Comic Book Justice Strikes Again

Batman

Directed by Tim Burton

At the Harvard Square Cinema

AS portrayed on television in the 1960s, the comic-book superhero Batman was the ultimate stuffed shirt, a crimefighter so morally upright that he would wait for a red light to change before following criminals across the street. In a bizarre world of Penguins and Riddlers, Batman was the perfect straight-man. He never realized how fundamentally weird Gotham city was, and that's why the show was funny.

The Batman of old didn't try to be action or drama; it was camp, pure and simple, and it attracted a huge cult following because it was so ridiculous.

But comic book fans have long harbored a grudge against the TV portrayal of Batman. This isn't right, they said. Batman ought to be a Serious Psychological Drama.

And now, to redress all grievances, we have a new Batman movie. Director Tim Burton has chosen to make a deadly solemn film about a superhero whose mental state is just this side of psychotic. This Batman does not battle crime out of any sense of moral righteousness. He does it because he is obsessed. He likes to scare the hell out of crooks by dangling them off the edge of skyscrapers. He enjoys slinking around in the dark, vanishing and reappearing without warning in the thick mist that envelops Gotham.

There is nothing funny about this crimefighter. He also seems to have no qualms about crossing against the light, judging from the way he ploughs through the streets of Gotham in his snazzy black Batmobile.

Without question, the real star of this movie is the city of Gotham itself. As envisioned by production designer Anton Furst, it seems to be part Transylvania castle, part Star Wars fantasy, part comic book, but mostly a decaying caricature of Manhattan island. The city is covered in shadow and smog. Any superhero who hung out there long enough would inevitably become a bit deranged, but fortunately Batman (Michael Keaton) has a head start.

The hero's alter ego, Bruce Wayne, is an eccentric young millionaire who lives alone on the outskirts of Gotham with only his butler Alfred for company. As a child, Wayne watched as his parents were murdered in cold blood, and he has since grown up in almost total isolation, traumatized by the incident.

Scarred by his childhood memories, Wayne remains distant from the rest of the world. At his own black-tie benefit, Wayne wanders around without speaking to his guests, and when the gorgeous blonde photographer Vicky Vale (Kim Bassinger) asks where she can find the host, he gives her a confused look and conceals his identity. Later, when he invites Vale to dinner, they sit at opposite ends of a long table, unable to see or hear each other.

This is a Keaton familiar from earlier comedies like Beetlejuice. He gets to deliver only a few amusing lines--notably in a scene with Vale and newspaper reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wohl)--but he delivers them well. And Keaton has a beautifully expressive face; he's fun to watch when the script supports him. Sadly, however, it seldom does.

BUT once he dons his rubber and leather bat costume, Keaton is something else again. His face, hidden behind a black rubber mask, is almost expressionless. His voice, somewhere between a rasp and a whisper, reveals almost no emotion. It is easy to understand why the people of Gotham are afraid of him--early sightings of the superhero describe a six-foot bat who drinks human blood. Keaton does his best to make Batman a creature of the supernatural.

Where Batman appears dark and impenetrable, his nemesis the Joker (Jack Nicholson) is just the opposite. Nicholson wears a bright orange and purple suit that stands out from the Gotham cityscape. Dressed like that, the Joker is not about to disappear into the fog. And Nicholson's face, wrenched into a permanent parody of a grin (the result of being dropped, by Batman, into a vat of toxic chemicals), is a perfect complement to Keaton's expressionless mask.

Unlike most of the other characters in the movie, Nicholson actually gets to deliver funny lines. He also gets to roll his eyes, laugh hysterically, sing and dance while defacing works of art and play endless practical jokes. He's clearly having fun with the role, although one would think he'd be tired of playing pure evil by now.

The Joker is a pycho who finds humor in everything, but especially in killing people. ("I am the world's first fully functioning homicidal artist," he tells Vale.) For the Joker, killing is a release of the pain and boredom of his pretoxic-waste life as a big-time gangster. In his own way, he is as driven as Batman.

THERE isn't really much of a story to Batman. In the grand comic book tradition, the movie simply focuses on a series of confrontations between Batman and the Joker. None of the other characters have any depth, particularly Vale, who seems to exist only to be terrorized by the Joker and rescued by Batman.

It isn't Basinger's fault that her character is so dull. Sam Haam and Warren Skaaren, who wrote the screenplay, don't seem to have much interest in elevating women beyond the level of comic-book bimbos.

And the psychological angle is none too subtle. It only takes about 20 minutes to realize that Batman is the flip side of the Joker, equally brilliant, equally dangerous, equally deranged. Batman/Wayne has simply channelled his obsession in a different direction.

This is comic-book psychology in its highest form, and it seems pretty silly in a two-hour-plus movie. The idea of a twisted, tortured superhero who feels driven by his own past to fight crime is perfectly fine. And the idea of a deranged psychotic trickster who mirrors the the hero's split personality is equally intriguing.

But Batman doesn't really do anything with the idea. There is no moment of revelation; Batman's external battle with the Joker does not seem to have a parallel within himself. He doesn't learn anything or gain any control over himself. He simply defeats this film's embodiment of evil. So what if Batman and the Joker are complementary psychotics? Why the Joker, and not Darth Vader or Lex Luthor? In the end, Batman is nothing more than a clever comic-book idea that just doesn't go anywhere.