The Historian - by Elizabeth Kostovo

I let out a long exhale after I finish The Historian, not out of the excitement of an enthralling experience but a "thank God I waded it through" kind of relief. The book is dense, plodding, slow, constructed and, the deadliest of all flaws for a counter-factual fiction, far-fetched. Writing in the epistolary style is no easy feat and Ms Kostovo is simply not up to the challenge. All the letters are written in such a strange register inappropriate for the characters responsible for them and the huge amount of superfluous details soaking up every single page have only made the letters all the more plastic. The characters are phony and overly feminine. The ending is one of the weakest in recent memory, too. All in all, this book is hyped beyond belief.

Batman Begins

I was drumming my figures when I started writing this blog ten minutes ago. Do I like Batman Begins? Sure, I'm entertained, to a certain extent, but frankly, I don't like it...or maybe just a little. Yes I'm a nit-picking bastard, but there're too many problems for me to turn a blind eye to. David Goyer's screenplay is weak if not downright bad. All the silly pap about the nature of fear in the first act is so very passé, exactly the kind of material that doomed tons of novels to the bargain bin. The plotline on how and why Bruce Wayne commits himself to a criminal life is also poorly written (and shot). The motive is neither clear nor strong enough, or even relevant. True, his parents are killed before his eyes, but the perpetrator is only a street bum, not the mastermind of a giant crime syndicate or anything of that caliber. No matter how traumatizing the experience is for the young Bruce, it's simply not a reason good enough for him to embark on an anthropological investigation of human wickedness (and risk his life and limb by doing so) and be motivated to commit to the enormity of such an aspirationin as to rid Gotham of evil, instead of a more straightforward response, i.e. an-eye-for-an-eye revenge. Given that he chooses to be a loner hiding in the dark waiting for his prey, it's only too obvious that Bruce is a troubled lad. Avenging his parents is not at the top of his agenda. There lurks something deeper! Disappointingly, the screenplay never tries to leave the comfort zone. Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor depicts a somewhat similar scenario, in which a reporter commits himself to a mental institution, in order to investigate a murder case and hopefully win himself a prize for it. He's also risking his neck in an entirely different sphere, but the motives are much more convincing. Bruce Wayne, by comparison, looks like a melodramatic fool. It's all too old-school and not as biting as it could have been, and I was hoping to see Nolan pushing the envelope. Once again, it proves that gifted director needs to stay in poverty to be creative.

Another gripe I have with Batman Begins is the production design. The look of Gotham City is a far cry from previous outings. The hybrid design of a modern cityscape featuring a comic-tinged ghetto just doesn't cut it. Batman is a larger-than-life character, not someone you'd expect to be living in your neighbourhood, and so the city he strives to protect should also be of striking difference from ours. Besides, Batman doesn't have any superpower. He's all blood and flesh. A realist approach strips him of the air of mystique so important to a masked hero, and turns him into a boy scout or 007 donned in lycra! Darn, he looks fetish! I left my conceptions of reality at the door only to be caught completely off guard by how close the film had stuck to it!

It's a tough act to rescue a tarnished franchise (thanks to Joel Schumacher), much tougher to reinvent without offending the die-hard fans. That explains why Goyer hasn't pulled any stunt with the screenplay. And with a steadfast focus to stay on the safe side, he borrows copiously from another hit in the superhero genre - Spiderman. Bruce stumbles as he takes on his new role as the Dark Knight, and reveals his secret to a girlfriend at the end - it's Spiderman 1 & 2 all over again! And when he's not borrowing ideas, he takes the short cut. So Morgan Freeman is given the role of a Santa Claus handing out candies in the basement: Need a suit? No problem! Weapons and gadgets? There on the shelves, go knock yourself out! A Batmobile, that's new! But I've got just what you need! If this is not lousy, I don't know what is! In fact, ain't Morgan Freeman just another Q?! I'm not going to stop just yet. What's wrong with Nolan when he shot those action sequences? All the tight shots and lightning-fast nauseating quick cuts have left my head spinning!

I try to take the good with the bad. The good being the decent performance of the cast, and the ultra-cool bat cave. But they aren't enough, are they?