Cult 101: Batman Begins (2005) 20th Anniversary Screenings
Director: Christopher Nolan Run Time: 140 min. Rating: PG-13 Release Year: 2005
Starring: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine
Country: United States, United Kingdom
Language: English, Mandarin
About the film:
A young Bruce Wayne travels to the Far East, where he’s trained in the martial arts by Henri Ducard, a member of the mysterious League of Shadows. When Ducard reveals the League’s true purpose—the complete destruction of Gotham City—Wayne returns to Gotham intent on cleaning up the city without resorting to murder. With the help of Alfred, his loyal butler, and Lucius Fox, a tech expert at Wayne Enterprises, Batman is born.
“Here’s how any great franchise should start: with care, precision and delicately wrought atmosphere.”
—Desson Thomson for the Washington Post
About the filmmaker:
Writer-director Christopher Nolan is famous for his innovative, story-driven filmmaking. He got his start at the Slamdance Film Festival in 1999 with his debut feature, the neo-noir crime thriller Following (1998), and his second film, the cult classic Memento (2000), premiered at Sundance the following year. He earned increasing admiration for his helming of the Dark Knight trilogy and pushing the boundaries of filmmaking with his compelling engineering of stories inspired by real scientific concepts in The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), and Interstellar (2014).
His films have received numerous accolades, including five Academy Award nominations. The Film Center was proud to screen one of those nominees, the masterpiece Dunkirk (2017), on 70mm film in 2017, and in autumn 2020, one of only ten 70mm prints of Tenet (2020) in the world screened at the Center.
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