The Automatik

“Would you like to see my mask?”

We humans rely on the fact that our superheroes are just that: greater than mortal men. But Batman is a special kind of icon: not an alien who came to earth in a meteor shower, nor a man bitten by a radioactive arachnid. Relying heavily on Batman graphic novels and completely discarding the embarrassing Batman franchise of the 1990s, in Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer have gifted us with a spectacular vision of Batman as not only a hero, but as a flawed human being who inhabits a world where the good guys don’t always wear white and sometimes the criminals are clad in shades of grey.

Indeed, Batman’s flaws, stemming from his human identity as Bruce Wayne, are the impetus for his strides into legend, although the evil that he battles isn’t always clear-cut. His mentor Ducard shares Wayne’s disgust with the rotten state of Gotham City, a place where thugs cut deals with an overtaxed justice system to squirm out of their well-deserved punishments. “Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding,” sneers Ducard. And one would think that Wayne, who witnessed not only his own parents’ murders but also the early release of their killer, would agree.

Yet although Wayne becomes Ducard’s greatest student, he betrays him because he cannot betray his own morality to become a criminal’s executioner. Much like Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode III, in Batman Begins, the pupil eclipses the master; only in this case, it’s not to join a Dark Side but to escape a League of Shadows.

But Gotham City is not without its own shadows, and they’re all cast by the larger-than-life figure of mob boss Carmine Falcone who like Ducard, understands the power of fear. Ducard, in a disturbingly Charles Manson-esque bit of wisdom, encourages Wayne to become his fear. He incurs the power of Wayne’s wrath by blaming his parents’ death on Thomas Wayne himself, a move which we believe is to mold him into a better fighter. Falcone also has harsh truths for Wayne. “You’ve never tasted desperate,” he lectures him. “This is a world you’ll never understand. You always fear what you don’t understand.” And like an abused child who grows up to beat his own children, Wayne becomes a criminal, only to be “saved” from a wretched prison by Ducard’s intervention.

Remembering his father’s words that “especially the scary ones know fear,” Wayne becomes a shadow of his own making by donning a costume and a persona to scare the hell out of the bad guys. Although previous incarnations of Batman have been goofy or outright ridiculous, in Nolan’s version, there is no garish spandex underwear and no cartoon bubbles shouting “POW!” Batman is as scary as hell, and in a dump like Gotham City, that’s saying a lot. Wayne relies on his Ninja training and Ducard’s ideas on theatricality and deception as potent agents to terrify, adopting a guttural snarl to mask his real voice.

It’s not just Wayne who dons a mask to become a frightening figure. Psychiatrist to the thugs, Dr. Jonathan Crane, has enough smarmy exchanges with Assistant District Attorney (and Wayne’s love interest), Rachel Dawes, to make us despise him and view him as perhaps the purest incarnation of evil. Ducard wanted to kill criminals; Crane turns them into lunatics. Although both Ducard and Crane appear to respect the mind’s power over the body, in Crane’s case, it’s more like slavish, rabid devotion, as he perfects the hallucinogen that Ducard used to train his students into a weapon of terror, a weapon that relies on visual deception much as Batman’s does.

It’s this secret terrorism that informs the entire movie, and one that is skilfully executed, most successfully when we realize that Falcone isn’t the biggest bad guy on the block. Like The Usual Suspects’ mysterious and powerful Keyser S�ze, Ducard is not as he appears. In Batman Begins, however, this is not just a clever device; it’s a profound and painful lesson for Bruce Wayne. Ducard’s placement of blame on Wayne’s father wasn’t merely to anger him into action; the young Wayne was his pawn all along.

In this way Batman Begins is a very believable film, in that it addresses the quite real effects of growing up in the shadows of one’s father. This is not to say that the film doesn’t rely on some fabulous special effects. However, this Dark Knight is not a CGI fantasy like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. There’s an organic quality to Nolan’s creation. We see the genesis of Batman, not only psychologically and emotionally, but also practically. As the prince of Gotham and the heir to the Wayne fortune and family name, Bruce has access to some amazing toys, but they all make perfect sense in the context of his access to a billion-dollar entity.

Wayne rolls up his sleeves and creates not only the Batman legend, but also Batman’s actual costume, working with Wayne Enterprises employee (and friend of his father) Lucius Fox, who is the Q to Wayne’s James Bond. Shurikens become throwing bats instead of stars. A soldier’s protective suit becomes the Batman uniform. A paramilitary tank becomes the Batmobile. Electrically charged memory cloth becomes Batman’s cape.

These are not the only parts of the film that utilize the believability factor. Michael Caine plays Wayne butler and Batman confidant Alfred less as a servant and more as a substitute father. There’s also an enormous feeling of comfort in seeing Gary Oldman as Sergeant Gordon, and we are reminded of why he’s such an esteemed actor. The vastly talented Tom Wilkinson inhabits Carmine Falcone with a combination of humanity and depravity. Liam Neeson portrays the duplicitous Ducard with creepy panache and Cillian Murphy’s cold stare and deceptively cherubic features make for one horrific Scarecrow.

But this movie is about Batman and Christian Bale’s Batman exceeds all other cinematic interpretations. The role appears to be the culmination of his career, as he portrays the wounded innocent (Velvet Goldmine’s Arthur Stuart), the deceptive capitalist (American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman), and the righteous warrior (Equilibrium’s John Preston). One can’t help but be amazed at the scene in which he smugly escorts European models into his sports car only to be rendered boyishly awestruck by the unexpected appearance of Rachel.

Sadly, Katie Holmes’s portrayal of Rachel Dawes is the weakest part of an otherwise flawless film (the scene with a comatose Dawes and an almost bumbling Alfred also seems woefully out of place). Although the idea of a Batman love interest as much more than a screaming bimbo has been a long time in coming, it’s difficult to be convinced by pixie-voiced Holmes in this role. Thankfully, however, gratuitous love scenes are non-existent and she does fulfill an important role in turning a confused and vengeful Bruce Wayne into a hero. “It’s not who you are underneath,” she cautions, “but what you do, that defines you.” When he reveals to her that he is Batman, Bruce thinks she’ll be proud of how he’s taken her words to heart. To her, however, the childhood friend she loved has vanished, only to be replaced by yet another mask; Wayne doesn’t just lead a double life as Batman, he also has to pretend to be a billionaire playboy to throw off suspicion. The strain on him because of this is palpable. After all, we all wear masks; the trick is not to lose yourself inside them.

If Wayne can’t tear off his own mask, he can at least destroy those of others. By exposing Ra’s Al Ghul’s plot and thwarting it, he hopes to take the first steps to transforming Gotham from a slum into a shining city. He still refuses to become the executioner, and his compassion is what Ra’s Al Ghul would deride as a fatal flaw, but it is in fact what makes Batman so powerful. “Don’t be afraid, Bruce,” chokes Al Ghul, echoing Thomas Wayne’s words of comfort to young Bruce in the bat cave. But it’s not fear of his own death that propels Bruce Wayne. By letting Ra’s Al Ghul die, Wayne is allowing Batman to be completely born. “I’m not going to kill you,” he whispers to Al Ghul as the metro train careens off its rails, “but I don’t have to save you.”

The following scene, in which the screen is filled with the stupendous image of Batman flying through the air, is a powerful example of the skillful direction of Nolan, who has crafted a grimy world of sepia tones not unlike the futuristic squalor of Blade Runner (another movie about secret identities). This Gotham City looks like any big city that’s been ravaged by crime, but is more fantastic than and horrible than all of them combined. The gritty reality of Gotham is heightened by the music of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who have developed a marvellous score that makes tremendous use of two sustained notes. Fortunately, there are no cheesy hits-in-the-making by modern bands to tear down the ideal that this Batman is real.

The combination of script, score, directing, and acting make this Batman more credible than his predecessors. It is this credibility that makes Batman not just a literal symbol of good against evil, but a metaphor for humanity in a cruel and twisted world. Although it is man’s inhumanity to man that contributed to the wretchedness of Gotham, it is the fact that Batman is human that may resurrect it in the end.