“Batman”. Revenge is not enough, people need hope [RECENZJA]

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The idea of ​​casting a billionaire in an exceptionally strong condition in the role of an exceptionally strong actor, who in interviews for years emphasized that physical exercise and stunt performances are generally alien to him, seemed risky and rather surprising to say the least.

A very human Batman

Perhaps the first association with the name of Robert Pattinson is no longer the slogan “shiny vampire Edward”, but the fact is that the British has been consistently choosing roles in productions from the more engaged and, let’s say, artistic cinema trend for years. He played along the way, incl. Salvador Dali, the circus elephant trainer or the out of his mind lighthouse keepers in the highly praised drama “The Lighthouse”. Somehow Batman did not fit. And yet Robert Pattinson really wanted to play Bruce Wayne. When he heard that they were planning a new “Batman”, he asked and pressed the producer, keeping his finger on the pulse. Well, apparently, during the casting for the role, he even missed the set of “Tenet” directed by Christopher Nolan. And he was right to do it.

As a loyal comic book reader and fan of classic Batman movies, he took the matter with great dedication. It’s not even about the fact that the boy clearly contributed to the training and is doing quite well in action scenes that came out somehow disturbingly realistic. Pattinson did a great job of building the characters and showed something that wasn’t there before. He has nicely balanced various potentially dangerous nuances and created a very human incarnation of a bat-man.

His Bruce Wayne is actually a rough-and-tumble guy. He clearly suffers from the loss of his parents, the cure for pain is theoretically supposed to be the night struggle with the evil raging on the streets of Gotham. The smudged eye-liner under the eyes and the long fringe falling to the side of the face remind us of the existence of the emo subculture, which dominated in pop culture in the actor’s teenage years.

The constant tracking down of criminals causes our Batman to get more and more lost in a spiral of violence and he is very close to crossing a dangerous border. To make matters worse, things only seem to worsen and the problems with crime are reaching even systemic dimensions, as shown by the subsequent brutal murders perpetrated by the elusive Riddler.

It is sad and gloomy, and the further the storyline gets only darker. We have a harsh climate – just like the purring songs of Nirvana. The film also has a particularly useful message, how reassuring in these crazy times: revenge for the wrongs of the past is not enough, people need hope that it will be better in the future – even if it is ugly now. And this is something that our hero slowly discovers, delving into a case that also dates back to his own past. Because to know is one thing and to understand the other.

The first two hours of the film somehow pass unnoticed. The creators managed to put together the sequences so that it turns out to be a nice piece of detective story, in which Batman and Catwoman are investigating like purebred undercover agents.

Zoe Kravitz will play the role of Catwoman in the new installment of Batman’s adventures Photo press materials

It was also nice to watch Pattinson’s on-screen chemistry and Zoe Kravitz, who was very efficient in his role – you can see that they work well together. I am also captivated by the fact that although they both actually wear conceptually funny costumes, in practice they have a lot of dignity with these ears on their heads and they do not look or act stupid. Even the comic book Penguin doesn’t seem like an exaggerated blackstar type here, but a guy you can actually meet in some forbidden American nightclub. By the way, Colin Farrell really would not be recognized in this make-up.

Heroic noir cinema

Surprisingly, there is also no repackaging of action scenes in this film, they only appear there when it’s really necessary. And what scenes they are! At the same time, I was saying “wow” to myself and I was laughing a little at the tension caused by the large-scale solemnity of the heroic frames. I think the scene in which Batman comes on fire to the car of the man he chases will circulate in the pop culture circuit for a long time. It really is beautifully laid out in terms of aesthetics.

The problem with this new “Batman” is that the ending of the film got a little sloppy in the script or editing. At some point, although the action gets denser, the narrative loses its pace, enters a different path and the story somehow gets stuck. The director could also omit a few shots that clearly refer to iconography straight from such paintings as “Medusa’s Raft” or “Freedom Leading the People to the Barricades”, because that was an exaggeration. But Pattinson had managed to defend himself even under such conditions, and somehow he was not funny about it all. He certainly does not have to be afraid of being remembered as the worst Batman in the history of all adaptations of this hero’s adventures, because he did very well – I will be glad to see him again in this issue.

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