The Darkest Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2006)

Let's be clear from the start: I don't see "Batman Returns" as a Batman movie at all. I see it as a pure artistic expression on its own, a very personal projection from one of the most gifted directors in Hollywood.
We're all fed the optimistic line that "we all have the power to be happy," but the world around us is still consumed in agonizing suffering. The best we can do is ignore such suffering, and try to think that the optimistic view does apply, even when in reality it only applies to some of us.
This movie shatters such idea. The world is not a perfect place, and not even one where everybody can make do and learn to live with what they are given. The three main characters here are deeply wounded people, who cannot integrate to society and be happy like everybody else _even if they tried_.
Batman is split because of the traumatic death of his parents. He enjoys the privileges of a rich man, has respectability through his Bruce Wayne mask, and somehow such respectability translates into a respectable pursuit: punishing evil, taking the side of good, becoming part of what makes society good, even if he has to remain hidden.
In the case of Catwoman the trauma is deeper. She, as a secretary who is not given any respect for her idea and as someone who comes from a small town into the big city, is a marginal. Unlike Bruce Wayne, she has no fortune, her life is not at the center of "normalcy," and she finds herself abandoned--by her boyfriend, by her family, by the executives. In one very poignant scene, she is left to clean the table after the all-male executives leave.
The imagery of abandonment continues (the calls from her mother reflect a difficult relationship, with little affection and much control; her boyfriend doesn't even have the spine to tell her directly he is leaving on his own). Abandonment plus marginality equal failure. Catwoman, even in her mousy avatar at the start of the movie, is a raging volcano. She makes that much clear in the final scene: she has gone beyond the level of rage that allows a person to try to adapt to normal society ("I just couldn't live with myself, so don't pretend this is a happy ending!"), and what is left for her is to be more radical than Batman: she will fight against the evil doers, but she won't take sides with the nice-and-proper. That makes her special and, in some ways, greater than Batman. She doesn't try to pass revenge as justice, no: she acknowledges it is revenge, and does not repent.
The Penguin is by far the most disturbing character and the reason why many people hated this movie. What happens when you're born in such a way that there is no chance whatsoever to be "normal"? Unlike Catwoman or Batman, for the Penguin there is not the choice of pretending to be like other people--he is, evidently, too different.
"You're just jealous because I'm a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask," that marks the Penguin's reality. What could an intelligent (the Penguin's level of speech is amazingly elevated for someone who grew up in the sewers and as a freak in a circus, and attests to his intelligence) person for whom all possibilities of social integration are denied do? For the Penguin, society is the enemy. In truth, he has little (or no) choice.
As Batman is the vigilante and Catwoman the avenger, the Penguin is the terrorist. He symbolizes the plight of those people who, for a reason or another (physical differences, religion, race, politics, language) are deemed "absolute marginals" in many parts of the world. And, as the terrorist doesn't blow himself or herself up for nothing, but because from his/her point of view there is nothing left but to kill and die, because for them life is hell and the hurt is so great the only way to pay it back somehow is by his/her own destruction and the destruction of those inflicting the pain, the Penguin has deep motives and, in spite of his hideousness and evil intentions, it is very difficult not to feel sad for him.
That is a feeling most people would rather not have. We're much more comfortable thinking in terms of good and bad, so that we can put ourselves cleanly in the camp of goodness. Yet, here we have a deformed man who orders to kidnap children to kill them ("No! It's a lot!") and who plans to blow up a whole city, yet we cannot fail to somehow understand his motivations and feel sad at his death.
That feeling makes us, who live comfortably in our little worlds isolated from the brutality of the lives of most people in this planet, feel bad. But that is Burton's master blow, too. Because in that moment when we understand a little, when we feel a little sorry for such an individual, we almost grasp what is behind so much of the pain and suffering in the world. Because the world is not black-and-white, it's much less comfortable than that.
The imagery of abandonment is much more present with the Penguin: from the moment when he's dumped in the river to the last moment when all his circus minions leave. Catwoman rejects normalcy by rejecting the possibility of a life with Batman; the Penguin embraces marginality ("I am NOT a human being, I am an animal!") to the last, expected conclusion.
In fact, this movie is a psychosocial study on marginality and abandonment, and the violence they generate. This is a subversive movie, because it makes us think beyond the terms of bad vs. good, and makes us realize how, in the grand scheme of things, we cannot judge others unless we have lived in their shoes.