that apply to both him and, presumably, Batman, we can’t buy into the theory wholesale. No one is perfect, and if we look closely at our heroes of modern times we can chip away at what they are all about. But those infallibilities do not make them bad, they make them human.
And on a completely random note, I love the pervasive “professionalism.” All very tongue-in-cheek. Every fight and encounter seems to have a bit of the sword fight in “The Princess Bride” too it. I’m not sure if its the best example, but certainly one of the prime examples could be from the trailer…the Joker complaining about Batman starting with the head trauma during the interrogating. The magic trick with the pencil also comes to mind. Batman dangling a crime boss from a distance “that won’t kill him.” The list goes on, but this added a great layer of comic mischief for me…a dark comedy bit that totally fit in with the dark themes and action scenes.
I have gotten off the path again. I will get back on by using the Joker’s own words to describe himself.
The Joker: [speaking to Two-Face] Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So, when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I’m telling the truth.
The Joker: It’s the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
The Joker: [Joker hands Two-Face a gun and points it at himself] Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.
Is he really telling the truth? Does he not have a plan? Or is this more made up tom-foolery of the scar variety? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. The truth is between the lines. Something very Tim O’Brien about it. The Things The Joker Carried. I like it. But that rounds off my thoughts nearly. So to a conclusion maybe?
I would have paid to see Dark Knight as two separate movies, by length and by quality. It was brilliance. The script, the acting, the works. Go watch it. If you already read this, you hopefully aready did. So go watch it again. It might not dethrone Titanic, but you’ll get to see a great, great movie.
Lt. James Gordon: Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now…and so we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a dark knight.
Hats off to you. To those who do your job, and we don’t know how well you do it because if you are doing it well, we will never hear of it.
RIP Mr. Ledger
All quotes courtesy of IMDB, that amazing well of information.
08.22.08
(12 Angry Men)*thematic and minor plot spoilers*
The first time I encountered the film or play, I was a freshman in high school. Somewhere amidst the tales written by old English bard types and fancy lads, this was tucked in our broad books of literature. I remember enjoying the fact that no one was named, and that it must make for a really cheap film with 99% of the movie all taking place in a small, simple room. Little did I know there actually WAS a film…well, atleast until our teacher showed it to us. And so my love affair began.
The cast was strong. A room full of people that make you wonder where you had seen them before, and lead by the ever likable Henry Fonda. The film came out shortly after the play (the film ‘57, the play ‘54).
I think what strikes me about the film is how it compares to modern film. Its not just the small things done cinematically that really resonate with me (though the shots are exquisite, starting with wide, panning shots of jurors and by the end typically zooming in, giving nearly claustrophobic close-ups, as a great example). The “good ol’ days” tended to have films with very clear themes, protagonists and antagonists struggling with a warm fuzzy feeling in the end. I didn’t live through the era, I don’t know if people liked their B&W movies to have B&W themes. In fact, I’m not even totally sold on older movies being clear cut…but I think its hard to argue that compared to how are dramas are now-a-days, we like the lines blurred more now. Many ambiguous movies and TV shows can be found just channel surfing these days. 12 Angry Men had some clear cut themes, but some catches.
The general plot line? One vs. everyone. The democratic process at work. America at its finest, man dressed in white, a nameless hero, standing up for justice. The entire movie is based around this point. The characters are cookie-cutter cut-outs. I can remember a line that is supposed to be amusing, as a man who is clearly supposed to be a foreigner, corrects a stubborn juror’s English grammar. But what can get lost in all of the feel good fun, the Frank Capra It’s A Wonderful Life type goodness, is that Henry Fonda, playing the rebellious juror who stands alone at the beginning in his “not guilty” vote. Juror 8, to be specific.
Juror 8: It’s always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don’t really know what the truth is. I don’t suppose anybody will ever really know. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we’re just gambling on probabilities – we may be wrong. We may be trying to let a guilty man go free, I don’t know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that’s something that’s very valuable in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it’s SURE. We…can’t understand how you…are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.
Two things that are note worthy about this speech. One, it admits the fault in that feel good feeling that everyone rooting for “good guy” Juror 8 has been helping swell within us. After nurturing that feeling that one person can make a difference, Juror 8 himself admits that we might be just screwing it all up. WHAT?!? Not what I wanted to hear! And yet…is it true? Can our good intentions lead us astray? Ok, so this thought doesn’t really sneak up on us. Juror 8 says time and time again that he isn’t saying the accused is innocent, merely that we can’t be so sure. And we never can be. Struggle as we might, we can lose our baseball tickets, our pride, or anything else we have to lay on the table. None of that will help. We can only hope that, in general, what we good we try to do is doing just that, good. People will take advantage, people will be wrong, but we MUST be willing to screw up in order to stick to our values. Now that’s a message.
The other interesting note, which is a re-occurring theme, is where the burden in proof lies. The end of the quote puts the people holding out on a “not guilty” vote on trial. If there is an antagonist amongst these twelve angry men, it is found in juror #3. Bull-headed, and having made up his mind when he first put eyes on the suspect. Lousy, no good type of people, someone you wouldn’t around in your community, and all that jazz. He must convince Juror 8 and all of his posse that we can trust our gut. We can’t always give benefit of the doubt, or no amount of evidence will ever be enough. I love juror 3. Mostly because I think of him and reading the newspaper now-a-days. Looking at the Barry Bonds types, the OJ types, the Enron types. One never knows where they can find justice, but if given the chance, leap at it! Atleast that’s what I think of when it comes to juror $3. But I have digressed. The burden of proof, according to our judicial system, lies upon the accuser. But as the this 1957 jury room shows, all too often is that far from true. I jumped to the end with that quote, but at the beginning, it was not up to the 11 guilty votes to convince the 1 non-guilty vote…but it was up to juror 8 to defend and explain why he was where he was. The above list, in particular all sports allegations, tend to result in us loving the gossip and the build up more then due process. We love villains, in our movies and in real life, and as such if voices are raised to discredit you, don’t wait around to see if there is a fire with that smoke. Even if its just smoke, its enough to get people to view a situation differently.
Again, I digress, I’m plugging my way through the final season of The Wire, and nothing portrays the battle of people trying to live vs. other people trying to live better than The Wire. Speaking of which, I think I shall continue to plug my way though it. But know this; 12 Angry Men manages to use all of your favorite cliched devices and characters to create something that resonates in the mind and keeps you intrigued until the credits roll. Check it out.
08.17.08
What’s wrong with me #1 (What Dreams May Come)
There is a fascinating human psychology that I will not attempt to explain or understand. But it is easier to complain, whine, kick and scream…and people tend to enjoy it more anyway. More to the point for me, I can justify not re-watching the movie right before writing about it. So, this seems a fitting place to start.
There’s something that fascinates me about this series I will try to write. I’ve often joked that I’m going to start ranking my friends and assigning point values based upon if their movie recommendations, in the past, have been accurate to my tastes. It’s not that they are wrong for liking certain movies, but it sometimes boggles my mind that they can recommend 10 movies in a row that I adore, and then something will come up that is such a far cry from good, to the point of being downright unwatchable, that I am left puzzled as to what is wrong with me.
So without further ado…to all of you who liked What Dreams May Come. What did I miss?
The cast and characters, I wanted to like. Robin Williams can do the serious thing as far as I’m concerned, including parts of Good Morning Vietnam, One Hour Photo, and to a certain extent Insomnia. I’m ok with this path in his career, though I’m growing weary of all of the funny men of old trying their hat at serious. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. But I can’t handle him in this movie, and considering he’s on-screen for 99% of it, that did NOT bode well. I don’t know if I can put my finger on what bothered me though. I guess for what was written, he did well enough, but the plot and bothered me more than its actual execution. Cuba Gooding Jr…he’s never wowed me, but never detracted from a movie. I find he did more of the same for me here. His character seemed wholly drawn out and unneeded for a majority of the film. It’d be bad enough to call him a device, but if he was a decide, what the heck was he a device for?
Plot wise…it felt like it was trying to be deep, but it never accomplished being deep. It was asking these greater questions of things beyond humanity without actually arousing me at all. But it wasn’t in a pretentious “We want an Oscar” way, it was more a matter of “Look at these characters, they are so deeply in tune with their spirituality,” and yet by the end of the movie, it was hard to tell. And again, I’m ok with ambiguity, but I felt I’d been trying to buy into something and never got anything in return. Love also played out as a huge overarching theme…and yet I just found no reason to vest in the characters. Kinda spoilerish, but only in a “you read the back of the box” sort of way, death is a hugely profound altering circumstance. Maybe I needed to like the wife more before I could care. Maybe the surreal-ness that was supposed to make me feel real just never quite clicked. But I didn’t care. There was no sorrow or joy about the thoughts of this loving couple. I know that makes me sound cold and callous, and I can be, but movies usually make me a sucker for the sentimental. This film just failed epically in doing so. You can’t whiplash me around and go over-the-top to grounded in reality and expect me to like it.
The settings were good, that I will concede. Everything was larger and brighter than life. Extra vibrant when it should be, extra gloomy when it should be, kudos to the art department on this one. And I’m out of praise.
So please, take your cheesy dialogue, your tortured protagonists, your weathered spirituality, and remake this. I wanted to like it, I did. But all I got was a big disappointment.
The Nominee for Worst Movie of All Time…
We stood huddled in the lobby of the local movie theater. While a biting cold awaited us outside, the group gathered to discuss and critique the film we’d just seen.
“Worst movie of all time,” A pronounced easily. “Hands down. Nothing is worse than this film.”
Without hesitation, I argued that she was wrong. The worst movie of all time was the not the film that still had credits rolling in a sticky-floored theater behind us. It was, without a doubt, that catastrophe of a film starring Bjork. Yes, that one. In the year 2000, presumably thinking that the end of the world was looming and the film would never be viewed by human eyes, Lars von Trier wrote a screenplay. His opus, I assume, and his attempt to immortalize himself before all computers failed to convert to 2000 and caused the world to Blue Screen of Death.
Tragically, I was not that lucky. I saw the Dancer in the Dark at the recommendation of friends. They lied to me and are friends no more, rest assured. They claimed it was emotional and powerful. I found it to be exhausting and draining. I’m not an expert on film, screenplays or humans, but I’ve found that when the audience is rooting for the heroine to die, the movie has probably taken a turn for the worse.
Over the past several years, people have encouraged me to watch the film again after hearing my diatribe about the angst this film has caused. “Give it another chance,” they egg. “Maybe you were in a bad mood!” If I was in a bad mood, it was because of that film, not in spite of it. To add insult to injury, I was so disgusted by the movie that I ignored its existence on my coffee table for days. What could have been a $.99 rental and two hour waste of time languished in my living room and became a $5.00 rental.
And the movie I valiantly defended to keep it out of the worst movie of all time slot? Eight Crazy Nights, an animated anomaly about Chanukah and Adam Sandler. Not Sandler’s finest moment, but at least he’s never shown up anywhere wearing a dead swan around his neck.
That’s just not Kosher.
