The Batman: Robert Pattinson reinvents the black knight in tortured detective [critique]

An undeniable aesthetic success, but a scenario that struggles to rise to the same level. Criticism without spoilers, or almost.

Event on TF1, this Sunday: The Batman Clearly arrives on the channel at 9:10 p.m. The editorial staff advises you. While waiting for news from In the suitewhich takes shape slowly at Warner: it is scheduled for 2027 in the cinema, always with the same team in front and behind the camera.

After trying to mix Batman to the rest of the superheroic populace (Batman V Superman et Justice League), Warner Bros. returned in early 2022 to the initial formula of the solo framed, ten years already after The Dark Knight Rises. At the controls, Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield and the last two parts of the reboot of The Planet of the Apes. Objective Table Shales: Exit the Burtonian carnival, the Bondian solemnity of the Batman of Nolan or the virilist concern of Zack Snyder. Here it is a question of boning the icon to keep only the essence (necessarily black), and restoring its detective license which the cinema has always deprived it.

So we get to know a Batman Bleu Cock (Robert Pattinson), in office for only two years. Twenty-four months to survey the streets of Gotham at night to chase the spleen of the death of his parents (which will not be seen once, rest assured), and to be encrusted on the crime scenes of his Only friend, the lieutenant – not yet a commissioner – James Gordon. The lonely vigilante acts in the shadows and its only existence is enough to breathe fear in the minds of the city’s thugs, as the second scene of the film is a little heavily. Personized revenge finds himself investigating a serial killer who eliminates the powerful of Gotham one by one. And on each place of murder, the mysterious riddler leaves clues intended for Batman … An investigation which will put him on the track of Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz, graceful and disturbing) and will lead him to the lowlands of the city, gangrened By the mafia Carmine Falcon (John Turturo, fantastic sponsor) and Oswald Cobblepot, alias the penguin (Colin Farrell, unrecognizable and flamboyant).

The Penguin series avoids the Couac thanks to Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti (Critique)

Obsessive gules breaker

Built like a movie Noir Lo-Fi and grandiloquent at the same time, The Batman first amazed by his vision of Gotham, more alive than ever. Impeccable artistic direction gives birth to a real city, garish and malfamed, whose “reality” cannot be questioned. Robert Pattinson evolves there as evidence, big charisma without doing too much, solidly anchored, he finds his own path without plagiarizing his predecessors. An obsessive Batman, a real vigilante, a breaker of gules between the shadow and the light (that is almost the entire film project), sublimated by the director of the photo, Greig Fraser (Dune, Rogue One, Cogan, Zero Dark Thirty…). Visually, The Batman Also escapes all past cinematographic influence, Matt Reeves redoubled with efforts to reinvent the myth by drinking at the source of comics. A racy vision which unfortunately no longer holds quite when the scenario goes into the hard way: the darkness mentioned in interviews seems reduced Despite the brutality of the action scenes, and the promise of a tortured Dark Knight is not held. The fault, in part, to a minimalist characterization of his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, in the trauma whispered, barely nourished by summary discussions with Alfred (Andy Serkis, present ten large minutes on almost three hours).

A clear choice on the part of Reeves, who seeks to compensate for this ghostly bruce by focusing on the torments of Batman, and especially his personal involvement in the track game with the Riddler. A nice idea on paper, except that the investigation itself skates quickly. We expected a Zodiac or a Mindhunter Superheroic, but the “Batman detective” abandons the terrain of suspense and thriller to transform into gimmick: the hidden envelope on the crime scene, the small enigma to decipher … The repetition of the process ends up tired and the Batman’s final overlapping in this case is at least disappointment.

There remains the filmmaker’s will to confront the figures of the black knight and the riddler through a mental fight where their respective folies telescop. A duality brought feverishly by staging (notably plans to twins) but which forces Batman to question his own limits. Pattinson internalizes this disorder, while Paul Dano throws him into the face, without hesitation to make boxes. Two actors not quite in the same play energy, as derely, which creates a strange impression while nourishing – in hollow – an interesting discussion on the vision of justice carried by these two characters.

More than in his demonstrations of force or his stubbornness to never look like what preceded him, it is in these interstices a little too rare where The Batman is at his best: when he finally decides to show the inner agitation of his hero instead of theorizing it.

Trailer:

The Batman: “We capture the interior bubbling of the character” [interview]