5 October, 2022 15:4HRS
The Batman - How the New Batman movie starring Robert Pattinson addresses mental health in modern society
The Batman and now Robert Pattinson's Batman in Gotham City highlights mental health and issues related to depression or boomer life
The new Batman movie "The Batman" clearly demonstrates that the Batman and every villain shown in the movie is affected or is dealing with some kind of mental illness How Matt reeves took on the approach for the new batman film and the previous Dark Knight trilogy went deeper into the psychology of the Characters and Batman himself.
None of the previously made batman movies have delved into the mental health And psychology of characters of the Gotham City. Many of the characters or villains might add to the stigma and outtake regarding mental illness. But this film presents the psychological and mental health problems, as will of how we as normal humans deal with mental illness and psychological issue in our modern society.
The film also doesn't fail to effectively deliver empowering message about how we as normal humans can overcome depression and trauma positively. So we will go deeper and into the details of how the Batman movie effectively addressed mental health and psychological issues.
When the movie starts, Robert Pattinson's character of Bruce Wayne narrates how he has been spending multiple nights without sleep and just awake, as he was occupied fighting crime as The batman because of which now he can barely remember all that he saw and witnessed while he was out on surveillance taking rounds so he relied upon eye contact lenses with the camera. That can record everything he sees.
This very well signifies how getting less amounts of sleep or struggling with insomnia is bad for memory and brain functions, as Bruce Wayne was unable to sleep being the Batman and fighting crime of the Gotham City, slowly he started to lose the grip on reality seemingly.
In the scene where Bruce Wayne refused when he was asked to hold the company breakfast, Alfred said to him that Bruce must also keep his business afloat or he might even lose Wayne Enterprises Organization of well as eventually All the money to continue fighting crime as the Batman.
And right after that, Bruce said he does not care about what will happen to him and even his company Wayne Enterprises.
He also said that Alfred is not his father. It was the scene that clarified the fact that Bruce is now willing to risk everything and his life as well because now he thinks he has nothing to lose. This is often what people with mental health issues think and believe in.
Bruce Wayne is known and has a persona of a Billionaire playboy in public and amongst the masses. But in the new movie "The Batman" featuring Robert Pattinson as the Batman spends most of his time alone in the secret bat cave, isolated from the society and people, or else he is outside wandering around Gotham trying to fight crime in the City. Director Of the film Matt reeves decided to base the Character of the New Batman on Kurt Cobain Who was also depressed and passed away by suicide.
Spending most of the time in isolation and away from normal society was not good for the mental health of Bruce Wayne and in fact it left Bruce neglecting his needs over the needs of the public of Gotham City.
After riddler's orphanage lost monetary support from Bruce's father Thomas Wayne's renewal fund, Edward aka. Riddler along with other orphan kids unfortunately had to live their lives in poverty and suffer from the hardships and daily struggles of livelihood in poverty. Many of those helpless orphan children died from drugs or cold winters, they quickly became addicts to cope with their pain.
The Riddler was ignored and mocked by the Society's which eventually led to him suffering from mental illness, and therefore he also turned into a psychopathic killer.
In Gotham city all of his Plans and things he did demonstrated to the world and people of his kind that lower -class and minorities are denied and are not granted access to care and basic necessities which they deserved as humans, It they got this care them now they would be physically and mentally healthy which could also have been achieved by donations made by Bruce Wayne.
If Bruce decided to focus on hid dad's business and continue Donte to all those charities then all these orphans would not be suffering and there would not be any villains like riddler.
While Batman was fighting the henchmen of riddler, Batman was weakened and almost overrun by the vigilantes and criminals that followed the ideology of Riddler.
As Bruce Wayne was almost overrun by these henchmen, he had to inject himself with Adrenaline in order to survive the fight and continue fighting.
When he injected himself with adrenaline, he got up on his feet to continue fighting the criminals and yet he was not soo much in control of his mind and ended up beating a gunman to death nearly.
This part of the movie the Batman shows now has become addicted to violence, anger and rage himself just like the goons and vigilantes that he is trying to fight.
The reason why Bruce Wayne is now addicted to rage and violence is basically connected to his trauma and in order to cope with his pain he takes exile into the anger and rage openly, this nearly made him lose control and almost kill a gunman (Batman never wanted to kill anyone and if Bruce did kill the gunman then he would have ended up breaking a rule that he set up himself.)
When the last of the Riddler’s gunmen and henchmen are down and Batman has finished the major fight, Policeman Jim Gordon unmasks one of those gunmen and asks “Who are you?” The response that the gunman gave was shocking to everyone present on that scene; The gunman said I am VENGEANCE
This showed Batman aka. Bruce Wayne how much the city of Gotham and its people are affected by his violent action and his rage of the fight against the crime in the city of Gotham.
Bruce Wayne became the Batman to fight the criminals of Gotham city and have a good effect on the city of Gotham, making it peaceful and free of criminals, but his actions and the way of violent war against the Criminals of Gotham city ended up actually influencing the criminals and vigilantes to take this fight in their own hands as well but in a more violent and uncontrolled way.
Bruce that moment realized that his actions actually might be doing more bad to the city of Gotham than good.
After the detonation in the Wayne Enterprises tower, Alfred was extremely injured and was admitted to one of the hospitals of Gotham. Bruce decided to go pay him a visit as Alfred was the one to care for Bruce when his parents died in his early childhood. Alfred indeed was a Guardian to Bruce.
When Bruce visited the Hospital to talk to Alfred, he asked to Alfred about why he decided to keep the truth about his parents as a secret from him.
Alfred explained everything to Bruce Wayne and reassured him of the fact that his father was a good and noble man, just he made a few mistakes in life.
Bruce also admitted and shared about the fear he felt when he got to know about the explosion that was caused by Riddler and he thought he have now also lost the only guardian he had in his life which was Alfred.
This gave a new understanding to Bruce and his decision to be the Batman, perhaps one of the main reasons why Bruce wanted to be the Batman was to overcome the fear, and he wanted to weaponize this fear as Batman.
He realized he has something to live for and the fear is still within him still after all those years.
He understood he cannot just ignore all of his problems but he must face them and eventually overcome them with time.
OUR SCARS TRANSFORM US
When the explosives set by Riddler explode and the city of Gotham is flooded entirely as per the Riddler’s plan, A mass effort is launched for search and rescue of the people where Batman also actively supported and helped with rescuing the people in need.
After a while when the people slowly start to recover from the citywide flooding, and the Search and Rescue efforts continue at large. There comes the scene where Batman says
“Vengeance cannot change the past, Our Scars have power to destroy us but if we survive our scars, they also transform us and make us stronger.”
This is a powerful message, as it is not what it is but how we decide to see it. Pain is not only to suffer but it is an opportunity to survive and become stronger perhaps.
