Batman is finally talking sense and nonsense at once

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2008)

Finally the new generation of Batman films has arrived and he is on the run. The film is long and there are many moments when no action happens, when the hero or the people are there to reflect upon events, to go down deep into themselves, to show us their feelings, their fears, their hopes. The film becomes a lot more psychological, mental even. It is talking of people, real people and how they react and live in a tense situation. The best moment of the film is when the people themselves have to decide who is going to die, them on one side or the others on the other side. They can do it on both sides and neither sides do it. They vote overwhelmingly for killing the others and yet they don't carry out their decision. Democracy is the worst imaginable regime because a majority is always found for the least ethical decisions that more or less demagogically please the masses, caress them in the right direction. And yet it remains the best because in these worst situations imaginable the people kind of react against the horror and the terror and do not follow the majority rule or reveal another layer of majority rule deeper and finer, well hidden but always ready to come out. The film shows how what is at stake is not what the masses are going to do in a crisis situation. It is what are the few individuals who have power and the means to use that power going to do, or rather become? And there the answer is super-negative. Individuals are always corrupted by the forces behind the terror that swoops down onto the masses. That's politics and that's well seen. And yet that's false when the film pretends these few corruptible people can be stopped. At least not the way the film says. They are never corrupted alone and they move into that corrupted state along with quite many people, armed forces, security forces and even more. The film is deeply reflecting on recent events but the diagnosis is wrong and the solution is wrong too. It will not be enough to get rid of the corrupted individual. It will not even be enough to get rid of him and the inner circle of his legion. You will have to explain why at a certain moment that man captured a vast majority of the people in elections or just public opinion. And you'll have to provide a way to reverse that fact and to prevent it from happening again. And then you will find you cannot prevent that because such massive support to evil when it is draped in a long shining armor of good is long lasting, very long lasting. The next solution is to turn that corrupted person into a dead hero. But then you have to turn your best friend into the fiend the masses require. Think of president Saakashvili in Georgia. He took the decision to send troops into Ossetia. That was a bad decision showing how he had been corrupted by his re-election and the anti-Russian feelings of some. You can even say he had been influenced if not directly manipulated by the Russians, or even by the West which more or less promised support, even military, another manipulation of course. His mind got corrupted and he provoked the big northern neighbor and he got what he deserved: his two military bases destroyed, the main airport destroyed, the main harbor destroyed, the basic infrastructures disrupted, the pipelines stopped. A military, economic, social and political catastrophe. Then what? Oust him and turn him into a hero? Follow the call of the hard liners among the people and start a guerrilla warfare adventure, provided the Russians decided to stay in Georgia? Send Bush to bury him deep and under a thick layer of concrete? Punish the Russians with isolation, as if they gave a damn about it because we, in the West, need their natural gas and their oil, not the reverse. This film is thus discussing this fundamental issue of what do we do with corrupted leaders who have commanded at some time in their careers vast support from the masses? The solution proposed is unrealistic. But the film is superb, especially because the Joker is really vicious and dangerous, really blood curdling and sickening, whereas with Jack Nicholson he was a funny clown. This time he is not a clown at all. And that is true: terrorism, even criminal terrorism and not political terrorism, is not funny, is not a game, is not a show. And it has means to get under the skin of most people. And then there is no solution, except an innocent fiend who will be on the run forever, like Ben Laden? We can wonder if our enemies, fiends are not such illusive evil beings who are not that evil but are necessary for the real evil ones to be kept in place. And are there even really alive, are they really real? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines