The Observer 19 June 2005
FILM OF THE WEEK
CRITICS PHILIP
FRENCH
BATMAN BEGINS
(139, 12A) Directed by
Christopher Nolan; starring
Christian Bale, Katie
Holmes, Liam Neeson,
Michael Caine, Morgan
Freeman
TOM Wolfe called the 1980s
‘the Me Decade’, a time when
everyone, with Steven Spiel-
berg in the lead, was search-
ing for their inner child.
Tim Burton put a spoke into
the wheel of this adolescent
cycle with his 1989 Batman,
which insisted that we aban-
don the foetal attraction of
that hidden infant and go in
search of our dark sides.
In so doing, he took us
back to the cruel spirit of the
strip cartoon Bob Kane, cre-
ated in the late 1930s. This
was before Susan Sontag’s
seminal 1964 essay ‘Notes on
Camp’ helped create a vogue
for kitsch and the cult of ‘It’s
good because it’s bad’, which
was consciously adopted by
the 1966 TV series featuring
Adam West as Batman.
Burton’s two Batman
films were followed by a pair
directed by former window
dresser Joel Schumacher
that returned the franchise
to the camp Sixties. Now,
Christopher Nolan, one of
the truly exciting British
directors to have emerged
ROYAL in the past decade, has been
STANDARD: engaged to restore some
KINGS OF depth and dignity. His Bat-
LEON man Begins, scripted in
collaboration with David S
ON TOUR Goyer, takes the caped cru-
PAGE 11 sader back to his origins.
The first episode of Bob
Kane’s comic-strip for the
May 1939 Detective Com-
ics was headed ‘The legend
of the Batman – who he is
and how he came to be!’ In
12 frames, he explained how
Bruce Wayne grew up to
adopt the guise of Batman,
brooding over Gotham City
as the implacable nemesis
of the underworld.
BEST OF As Kane tells it, the pre-
teen Bruce is out at night
BRITISH: (circa 1924) with his parents
ARTISTS’
EYE-VIEW
PAGE 12 AND THE REST BY PHILIP FRENCH
Billy Elliot’s waste land
Jamie Bell excels in a moody melodrama. Elsewhere, adultery rules
UNDERTOW
(105 mins, 15) Directed by David Gordon
Green; starring Jamie Bell, Josh Lucas,
Dermot Mulroney
WE DON’T LIVE HERE
ANYMORE
(99 mins, 15) Directed by John Curran;
starring Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Peter
Krause, Laura Dern
13 CONVERSATIONS
ABOUT ONE THING
(104 mins, 15) Directed by Jill Sprecher;
starring Matthew McConaughey, Alan Arkin,
Amy Irving, John Turturro
BOMBON EL PERRO
(98 mins, 15) Directed by Carlos Sorin;
starring Juan Villegas, Walter Donado, Rosa
Valsecchi
THE ECLIPSE
(125 mins, PG) Directed by Michelangelo
Antonioni; starring Monica Vitti, Alain Delon,
Francisco Rabal
TWO PROMISING talents
emerged in 2000 to consider-
able acclaim – teenage Brit-
ish actor Jamie Bell in Billy
£
Elliot and American direc-
tor David Gordon Green
with George Washington.
Both films were about
young people attempting
to escape from inert, de-
industrialised communi-
ties, one in the north west
of England, the other in
The box office the American South. Their
follow-up films were uncer-
UK
tain. Now Bell and Green
1 Mr & Mrs Smith
join forces in Undertow,
2 Star Wars: Episode III
a melodrama set on the
– Revenge of the Sith
humid coast where Georgia
3 Sin City meets Florida with teasing
4 The Pacifier hints at the beginning that
5 House of Wax
the film is based on actual
events.
US Bell plays Chris, the 16-
1 Mr & Mrs Smith year-old son of widower
2 Madagascar John Munn (a dishevelled,
3 Star Wars: Episode III unshaven Dermot Mul-
– Revenge of the Sith roney), who, for ill-defined
4 The Longest Yard reasons has withdrawn
5 The Adventures of with his sons into the back-
Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D woods to live in primitive
conditions tending pigs.
Spreading his wings: Christian Bale as Batman.
The cape of good hope
Christopher Nolan’s dark Batman prequel pays homage to its hero’s comic-strip beginnings
when an armed mugger kills
both of them. The orphaned
lad, his hands clasped in
prayer, his bedroom illu-
minated by a single can-
dle, swears ‘to avenge their
deaths by spending the rest
of my life warring on all
criminals’. He ‘becomes a
master scientist’ and ‘trains
his body to physical perfec-
tion’ and, because ‘criminals
are a superstitious cowardly
lot’, chooses to become ‘a
creature of the night, black,
terrible… a bat… the Bat-
man’. From these two gar-
ishly printed pages, Nolan
and Goyer have fashioned a
whole movie.
Convincing: Jamie Bell and Shiri Appleby in Undertow.
He bullies Chris while lav-
ishing his attentions on
12-year-old Tim (Devon
Alan), a bookworm with an
anxiety disorder. Into this
neo-Tobacco Road comes
John’s brother, Deel (Josh
Lucas), a sleazy, charm-
ing lowlife newly released
from jail. Deel is after a
mysterious cache of gold
coins bequeathed to John
and him by their father.
Very soon, there’s a lethal
confrontation between the
pair. Fearing for their lives,
the kids go on the run from
their vicious uncle, living
by their wits as they head
for Mexico with the gold.
His southern accent
convincing and unforced,
Jamie Bell more than holds
his own with Lucas and
Mulroney. Philip Glass has
provided a score that alter-
nates between the pulsat-
ingly minimal and the mys-
tically choral. The film is
stronger on mood than nar-
rative drive and ends up as
a pale imitation of Charles
Laughton’s 1955 classic,
Night of the Hunter, which
it consciously reworks.
The week’s two other
American independent
films are urban, middle-
class, northern and end-
lessly loquacious. Larry
To a narrative that itself
draws on a tradition of
avenger heroes in foppish
disguise stemming from
Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet
Pimpernel, they have added
elements from sources
ancient and modern, among
them Fritz Lang’s expres-
sionist thrillers, Da Vinci
Code conspiracies, kung fu
flicks and Bond movies.
More important, in tracing
Bruce Wayne’s progress from
troubled youth to confident
adult, they have employed
the disruption of time and
linear narrative that gave
such distinction to Nolan’s
shoestring Following, and
Gross, hitherto best known
for genre movies and sharp
movie criticism, has done
a sensitive job of adapting
two Andre Dubus tales as
We Don’t Live Here Any-
more, a look at adultery and
its consequences on a small
New England campus. Eng-
lish lecturer Jack (Mark
Ruffalo) and creative writ-
ing professor Hank (Peter
Krause) are best friends, as
are their respective wives,
Terry (Laura Dern) and
Edith (Naomi Watts). Jack
and Edith fall in love and
embark on an affair. Bored
by Edith, Hank makes
→ KINGS AND QUEEN (15)
Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling
family drama is like Love
Actually and Four Weddings
rewritten by Balzac.
→ BATMAN BEGINS (12A)
Christopher Nolan has
struck camp and taken
the caped crusader back
to a more serious time in
Gotham City
→ THE CONSEQUENCES
OF LOVE (15) Paolo
Sorrentino’s poised thriller
stars Tonio Servillo as a
Mafia bagman waiting for
the end in a Swiss resort.
NOLAN EMPLOYS
THE BRILLIANT
STYLE THAT
GAVE SUCH
DISTINCTION
TO MEMENTO
its low-budget follow-up, the
masterly Memento. In both
those movies, the elliptical
style drew us into the mind
of a troubled protagonist;
here, the brilliant but not
flamboyant editing involves
us in the divided conscious-
passes at Terry, which she
initially rejects because
she’s devoted to Jack and
their small children.
The movie covers a period
of around six months from
the height of summer to the
first snows of winter, and
Gross and the director John
Curran keep all four char-
acters constantly before us,
cutting between them in vir-
tually every scene, as they
make love, argue, rational-
ise and deceive each other
and themselves.
It’s an honest, modest
film and beautifully acted.
Dern is especially good as
the long-suffering Terry,
driven into infidelity by
her husband to assuage
his own guilt. It’s far more
erotic than Michael Win-
terbottom’s 9 Songs, and
the women emerge from it
better than the men.
Directed by Jill Sprecher
and co-scripted with her
sister Karen, 13 Conversa-
tions About One Thing is
one of those mosaic mov-
ies in the manner of Robert
Altman’s Short Cuts, and
tells a succession of paral-
TO
PH
IL
P
IP
FI
FR
VE
EN
CH
→ BOMBON
FI
’S
EL PERRO
LM
(12A) Delightful
S
Argentinian comedy
about one man and his
dog in Patagonia.
→ MOOLAADE(15) No
concessions or reservations
need to be made in greeting
this brave, compassionate film
by the octogenarian Ousmane
Sembene, Africa’s greatest
cineaste.
ness of Bruce Wayne (Chris-
tian Bale).
The primary strand cen-
tres on Bruce’s journeying in
the east, where his attempts
to understand the criminal
mind have led to his incar-
ceration in a Chinese gulag.
From this dread place, he’s
plucked by a mysterious
stranger (Liam Neeson) who
dispatches him on a quest to
the Himalayas. At a remote,
vertiginously located mon-
astery, he receives the spirit-
ual and physical instruction
that will make him a mem-
ber of a clandestine ninja-
style elite called the League
of Shadows.
lel stories about New York-
ers that appear to be, but
are not, taking place at the
same time.
The ‘one thing’ of the
title is fate or chance or
the possibility of happiness
or, put more grandly, the
meaning of life. The mis-
anthropic head of an insur-
ance company’s claims
department (Alan Arkin)
sacks an oppressively
cheerful employee to see if
unemployment takes the
smile off his face. A deeply
religious girl (Clea DuVall)
believes her rescue from
drowning as a child was a
miracle, but later events
test her faith. A cocky
young lawyer (Matthew
McConaughey), convinced
he’s doing a great job
putting felons behind bars,
unexpectedly commits a
crime and finds everything
he stands for challenged.
A professor of physics at
Columbia (John Turturro),
seeking to revitalise his life,
leaves his wife for a fellow
teacher. And so on.
What links all these peo-
ple is that old movie device,
a hit-and-run accident (the
last picture to employ it
was Iñarritu’s 21 Grams in
2003, though 13 Conversa-
tions was first shown in
the States in 2001). It’s an
intriguing film, a little like
Woody Allen’s Crimes and
Misdemeanours with fewer
jokes, and the kind of thing
that keeps serious under-
graduates debating into the
early hours.
Less pretentious and
more fun, Carlos Sorin’s
Bombón El Perro is a hom-
age to Patagonia and its
sweet-natured inhabitants
who soldier on in this flat,
thinly populated edge of the
world where coat collars are
pulled up against the wind
and belts are constantly
tightened by the economy.
The central character, Juan
Villegas (played by a non-
professional called Juan
Villegas) is a kindly, end-
lessly cheerful 52-year-old
mechanic, made redundant
by a filling-station chain
and travelling around try-
ing to sell knives.
Suddenly, his life is trans-
9
The secondary narrative
is a succession of flash-
backs, recounting his child-
hood, the murder of his
wealthy parents, his deci-
sion to drop out of Prin-
ceton and his departure
from Gotham, disgusted
by its corruption. From
these flashbacks emerges
his secret fear: he fell into
a bats’ nest as a boy, so
bats became for him what
rats were for Winston
Smith and snakes for Indi-
ana Jones. We also learn
of his lifelong love for the
upright Rachel (Katie Hol-
mes), the guilt he feels for
his parents’ death and the
formed when a grateful
widow gives him an enor-
mous white bulldog from a
special Argentinian breed.
He’s now welcome every-
where as the dog, known as
Bombón or Lechien, does
security duties, enters ken-
nel shows that offer big
prizes, is hired out for stud
purposes and sought after
for wild-boar hunting. The
film’s a delight and while
not neglecting social prob-
lems, it’s as far as you can
get, geographically and
otherwise, from that other
Latin-American doggy pic-
ture, Amores Perros.
As part of a complete
Antonioni season at the
NFT, The Eclipse (1962)
is getting an extended
run. It completed the mas-
terly trilogy of black-and-
agitation produced by his
thoughts of revenge.
These problems are dra-
matically resolved when he
comes to see that the League
of Shadows, despite its
2,000-year history, is a band
of fascistic vigilantes. He
returns to Gotham to shape
his new identity by turn-
ing his greatest fear into a
weapon against crime as he
decides to follow an age-old
family tradition of public
service. Apart from comic
interventions from Alfred
(Michael Caine), the family’s
devoted English butler and
guardian of Wayne Manor,
the early part of Batman
Begins is an earnest, not to
say solemn affair.
It becomes more playful
thereafter as Bruce prepares
to confront two groups of
opponents – on one hand,
the sinister CEO of Wayne
Enterprises (Rutger Hauer),
and, on the other, a sadis-
tic underworld boss (Tom
Wilkinson) and a mad psy-
chiatrist (Cillian Murphy)
with a private asylum, who
are terrorising Gotham. A
major ingredient here is a
delightful, extremely funny
performance from Morgan
Freeman as the maverick
head of the special ord-
nance branch of Wayne
Enterprises, a version of
James Bond’s Q. He pro-
vides Bruce with a lethal
armoury, equipment for
scaling skyscrapers and, of
course, the Batmobile, most
of it commissioned by the
Pentagon but rejected as too
expensive for everyday use.
Christian Bale is persua-
sively melancholy but less
gloomily brooding than
Michael Keaton, a sturdier
figure than George Clooney
and Val Kilmer, and more
likable than any of them.
He doesn’t manage his char-
acter’s playboy persona as
easily as Leslie Howard does
in The Scarlet Pimpernel or
Pimpernel Smith, but that
may be part of the joke.
Anyway, this is an enjoy-
able, sophisticated film with
a largely British cast and
mostly made in this coun-
try. Amusingly, the Joker
presents his calling card in
the final minute, seemingly
announcing a sequel. But no
one would be foolish enough
to compete with Jack Nichol-
son’s 1989 Joker, so perhaps
Nolan is saying that Batman
Begins already has a sequel –
Tim Burton’s Batman – and
that he himself is moving on
to pictures new.
white movies begun by
L’Avventura and La Notte,
that made his reputation,
created (along with Fel-
lini’s La Dolce Vita and
8½) a new kind of Italian
cinema and turned Monica
Vitti into an international
art-house icon.
She was part of the fash-
ion process by which the
intelligentsia put Anouilh
and neorealism behind
them and embraced ennui
and neo-Marxism. Vitti’s
elegant languor is con-
trasted with the cacophony
of the Rome stock exchange,
which is the director’s
metaphor for the madness
of unrestrained capitalism.
The trilogy is wearing well,
though only one of Antonio-
ni’s later pictures, Blow-Up,
has stood the test of time.