"She specializes in abnormal psychology, multiple personalities ...
I read your work. Insightful. Naive, but insightful ..."
"A trauma powerful enough to create an alternate personality leaves the
victim in a world where normal rules of right and wrong no longer apply."
Batman Forever doesn't quite work. Because the moment he is aware of his psychosis to the degree Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne is, he comes out of it. When he is fully aware of it, technically he no longer is psychotic. He cannot talk about it calmly in a matter-of-fact way and still be in a state of psychosis. Someone in that state is in that state because they are not in cognitive control of their actions or their condition. They are in a "state", a state of being, driven by emotion, psychosis, anger ... they are not thinking it out, weighing whether they should or shouldn't. They don't have this control.
When he knows what he is, what he is doing, he no longer "is" the thing we are used to seeing, the thing he is used to being. Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne/Batman implies he can freely, calmly choose, intellectually, which one to be. Doesn't work this way. The descent into the other personality, the other state, is a compulsion. It is desperation, it is pure emotion. And it is uncontrollable. The thing he is is because he is driven, not self-aware.
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I was watching Batman Forever -- the third one, after the two Tim Burton ones, with Val Kilmer, the first allusions and nods, to the Dark Knight (although still somewhat Tim Burton-ified?, and very Joel Schumacher-ified -- Burton had a great impact on the look of the films and Schumacher was taking rather a lot of cues from him, and we see just a hint -- although thankfully laced with dark overtones -- of Burton's cartoony approach to Batman and Robin. Still, this one is darker, more real in comparison, which is a first step toward the eventual darkness and dark overtones of Christopher Nolan's Batman. Both draw from the Dark Knight graphic novel -- and it's good this is happening.
Anyway, I was watching Batman Forever and studying/noticing the theme of Val Kilmer talking about his own psychosis. This doesn't work. Someone in a psychotic state can't talk so matter-of-factly about their psychosis. To do so they would have to be out of that state. Because when they do, when they are fully aware of their own psychosis, such that they can talk about it so matter-of-factly, implies they are no longer in that state. Being psychotic is an involuntary state.
All these mental maladies -- split personality, dissociative disorder, schizophrenia -- all share things in common.
It's not like Bruce Wayne "decides" to be Batman, consciously - it's not like he nonchalantly traipes over to the cave and puts on the suit, and decides, reflectively, to stomp around. It can be argued that Being Batman is an involuntary state for him. He's driven to do it, he's not in control of it, it controls him, almost at a primal level, one that doesn't afford him to think about whether he should. He just does it. He doesn't think about it, intellectualize it. As in, "hmm, should I be Batman today?" It doesn't work like that. This is a deep psychological drive, something driven by obsession, by an involuntary state, by emotion, by obsession, it is always there, it consumes him. It's not a "hat" he decides to put on. It is always there.
Psychosis is a state that never lifts. Because when it does, when the psychotic is aware of what he is doing, he no longer becomes psychotic.
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Other thoughts:
You can see the beginnings of Joel Schumacher's gayness-overtones that were the source of so much derision in Batman & Robin. But the surrealness, left over from the Tim Burton days, of Carrey's Joker and Tommy Lee Jones' Two Face brings it back to a more Keaton-esque place. And Kilmer gives the movie its center. Although his too-calm-and-not-nearly-troubled-enough portrayal of a not-so-dual Bruce Wayne and Batman, is a source of contention as marked above.
Also, this movie marks one of the last times where Nicole Kidman is truly
beautiful.
True, Tommy Lee Jones is channeling some Jack Nicholson as Joker here --
but it's also him, so he's forgiven.
