Masquerade
(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in close and explicit detail)
Saw Tim Burton's Batman Returns on the big screen again after three decades and far as I'm concerned: not just the best onscreen incarnation of the character ever but one of three best examples of its genre, period. Channels a distinct look-- German Expressionism-- with extensive use of miniatures and forced perspective and gigantic sets and minimal digital effects; puts Danny Elfman's creepy-swoony-funny holiday season score to lively use; features a trio (actually a quartet) of stylized performances savoring the sparkling dialogue they've been served (by Daniel Waters)-- as if seated at an extravagant champagne feast of which they've never seen the likes before, and likely never will again.
And the film's so kinky. And subversive. And stuffed to the ears with eat-the-rich sentiment. A lot of frankly explicit jokes, including a scene of Selina (Michelle Peiffer) getting hold of Bruce's (Michael Keaton's) codpiece (prolly helped that Keaton-- clever lad--specifically requested to be able to relieve himself while wearing the costume). You could tell writer and director couldn't care less about the plot, much less the eponymous character (or at least his official job title), much less the source material, and it's a liberating feeling, a pretentious goth art film masquerading as a multimilliondollar superhero movie. Parents were right to be outraged and Warner Brothers was right to be alarmed, and I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone who thinks Pixar and Disney movies are worth watching. This is strictly a one-of-a-kind gloriously bonkers misfire that deserves to be treasured as such.
Burton and Waters reportedly weren't interested in the character of Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito) but there's significant pathos to his character arc-- thrown Moseslike into a river by his parents, accepted then abandoned by the city, accepted then abandoned by his own Red Triangle Gang, he's like a Charles Dickens orphan whose rejection has inspired much bile the stuff dribbles down his cheek. Burton's concept of Cobblepot feels less like an animal and more like a corpse that has been submerged in sewage and gone bloated; inside he's even more repulsive, from misfit to misogynist to misanthrope, his character arc caught in an inescapable downward spiral.
But you recognize Oswald's reasons; you know-- maybe even feel-- his pain ("I am not a human being, I am an animal!"). Selina's cursory rejection seems like a poor reason for Oswald to attempt to hang her from the highest bough, but considering his frame of mind, the fact that he was on an all-time high at that time-- prospective electoral candidate watching his city burn-- and knowing of recent real-life leaders who've unwittingly stepped into the role, can you say his entitled manbaby tantrum is entirely unbelievable?
And-- wouldn't say this completely redeems Oswald-- but he did have folks who cared for him no matter what, the Emperor penguins who receive him as a babe in a woven basket from out of icy waters, the same giant silent faintly comical figures who returned him as a corpse back into those same waters, a grace note of symmetry that offers at least the chance that maybe you'll feel some sympathy for him after all.
Likewise the figure of Max Schreck-- created by Waters as linchpin to connect the plot strands, and for all I know named after the legendary actor in Murnau's Nosferatu just for the entertainment value. Christopher Walken plays comic-creepy with effortless ease, mainly because there's always been something creepy about the way his popped-open eyes seem to stare past you at an unseen presence standing right behind. A simple if memorable caricature but when you think about it what are the rich today if not outsized cartoons? If the satire here isn't subtle it's remarkably appropriate for this day and age, because the targets have grown bigger and so much coarser.
Then there's Peiffer. Who got this role secondhand. Who nevertheless trained to crack her own whip (that's no stunt double snapping the heads off department store mannequins). Who swallowed a live bird (a finch?) for a shot-- no puppet effects for her! Who had to be vacuum-sealed into her impossibly tight black latex costume (with thick silicon applied with sponge brushes, for a fluid shine) every morning before the cameras start rolling.
Peiffer took the role and made it her own, ferocity and female sexuality incarnate, but lemme cite a scene that stands out for me: first time she walks into her apartment chirping 'Honey I'm home!' she turns on a side desk lamp, painfully takes off her dress jacket (it's been a long day and her joints ache), pours a bowl of milk for the cat (O her paining back), checks her voice mail (Selina it's your mother calling to say hello"). You recognize it's a routine complete with self-invented banter, a choreographed dance of loneliness composed mainly because she has nothing better to do, and no one to do it with. Second time she does this, after being dropped from a high window (Burton seems to excel at depicting freefall terror a la Vertigo), she again walks into her apartment saying 'Honey I'm home!' only to knock switched-on lamp off the table; peels her jacket like freshly flayed skin; pours milk into bowl and floor; lifts the carton to drink herself, the white thick fluid sloshing down neck and shirt in a parody of what porn professionals call a 'facial.' All the while her eyes gaze at some far object, aching joints and exhaustion all forgotten, a startling demonstration of no-look no-effort physical dexterity that must have taken hours to rehearse and just as long to perform right on-camera (tho I'm betting it actually took all of one take). We're talking a woman whose psyche is so shattered she can't quite take in reality at the moment-- as if she was forced into a waking walking dream while struggling to process what happened (I nearly died-- or I did die and came back to life).
Selina literally rebuilds herself from patches of latex and leather and black raincoat, stitched together with string and wire; the completed costume suggests Frankenstein's creature's bride if the bride were heavily into bondage (part of why the parents must have objected was because their children were getting too much insight into Burton's fetishes). Selina herself is part cat in heat part panther on prowl, a masked vigilante seeking satisfaction and revenge both ("A half pint? I'm talking gallons"), and a large measure of her arc is the way men are constantly promising and failing to deliver, ending up killing her one way or another (Schreck drops her from a hundred feet through several awnings onto a bed of snow; Bruce drops her some sixty feet into a truckload of sand ("Saved by kitty litter!"); Oswald catches her via umbrella handle to the neck hoists, her to what may be the greatest height of all, then drops her through a greenhouse roof into a bier of roses (the picture serves up an unnerving number of funerary imagery)).
Selina quickly uses up her cat-induced nine lives, by end of the film leaving only one; you can only imagine what the inside of her head was like at that point but her response to Bruce's offer of giving up and living together is indicative: "I would love to live with you in your castle forever, just like in a fairy tale" she says, prior to slashing his face with her claws. "I just couldn't live with myself. So don't pretend this is a happy ending." If I've learned anything from working with wounded youths and children it's that they often wound others in return; not the proper or accepted response especially to a hand held out to help, but one too often seen to ignore. Burton's film with its stitched-up cats and monstrously hobbled penguins seems to be saying this about the hurt the maimed the permanently crippled, in limb or mind: that they are in pain, that sometimes they can't be helped, that sometimes they don't want help. The best you can do is hold out a hand* and hope this time they don't clamp their teeth down on it, for your sake as well as theirs.
*(Which is basically what Bruce does throughout the film-- fans complain there's not enough of the eponymous character to which I say good: we dealt with him in the more handsomely produced if less heartfelt first Burton adaptation and we're thoroughly familiar (overfamiliar) with his history and trauma; this sequel shows how he deals with the trauma of others and as it turns out-- continuing Burton's theme of subverting comic book conventions-- he doesn't do so well, being too busy to stop Oswald's plunge then, yes, the aforementioned scene with the proffered hand)
At the same time you can't help but hear yourself crying out a little 'yes!' when Selina does that. She speaks out for the rest of us walking wounded: fuck you, fuck the patriarchy, fuck the whole goddamn world; if she wants to go down burning that's her choice, not anyone else's, least of all not some man who failed her at least once before. Which I suppose is strong ill-advised inappropriate stuff for a supposed children's film, much less a comic book adaptation, and it shows-- after this Warner Brothers eased Burton into the 'producer' slot and recruited Joel Schumacher to make something brighter and considerably more toothless, and when the winds of fashion changed, hired Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, and Matt Reeves to do something grittier and grimmer, but also more straightforward and drearily literal (not to mention faithful-- yawn-- to the comics).
Which leaves us with only one film to mix the comic the gothic the grotesque (and hilariously pervy), enough to scare the shit out of the big corporate conglomerate that spawned it-- so much so said corporation never tried anything like this ever again. As Oswald once put it: 'just the pussy I've been looking for!' Accept no substitutes.
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