Category: Cillian Murphy

BATMAN BEGINS

By Marc S. Sanders

The merits of a lot of action/adventure films is predicated on how strong the villain is to the story.  Often the hero is the straight character in the heroic garb ready to enter the scene just as the bad guy is on the brink of maniacally destroying the world.  In the early 2000s however, the focus diverted to the hero when big franchises opted to reinvent themselves.  James Bond’s origin was finally offered up in the best film of the series, Casino Royale.  Christopher and Jonathan Nolan served up one of the best cinematic Batman stories on screen.  The title said it all.

Batman Begins gets every note right with the all too familiar back story of Bruce Wayne’s drive to become Gotham City’s Dark Knight vigilante.  The film has its collection of villains but the center of the picture is always circumventing around Bruce Wayne, perfectly played by Christian Bale, with somber truth hidden by handsome playboy disguise.  As a child, he discovers his fear of bats and then attends the theater with his billionaire parents.  Upon their exit through a back alley, he witnesses their death and is left to be raised by his trusty butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine, my favorite actor in the role to date).

This film achieves my undivided attention because it paints a full canvas of this character before he ever adopts an alter ego in a black costume.  We explore how he becomes motivated followed by his intense training in the zenith alps, on the Asian continent.  Then we see how he supplies himself with all of the familiar gadgets and costumes when he befriends an ally within his father’s company, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). 

Jonathan Nolan’s script diverts away on occasion to embrace the capable villains of this story with the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), Rha’s Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) and mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson).  Bruce’s mentor, Ducard (Liam Neeson), is a big factor in the hero’s development as well.  Lastly, there’s Bruce’s childhood friend and legal connection, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes).  Lt. James Gordon is the uncompromised police detective that Bruce singles out to trust within this dense world of corruption.

Just to read this cast list is impressive as they fall beautifully within the matrix of Nolan’s blueprint.  Everyone is given enough time to make more than one impression as their storylines twist and alter.

Christopher Nolan’s films are always moving like a smooth ride on a never-ending stretch of road with no traffic in the way.  Nothing bears repeating from what was already shown in an earlier scene.  There’s something new to learn as the pace continues.  Nolan is one of the few filmmakers where you do not mind the time jumps he incorporates into his stories.  Bruce will first be seen as a ten-year-old boy, then in his muscular fit thirties in a Chinese prison completely departed from the wealth of Wayne Manor.  A step back before that shows him as a Princeton drop out with a mop top haircut.  Every different appearance of Bruce is interesting and you become intrigued with how he ends up in one place after another. 

Like the first appearance of Daniel Craig in the Bond series, this Batman/Bruce Wayne is repeatedly imperfect.  He’s flawed because he still needs to learn and the characters that enter and exit and reenter his life must teach him.  Alfred will lecture a short-triggered Bruce when he’s on the cusp of risking the reputation of his father’s legacy.  Rachel will slap him when he’s prepared to kill in cold vengeance.  Ducard will teach him the ways of physical survival and will test Bruce’s loyalty and the measures of crime with punishment.  Even the Scarecrow is smarter than Batman when he springs an unexpected trap.

The ongoing education of Bruce Wayne is the theme of Batman Begins, all the way to the end, when he finally learns to mind his surroundings.

Christopher Nolan made Batman exciting in a new unfamiliar way.  The Batmobile is a not a sporty kind of vehicle.  It’s a tank called The Tumbler and it bears a thunderous series of sound edits as it barrels through Gotham City.  After some slip and falls off rooftops, Batman becomes much more covert than in other interpretations.  You don’t have to physically see Batman to observe him operate.  If a thug gets swallowed into a void of darkness, you know what has ensnared him.  The crusader’s devices which stem from his gold utility belt are demonstrated with explained reason for why he selected them for his fighting advantage.  The Nolans proudly recognize the theatricality of this guy.

Cillian Murphy is unforgettable as he lives up to the name of Scarecrow, also known as Dr. Jonathan Crane, a criminal psychologist.  His choice to put his victims into a hypnotizing sense of fear lend to the back story of Bruce Wayne’s intent to become a frightening figure himself, where his enemies will recognize his dread.  Tom Wilkinson claws his gangster persona straight from a Godfather kind of picture, but he represents an old guard of Gotham City before costumed and makeup identities take over.  Gotham will transition from the sharp dressed mobsters over to the crazed clowns yet to come. 

Gary Oldman invents another unique personality – a strait-laced city guy who might have come from a 1970s ABC cops and robber show like Dragnet.  No two characters of Oldman’s are ever the same.  So much so, you almost wish they would all assemble in a movie for the various personalities to interact.  Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are like comfort food who are so subtle and relaxed in front of a camera.  Neither one makes big waves with their characters.  Jonathan Nolan wrote their respective purposes for this Bruce Wayne and they execute their techniques of less is more beautifully.

Liam Neeson delivers the second-best performance of his career thus far, after Oskar Schindler.  He adopts the same kind of method that Freeman and Caine work with, but then he sways from that behavior when Ducard has to surprise Bruce as a means for his pupil’s development. Some of what he does comes from nowhere.  Early in the film, his first two scenes could not be more different.  Neeson works like an unpredictable entity.

The next film in this trilogy replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal.  I was disappointed because Holmes was maturing as a very formative actor by this time.  She was blessed with a well written character in Rachel Dawes.  When I watch the next film, The Dark Knight, I cannot help but wonder how she would have performed the role for a second and much more developed opportunity. 

There is not one flaw in Batman Begins.  This is the movie that placed Christopher Nolan in the echelon of top blockbuster directors like Spielberg and Hitchcock, along with Lumet and Mann.  Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack is thrilling as it speaks for The Dark Knight who is of few words.  Zimmer’s scores announce the introduction of Bruce Wayne first, and then later Batman. 

Gotham City makes for a sensational character with various rooftops, fire escapes, tunnels, bridges and a gorgeous, elevated train at its center.  The entire city breathes steam amid the distressed decay, wet streets and rusted architecture. 

Wayne Manor has a ghostly effect as Alfred and Bruce climb the large staircases and floors.  Further down under its platforms rests the cave that’ll serve Batman well.  The waterfalls and rocky caverns are immense. 

Batman Begins is not one of the best films of a genre like any other superhero movie.  I refuse to recognize it that way.  Instead, I see a character study where a man accepts a responsibility to fix what scarred him at a young age.  He wants to right a world that once had promise.  I don’t see the costumed protagonist announce himself as a superhero.  I don’t see the costume.  With the cape and the horns on the head and the car and the tools, I see an image, never a superhero.  With Christopher Nolan’s first film in what will become a well-received trilogy, I always see the man underneath the mask. 

OPPENHEIMER

By Marc S. Sanders

Christopher Nolan is one of the modern-day directors that you can rely on for brainy science fiction whether they are in embedded in dream subconsciousness, intergalactic space travel, transcendences of time, or even putting a fresh polish on a favorite superhero.  With Oppenheimer, he triumphs with exploring the actual prophets of science in the twentieth century, particularly its title character J Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist played convincingly well by Cillian Murphy.  Nolan doesn’t just stop at the assembly and discovery of science though.  He uncovers the consequences of Oppenheimer’s innovation and genius insight.  Dr. Oppenheimer might have been the man who knew too much and arguably that cost him quite a bit, personally.  Additionally, the so-called lab rat of his atomic bomb, namely the planet Earth, suffered the expense of a, at the time, troubling present day, and a still ongoing future. 

This movie seems to start right in the middle of its story and as a viewer you need to claw your way through the dense foliage to find its beginnings and what comes afterwards.  The first two scenes of the movie are titled “Fission” and “Fusion.”  There are no time periods specified by a font caption, however.  The differences in various points in history are distinguished by where J Robert Oppenheimer is located during select points in his life.  For seconds at a time, the film will change its photography from vibrant color to black and white, for example.  The characters will either look more aged with grey hair and some wrinkles or during more youthful time in their lives.  At one point Oppenheimer is being recruited by Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr) to head the department of a new kind of weapon development.  Work the science to make a difference.  There’s another time period where he’s being interrogated in a small room by a governmental suit and tie committee.  Oppenheimer is also in his classroom or debating and working with colleagues.  Another story observes his progress with building the atomic bomb among a collection of other engineers and scientists in a desert town, Los Alamos, specifically built at his own request, under the order of the nothing but militant Colonel Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), to conduct his work and research while hiding in plain sight. 

The film also covers Oppenheimer’s association with possible suspects of the Communist Party during the stressful pre-cold war era of McCarthyism.  Questions arise if his reliable brother Frank (Dylan Arnold) is a communist or even his mistress (Florence Pugh).  Does that in turn make Oppenheimer a communist as well?  If that is the case is J Robert Oppenheimer, the man tasked with ultimately ending World War II in favor of the Allies, sharing secrets with Russia and/or the Communist Party?

Nolan’s film gets easier to watch as it moves along, but you must get used to his pattern of filmmaking.  If you have never seen a Christopher Nolan film, I do not recommend you start with Oppenheimer.  His work is recognized for fast paced edits of different time periods and conversations.  There is much information to decipher. As well, there’s a very large collection of welcome characters to sort through, who worked with or against Oppenheimer.  Having only seen it once, I was captivated with the picture, but I know that I need to see it again.  The quick edits, working beautifully against the soundtrack orchestrations of Ludwig Göransson (nominate him for an Oscar, please), happen a mile a minute.  I appreciated this method because it enhanced the urgency of Dr. Oppenheimer in the eyes of the world, first as the savior of the united Allies against the last remaining superpower of the Axis countries, Japan. Then later focus is on whether it is in the United States’ best interests for the regarded physicist to have security access to the country’s most secret weapons and technological progress in a post war age.

People have been cajoling about how they know the ending to Oppenheimer.  They drop the bomb, of course!  (Twice actually.)  However, they do not know the entire story adaptation that Christopher Nolan as director and screenwriter presents. 

Cillian Murphy is perfectly cast. Give him an Oscar nomination.  He serves the confident, assured scientific leader who becomes envious of competing powers who achieve the impossible, like splitting the atom, while also admiring peers and mentors like Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein (Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti).  All these men are interested only in what can be accomplished.  The superpowers that fight in war, though, are interested in how these accomplishments of modern science can be used to their advantage at a cost of collateral damage.  It is these conflicts of interests that Nolan admirably demonstrates over the course of the film. 

A telling scene for me, that I won’t forget, is when Robert Oppenheimer meets Harry Truman (Gary Oldman, doing an unforgettable cameo).  As the physicist exits the Oval Office, having shared his concerns and scruples with the Commander in Chief, Nolan includes a throwaway line delivered by the President, that I won’t soon forget.  It will not be spoiled, here.  Yet, the dialogue speaks volumes of what the United States held important regarding the servants who did the country’s bidding.  The scene closes like a stab in the heart, and suddenly science is no longer just facts within our planet.  Science is now questioned on whether it should ever be acted upon. Those questions certainly have remained as long as I’ve been alive to read about our never-ending world climate.  These inquiries will be here for many generations after I’m gone as well; that is if men and women’s recklessness with science doesn’t destroy the Earth before then.  At one point, Oppenheimer shares a small fraction of possibility for the end of the world when they activate and test their first atomic bomb. Matt Damon’s Colonel Groves’ asks for a reiteration of that observation.  Is this finding worth even the smallest, most minute risk?

Emily Blunt portrays Kitty Oppenheimer.  She’s marvelous as a lonely alcoholic wife to Robert, and a mother minding a home built in the desert while her husband serves an important purpose.  I didn’t take to her presence in the film until her grand moment arrives during an interrogation scene.  As the character gives her testimony regarding Oppenheimer’s communist ties, Blunt locks herself in for a wealth of awards in late 2023/early 2024.  Once you’ve watched the movie, you’ll likely know which scene I’m referring to and you can bet it’ll be that sample clip shown on all the awards programs.  This might not be Blunt’s best role, because it is rather limited within crux of the film, but I’d argue it is her greatest scene on film that I can remember.

Oppenheimer is a three-hour film, and it demands its running time.  There are so many angles to the man that few really know about.  Many know it was he who instrumentally built the atomic bomb that to date has only been used twice within a period of four days.  Thankfully never since.  Nolan emphasizes how unaware we are of how carefree the doctor’s government supervisors performed with the weapon he agreed to build.  Don’t just drop the bomb once.  Send a message to Japan by dropping it twice so they know to no longer engage in this ongoing war.  Choose the area where an army/government official didn’t honeymoon though.  It’s too beautiful a region.  Tens of thousands of men, women and child civilians perished immediately following the strikes.  Many others died weeks later following exposure to the nuclear effects that followed.  All issued as a horrifying cost to end a war that was already being won now that Hitler was dead.

Mechanically, Christopher Nolan does not disappoint either.  I watched Oppenheimer in a Dolby theater and I highly recommend it over a traditional one.  However, beware of the sound.  It is a LOUD!!!!!  Your seat will rattle early in the film when Cillian Murphy is shown in close up imagining the collision of atoms, protons, and neutrons.  How a star naturally dies in space runs through Oppenheimer’s consciousness as well, and then we see how a black hole forms.  Nolan offers a Cliff’s Notes edit of science doing its job.  Murphy performs so well when he’s not speaking and cut against the quick edits of Nolan’s visual and sound effects of science at play.  It shows how an educated scientist thinks beyond what is documented on a chalkboard or in a textbook.  J Robert Oppenheimer used to teach about the building blocks and natural destruction that occurs within the universe.  Regrettably, what he learned about natural function soon becomes manufactured capability when the professor accepts the task of building scientific destruction with his bare hands. Man stole fire from the Gods.

Oppenheimer is so dense in the scope of science and the scientist behind it.  That’s a huge compliment.  It’s an engaging film with much to tell, and a lot more to think about afterwards.  It accomplishes what the best movies do.  It leaves you thinking long after the film has ended.  More importantly, it’ll leave you frightened for the future based on the behavior of this planet’s past. 

Oppenheimer is one of the best films of the year.