TOM BURTON – JACK NICHOLSON – MICHAEL KEATON – BATMAN – 1989
This new version of Batman was
bound to rejuvenate the old story. It was intended to reopen the book though it
was closing it in a way. Batman was not the flier we thought he was but he was
only a very good acrobat who had very good weapons that threw cables all around
and helped him get out of the muddy marshes of life right into the sky. At the
end of his metal thread he looked more like a spider swinging in the wind than
a bat, but let’s say he was close enough.
The main rewriting was not about
that technical side of things. The bat mobile was not the great war tool it was
supposed to be. It was awkward and did not play a great role. What’s more the
flier version of it ended down on the steps to the cathedral with Batman inside. Not very swift
that bat mobile. But well you have to do with what you have and nothing else.
The main rewriting was not the
car nor the plane nor any of these vulgar means of transportation. The main
rewriting was the girl who went through all kinds of traps, tricks, fears and
frights in the hands of the Joker or in the hands of Batman. Luckily or
unluckily she fell in love. The poor darling! In love with a bat, and they say
it drinks blood. But at the same time that makes Batman a real man who can fall
in love and have an adventure with a woman. Once again, in 1989 we were still
very far away from Proposition 8
in California and the rulings of the Supreme Court in
2014 or is it 2015. It was so earth-shaking that we don’t even remember the date.
But Batman knows how to do it in
style with champagne and luxurious British cars with the driving wheel on the
right side, and door opening the way they haven’t opened for now more than
fifty years. That makes the film really attractive and the girl very remarkable
since she is able to keep a secret. For a press photographer that is rather amazing.
She cancelled her chance to get a Pulitzer Prize. You must admit love has no
limits.
I guess after a few winter nights
spent in solitude and fear she might find the adventure less attractive, but
well, we will cross this bridge when we come to it, shall we not?
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
AMAZON.COM
0
of 1 people found the following review helpful
The Joker Nicholson is a great paranoid
psychotic clown that only wants to kill and hurt though he attracts people not
with honey but greenbacks. Batman is a child fighting to get back to his
parents, to bring them back to the only life they can know after death, and
that is the root, the goal or the mind of the one who will purge Gotham of the
evil Joker that does not even deserve a smile when he goes down into his
macadam grave.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:11 PM