Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992)

 

"Life's a bitch; now so am I."

Those immortal words were first spoken on the big screen for the first time on 16 June 1992, and while they haven't exactly changed the world in obvious ways, they have in several thousand little ways, over the many years since. They've certainly stayed with me.

(WARNING: plot points of Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992) discussed in close detail)

Batman Returns was meant to be Tim Burton's reward for making the 1989 Batman, a huge hit for Warner Studios. Where in the first film Burton felt the pressure and interference of the studio in directing a superproduction, this time he had carte blanche and it shows: the film has more-- well, not coherence, you can't really say that-- more consistency say, more evidence of a single consciousness' (Burton's) sensibility. If the plot isn't any more logical, the emotions do operate under some kind of satisfying system-- Batman (Michael Keaton) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) share feelings that progress from mutual attraction to mutual aggression to mutually shared anguish-- and the film has the dark humor and self-centered melancholy found in Burton's earlier work (Edward Scissorhands; Bettlejuice; his various shorts).

It helps that the script, started by Batman scriptwriter Sam Hamm, passed into the hands of Daniel Waters; Waters, who wrote a memorable female protagonist for his first big-screen feature Heathers (easily the best role dewy, dark-eyed Winona Ryder ever sank her teeth into) seem to have added all the best lines in the film, borrowed a plot from an old Batman TV episode about the Penguin (Danny DeVito) running for mayor, and turned it into acrid political satire about  power figures manipulating the media.

Burton and Waters' script went further on paper, including a more elaborate campaign to discredit Batman (among others, an army of fake Batmen running about and raising hell) and digs at spin-off merchandises like Batman lunchboxes (apparently Burton, unlike Hitchcock, was not free to nip the hand that feeds him). Waters' scripts are often toned down, rewritten (his original ending for Heathers had the school blowing up), which says something about how comfortable studio executives are with his work; fortunately, much of the dialogue he wrote for Pfeiffer survives.

"How can you be so mean to someone so meaningless?"

Pfeiffer first enters the film carrying coffee for her boss Max Schreck (Christopher Walken); she's Selina Kyle, Schreck's secretary ("assistant," she insists), and Schreck's attitude towards her is summed up with the following words: "I'm afraid we haven't properly housebroken Ms. Kyle. In the plus column though she knows how to brew coffee."

It's a withering attitude, made worse by how meekly Selina takes it, slapping her forehead "Stupid corn dog!" When Schreck forgets his speech for a Christmas tree lighting Selina desperately runs to bring the notes to him and is assaulted by a clown member of the Red Triangle Gang, who holds her hostage with a stun gun. Batman knocks the clown out and leaves, to which she responds: "That was very brief. Like most men in my life. What men?"

Then we get the first hint of a worm turning: Selina picks up the stun gun and gives the unconscious thug a good jolt.

Selina's first words upon entering her apartment are: "Honey I'm home." Pause. "O I forgot: I'm not married." She feeds her cat Miss Kitty while commenting on the cat's social life-- apparently Selina's smart and witty but also so lonely she has to provide her own repartee. Her answering machine furnishes further tidbits: a mother that nags her to call back, a boyfriend that on doctor's advice is breaking up with her "to be my own person now and not some appendage" ("Some appendage" Selina mutters). Finally she hears her own voice reminding her to go back to the office to do more slave work.

"The party never stops on Selina Kyle's answering machine," she notes. If she's lonely that's because she's been beaten down too long (not as if she had a choice; back in her home town, her lovingly asphyxiating mother awaits). She's not without spirit-- she regularly wins at racquetball with her boyfriend*, speaks up (timidly) to her boss, gives the odd psychopath a quick jab in the ribs-- but these feel like fading signs of life in an upright corpse.

Pfeiffer in these scenes is wonderfully game: she was always good at comedy, especially romantic comedy, and had a flair for slapstick (Into the Night; The Witches of Eastwick; Amazon Women on the Moon; Married to the Mob; The Fabulous Baker Boys; Frankie and Johnny). Here her huge blue eyes widen in dismay or terror at problems big and small (a forgotten speech; a boss' withering comment; a psychopath's assault), her shoulders slump in comic exhaustion ("you have to come all the way back to the office"), her feet spin and whirl and double on themselves to keep up with her hectic yet empty life. 

Yet there's that moment with the stun gun. Looks around to see if anyone's watching, stabs the instrument into the man's side, her face twisted with glee as if the gun were wired to her pubis and she enjoyed the voltage. 

An interesting problem for the meek and mild Selina to try and grapple with. "Who is this inside me, ready with power racquetball serves and stun guns? Why do I let men walk over me when they even bother to notice? Why did I leave home (where I’m oppressed) to come to the city (where I’m oppressed further)?" All knotty questions that take most other movies the rest of their running time to work out; she never does because she's murdered that night.

"I don't know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel so much yummier."

Selina's death is terrifying enough (Schreck pushes her out a high window and in moment of Burtonesque audacity we follow her all the way to the ground) but the scene with all the cats 'feasting' on her body-- what's that? Resurrected life was not part of the Catwoman comicbook mythos (though Selina once suffered from amnesia from a blow to the head, which might be a kind of resurrection (later the amnesia is explained away as faked, an attempt to give up crime-- yet another resurrection in effect)).

Bast-- a cat creature or woman with a cat's head-- was one of the more popular gods in Egyptian mythology; she was said to be a daughter of Ra, protector of cats and those who protected cats. In the Middle Ages black cats were considered witches' familiars, oft associated with the Devil, and burned. Cats act as if they don't completely belong to this world and are worshiped for it, same time their aloofness and unpredictability can be aggravating, even terrifying, and they're persecuted for that as well (at a cost-- the massacre of cats led to a proliferation of rats and helped bring about the Black Plague). The same can be said of women: that they're worshiped for their beauty and mystique, persecuted for their fickleness and duplicity (a dog's affection is readily apparent; a cat's-- who knows what it likes and for how long?).

Can we say that Selina protector of a cat (or at least caregiver) is under Bast's protection? That Miss Kitty is a familiar, calling on fellow cats to help bring its mistress back to life? That the cats, sensing a fellow feline in distress, lent her their life-force? That Selina is a kind of put-upon feline who in extremis finds herself exerting one of her nine lives?

The upshot of all this is that Selina is reborn. Not a painless process; Selina comes home speaking her familiar line ("Honey I'm home") like a woman in a trance. She listens to her answering machine, relentless chronicler of her so-called life, and on the umpteenth message cracks, shrieking and trashing her apartment, using her heels to smash her neon "hello there" sign into a different message ("hell here"); she threads wire through a needle and sews gloves and pieces of raincoat into a costume, all sutures and gleaming black latex.

Selina's already fragile psyche has shattered; in her attempt at recovery she's stitched the fragments into a Frankenstein personality (talk about sewing as psychic therapy)-- part feline, part avenging angel, part psychopath. Pfeiffer's eyes glare, her lips are red and moist, her voice furred and slinky.

"Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it." "A kiss can be deadlier if you mean it."

Selina shows up for work-- to no small surprise to Schreck-- and Batman in the guise of Bruce Wayne has finally expressed interest. Why? Does Bruce sense the strength of Selina's recycled resurrected soul? Is he responding to the not quite sane vibes she's radiating? As Selina puts it later in the film "sickos never scare me-- at least they're committed." Sickos apparently don't scare Wayne either.

Selina ventures forth as Catwoman, encounters Batman; they fight. Catwoman's tactics are distinctly feline (distinctly feminine?): when Batman strikes, she yelps  "How could you? I'm a woman!" Batman apologizes and she promptly kicks him off the roof. "I'm a woman, and can't be taken for granted." More witty banter, more innuendos, a savage thrust at a heavily armored midriff (Batman's vest is proof against bullets, but interestingly not against Catwoman's sewing-needle claws) and Batman finds himself accidentally flinging her off the roof as well. "I tried to grab you save you" Batman explains to which Catwoman purrs "Seems like every woman you try to save ends up dead or deeply resentful."

We've seen this sort of relationship before: two people mutually attracted and antagonized, a storyline that was old when Shakespeare used it for The Taming of the Shrew through '30s screwball to Moonlighting in the '80s. Burton and Waters add the masks and whip.

It was no small add. They're able to do more-- kiss, caress, share their most intimate details with familiar ease-- disguised than undisguised, the possibility of a news report or phone call cutting them short adding an edge to their lovemaking (helps that Keaton and Pfeiffer were once a couple-- if you couldn't tell it becomes obvious when at one point Pfeiffer laves Keaton's face with saliva).

Then, of course, Schreck's costume ball-- brilliant conceit by Burton and Waters that when everyone is expected to don a mask Selina and Bruce wear bare faces. They talk softly, flirt gently; details slip from between loose lips, and they recognize each other's true identity.

But it was obvious; the way the two talked they struggled to remember if their masks were off or on, and it all becomes too much for Selina; when Bruce asks who did she think she was Pfeiffer replies with a choked laugh: "I don't know anymore." Funny line till you look at Pfeiffer's face, see the little girl lost expression, and stop laughing.

"I am not a human being! I'm an animal!"

Arguably Batman Returns is a '90s variation on classic screwball with a silly monstrous Penguin-Man getting in the way, but DeVito's is too memorable a character to easily dismiss. He's a grotesque variation on Dickens' protagonists, the little orphan grown to mutant proportions (he might have been someone Dickens thought up had Dickens written for Hollywood). He represents unattractive little boys and their tendency to be rejected by parents, friends, everyone, the story of people so unlovable they can't totally be hated (Batman I suppose gives us the pathos of someone who hates too well to love).

Interesting to note, though, how the three main characters are treated, how their storylines unfold across the picture's running time. Each is a force of nature, with his or her 'familiars' (animal attendants representing the characters' will, life-force, what-have-you) hovering about them, giving them a larger-than-life aura. 

Finally, on the feline ability to fascinate and infuriate. We've heard stories of cats burned, crushed, smothered, drowned, tortured, turned into steamed buns, a hundred and one uses for their corpses (there's a joke book from the late '80s)-- and worse, much worse; not so much the fact that they're abused as it is the variety of abuse and sheer cruelty demonstrated. Catwoman is likewise dropped, scorched, strangled, shot, electrocuted, leered over, and all-around humiliated-- not a cheerful depiction of our treatment of cats (or of women) but a strangely inspiring one, showing their strength and ability to survive, even thrive in the face of adversity. Don't think it an accident that after this film Burton wanted to do a spin-off focusing on Catwoman alone (alas not to be, at least not with the talents involved here). Catwoman / Selina / Pfeiffer may not have been the only memorable character in the film but she was arguably the most resonant, the one that most haunts our--or my--imagination, the one who left the sharpest pangs of, well, whatever. To quote one of the Penguin's best lines:

"Just the pussy I've been looking for!"

I can accept no other. 

Part of the Michelle Pfeiffer blog-a-thon, managed from this site: Pfeiffer-pforever

5.29.14