I was worried when I settled down for the colossal 3 hour long The Batman on a Sunday morning. As is per with most ‘darker and edgier’ franchise directions, it appears darker tones in a film cannot be approached without a massively underexposed cinematic choice.
If I say to you: ‘The final season of Game of Thrones’ or ‘Any Harry Potter movie past Order of the Phoenix', I’m sure many of you will understand what I mean.
The new craze of cinematographers to render the content of films almost unseeable just to prove how sad and edgy it is.
I remember the days of streaming Game of Thrones on my laptop and turning the brightness to max, turning all the lights off in my room and sitting in the darkness with the screen titled, still desperately trying to work out what exactly I was watching.
And no surprise: The Batman is a dark film. Both tonally and visually. It had to be.
But it worked.
Because director Matt Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraiser don’t let the darkness become the main storyteller. It merely provides the background for the brief moments of light to take on huge narrative meaning. The film does not use darkness to show you how troubled and violent Batman is. It instead uses sparse sparks of light to show you the deep human need he has to be ‘good’.
The Bruce Wayne of The Batman is semi-proto Batman. He’s haunted, a Batman submerged in grief and insomnia who hasn’t yet become the strong moral symbol we know him to be. He’s awkward, aloof, and often seems uncomfortable. He hides in the darkness of his Batcave and Wayne Tower because he is afraid to come out and face the light. He continues to reel from his childhood trauma and pushes away any chance of genuine connection with another person to protect himself.
Reeves was heavily inspired by tragic Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and styled much of Bruce’s reclusive, almost sickly, nature on the troubled singer as an enigmatic and absent figure.
‘I am the shadows’ Pattinson’s Batman proudly claims. 'I am vengeance.'
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He lurks in the darkness, appearing at the last minute to swoop in and punish would-be criminals. Darkness comes to represent Batman within Gotham; crooks stare into the blackness of an empty alleyway or doorway, expecting the Batman to materialise out of the depths.
But light also bends to Batman’s will; the Bat-Signal loses any trace of a camp ‘call for help’. Instead, it reigns above the oily skies of Gotham, acknowledged as a warning to ne’er-do-wells that the dark knight is watching and waiting.
It doesn’t matter whether Batman really is waiting in the shadows to strike or not. The darkness serves as his stand-in, enveloping Gotham in both fear and protection.
But where Batman is the darkness, Wayne is the light. We only see an unmasked Bruce Wayne a handful of times during this movie, and Reeves makes it count.
He attends the funeral of the murdered mayor, a sequence almost blindingly lit in comparison to the rest of the movie. During this, he saves the life of the mayor’s son, a grieving young boy who Wayne clearly sees himself in. Both are collateral damage of the corruption of a city.
This is Batman’s humanity; the desire to protect the life of someone who has suffered in ways similar to him. This is the light inside Batman that reduces him to tears at the crime scene of the mayor’s murder, watching the traumatised son being interviewed.
This vulnerability in lightness is seen also as he sits beside an injured Alfred. Lit by the harsh neon of hospital lighting, he admits to Alfred how much he fears losing those he cares about.
But light does not simply signal Batman = bad and Bruce = good. It’s more a complex intertwining of light and darkness, with both sides acknowledging they need each other to be successful. The fundamentals of Batman’s psychology are still finding their roots. He needs the fear and protection of the darkness to remain in power, but also realises he needs to let in the light of vulnerability to stop him from being completely overwhelmed.
His meetings with Selina/Catwoman often happen against an ambiguous dusk/dawn pink sky. Here, night and day are crossing over; the violent drive for justice they both share, and a vulnerability in their potential shared feelings for each other.
This vulnerability can once again be seen as he holds hands with an injured civilian near the end of the film. He is a presence of comfort in the gentle daylight, not a threat.
Over the course of the film, Batman experiences a rebirth of light. In the climax of the film, he plunges into the rushing water that engulfs Gotham and ‘vengeance’, is killed.
After emerging from the water, he immediately lights a flare. Someone who lurks within the darkness, who is the darkness, suddenly becomes a beacon of hope for the stranded civilians of Gotham. In a beautiful shot, he leads them out of the wreckage and into safety.
From the midst of a violent darkness, a light of guidance has exploded and leads the people of Gotham to safety.