The Batman review: Dark, and technically brilliant

Robert Pattinson as Batman. Behind him, the words “NO MORE LIES” are scribbled by The Riddler. (Photo via Warner Movies)

In the DC Comics universe or any other popular comic franchises, Batman is the only superhero who doesn’t have a singular, pre-determined superpower. His psychology is what defines him—the Hamlet of comics, or maybe Dracula. That’s reason enough for the endless reinvention. After the ultimate tragedy besets him early in life, Bruce Wayne chooses to be morally compunctious—a vigilante by choice, despite all his inherited wealth, to serve Gotham City, upholding and taking forward a legacy which he believes was his father’s. He trains himself in science, in forensics and the city’s history to be that super-endowed vigilante. He wears the Batsuit himself; the Batmobile is designed to be that marvellous zipper.

In that sense, the new Batman film that released in theatres Friday—directed by Matt Reeves, who also directed Cloverfield, one of the best American monster films ever made—is closer to the original comic than all the other instalments, especially the ones Christopher Nolan edified as masterpieces of the comic book film lexicon. It is in the best tradition of Film Noir, peppered convincingly with tropes from gangster films and, of course, superhero films—a winning direction to take after The Dark Knight.

Christopher Nolan, who directed three Batman films, brought such prodigious levels of realism and gravitas to the saga that the only way to go would have been to go even darker—in this case, darker literally as well as metaphorically. Reeves also goes a step further, by tearing down the very idea of superheroes. In a climactic, non-armed confrontation with his nemesis, Reeves, who has also co-written the film, he has the bad guy explain to Batman with clear logic why his plight as an orphan has little value compared to the orphans who have endured the city’s dismal childcare system and orphanages. What Batman has, after surviving his self-imposed loneliness, is a moral superiority, and this movie heartily interrogates that right. The villain is not extraordinary in the narrow sense because the film eventually asks: What if the good guys on the city council roster are the real villains? “NO MORE LIES”: Words scrawled across the face of the first victim of the serial killer villain The Riddler, Gotham’s mayor (Rupert Penry-Jones).

It is Bruce Wayne’s second year as Gotham City’s nocturnal vigilante and saver. A drug called “the dropper” is everywhere, turning young and old, rich and poor, into sort of zombies. The Riddler is on the loose, precisely targeting his targets—middle-aged men serving the Gotham City government and complicit in turning Thomas Wayne’s “renewal” ideas into useless nostalgia. After every murder, The Riddler leaves cryptic hand-written letters and ciphers for Batman and gives him clues to find him. Just when it’s imminent that his next target is Batman himself, and apocalypse is near, we realise Riddler and Batman could be more alike than different. What then would the differentiator be?

Robert Pattinson is the most dour Batman in the franchise’s 17-movies history. He wears his nihilism in his eyes, on his stooped shoulders when the mask is off, and on the scars on his stooped back. The character has less bravery than ambivalence and a sullen recognition that what happens to him doesn’t really matter. Pattinson channels the character’s saddled and withdrawn pallor, and his emotional baggage with father wounds from his childhood with a deadpan face and ash-white makeup. He is also a gargantuan black wall, but without much ability to navigate swoops from the city’s hyper-vertical concrete structures. Gotham City—and by extension New York City—looks like decadence on steroids. Pattinson undoubtedly leaves his signature. In his role as The Riddler, Paul Dano is authentically scary—the voice of the challenges and miasma of the age, and projecting, like all Batman villains, the venom of a system that has wronged its most marginal. But the villain is strikingly without any grandly wicked flourish—The Joker wouldn’t approve of a successor with such nerdy verve.

The rest of the efficient cast includes Peter Saarsgard, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Andy Serkis. In the role of Selina aka Catwoman (also a superhero from the DC universe), Zoë Kravitz is a bite-sized hustler with her signature mojo and pyrotechnics.

The hero of this film, even more than the brooding man and a Batmobile that would supersede all expectations of the weaponised automobile created for all Batman movies, is the ensemble behind-the-scenes work of cinematography, sound design, art direction and CGI.

Rarely has a comic hero movie looked so moonless and neon-less. Shadows are painstakingly created vis-a-vis light without so much as a trace of prettification. Skewed angles frame the action and light is a character in itself in the visual scheme of cinematographer Greig Fraser—suffused with all hues of grey and red.

Light is a character in itself in the visual scheme of cinematographer Greig Fraser. (Photo: Warner Movies)

The production design by James Chinlund chimes in with the shadowy lighting with more sparseness and decrepitness than Gotham City has ever been imagined with. The artistic grisliness does not scream—but wait, there is an epic car chase sequence which is itself worth going to the theatres for. In a combat scene that unfolds in the corridors of an abandoned structure—a classic Batman kind of haunt—the screen is entirely dark, with only spurts of lights from the firearms exposing the action; the combat turns into horror, as if unfolding inside a discotheque.

The music and sound design by Michael Giacchino is probably the most memorable among all Batman movies—combining opera, emo and other genres, it is hauntingly good. The sound design takes the audience to places, hints at what’s coming and surprises with transitions without warning. The omnipresence of white noise and other kinds of ever-emanating digital noises and the cacophony it can create when layered with the sounds of the real world is an epigram about the age.

As an afterthought, the article before the name seems to make little sense except to assert that this is the most definitive Batman ever. Far from true. The story does not have as much juice as most others. But it is a real leap in the way Batman can be reimagined and reinterpreted. In technical aspects, the Batman franchise definitely takes a very hard and long stride. What better way to bring Batman—the superhero who tells us a lot more about ourselves than what it takes to be invincible—back to a world getting more and more hardened by cruelty and suffering. There’s even an epitaph that glorifies the power that comes from transcending adversity—a plea for post-pandemic healing?

The Batman released in theatres on Friday, March 3.

(Photo: Warner Movies)