Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Batman.
Here’s why the Nirvana song in The Batman is deeper and darker than you realize. A glimpse into the soundtrack was offered in The Batman's first trailer, which featured a re-arrangement of Nirvana’s Something in the Way from the band’s acclaimed 1991 album, Nevermind. However, when measured against the atmospheric sequences that are accompanied by the song, the choice emerges as one made keeping the film’s grim, somber tone in mind. The Batman is currently playing in theaters.
Reeves’ The Batman etches a grittier, darker vision of Gotham, a city overrun with crime, sheltering conspiracies, and cover-ups that threaten to usurp the ever-fluctuating status-quo. Bruce/Batman (Robert Pattinson) is only in his second year of fighting crime in Gotham, still raw from the pain of losing his parents, and the only way he channels the angst is by enacting vengeance on the criminals who come out at night. This version of the caped crusader is more emotionally vulnerable than his predecessors, yet more brutal at the same time, despite still retaining his “no-kill” rule.
The Batman, as a film, is dark and dreary, relentless in the way in which it etches its grim narrative over its three-hour runtime. Nirvana’s Something in the Way also echoes this particular sentiment, especially due to the fact that Kurt Cobain wrote the song with the intention of evoking the pain of acute loneliness, something that life often makes us feel. Here’s a look into why the song helps heighten the vision of the film, informing both Gotham as a city and Batman as an anguished, torn protagonist.
The history and the inspiration behind the song is a complex one, as it is rather difficult to separate fact from speculation, especially the circumstances that propelled Cobain to pen the same. The song was originally believed to have been written when Cobain was homeless and slept beneath the Young Street Bridge in Aberdeen. However, this has been disproved since: while Cobain did run away from home, there is little truth in the claim that he slept under Young Street Bridge, as confirmed by Kurt’s sister, Kim Cobain in the 2001 biography of the singer, Heavier Than Heaven. Nevertheless, the dire scenario of Cobain’s homelessness did inspire Something in the Way in poignant ways, although the grunge singer had suggested that the song was not strictly autobiographical.
The song in question has a rather sad, ominous feel to it, representing Cobain’s state of mind at the moment, who felt like he had to claw his way through life. Courtney Love describes the aura of the song as “emotionally desperate”, going on to say that it is a state that most people can relate to. Perhaps these factors contributed to Reeves’ decision to incorporate a rearrangement of the track, as the film is heavily bolstered by its spanning, operatic soundscape, as evidenced by Michael Giacchino’s soundtrack for The Batman.
Gotham has always been a cesspool of crime, especially in the grounded portrayal of the city in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. Reeves takes these elements to greater heights, infusing it with a fantastical, pulpy, comic book element that informs the vision of a city perpetually steeped in chaos. This is reflected in the way in which the criminals are rampant with lawlessness, and the streets are perennially unsafe: anything can happen in Gotham, and no one is safe. Reeves drives the point home in the very first scenes, in which Major Don Mitchell Jr.’s home is broken into by the Riddler, who brutally murders the mayor and leaves his telltale riddles at the scene. Even Gotham’s elite remains vulnerable to the anarchy of the streets, and there will always be figures like the Riddler, who aim to carry out their twisted schemes due to their own set of personal motivations.
Something in the Way perfectly captures the aura of Gotham city - most importantly, it heightens the helplessness felt by the average Gothamite, along with that of Batman - and the song’s ominous opening mirrors the way in which the criminal lowlifes spread anarchy in the streets at night. There’s always something, or someone in the way of everyday life in Gotham, especially that of Batman, whose vigilantism is a relentlessly thankless job, as most people, including the GCPD, view him as an element of chaos instead of an instrument of justice. The opening lines of the song also echo the animal symbolism rampant in the film as a whole:
“Underneath the bridge/Tarp has sprung a leak/And the animals I've trapped/Have all become my pets.”
Reeves’ Batman is undoubtedly a sad, immensely pained hero, so much so that his vigilante persona overpowers who he is: there is hardly any balance between the two personas that have been prominently portrayed in previous Batman films. This makes sense, as Bruce is a broken young man run down by his circumstances, unable to heal in healthy ways, and is hence propelled to become a symbol of vengeance that he feels the city needs. However, throughout his arc in the film, he is repeatedly proven wrong: vengeance, while a strong motivator and symbol, only serves to inspire criminals like the Riddler, who feel a twisted sense of affinity to Batman, expecting him to partake in their grand, macabre plan to unmask the truth about Gotham. When the song plays over the sequences, in the beginning, there is an aura of bleak hopelessness: whatever Bruce does as Batman is never nearly enough, and even his rare appearances as Bruce Wayne are a reminder of the fact that he is not doing enough to aid the city (as emphasized by politician Bella Reál in the funeral scene).
In the sequence towards the end, when Batman is fighting the Riddler’s followers in Gotham Square Garden, one of the goons (who is also the guy from the funeral) repeats “I am vengeance”, which is essentially Batman’s mantra throughout the film. The discomfort and pain that Bruce/Batman feels in the moment is palpable, as he never intended for him to this kind of effect, rather the very opposite. Although he does strike fear in the hearts of criminals, there are those who mimic his ideology to meet their own ends.
However, when Something in the Way plays again over the last sequence in which Gotham’s survivors are being aided by Batman and the others, it instills a sense of hope, as Batman also realizes that he must be more: Gotham needs a symbol of hope, someone to rely on, someone who will be there for the city in the darkest of times, comforting citizens and inspiring them to rise up as well. This, hopefully, will urge him to embrace his Bruce Wayne persona in the upcoming movies in The Batman trilogy, allowing him more space to heal along with the already battered, vulnerable Gotham city.
