The Dark Knight Rises
Directed By:
Christopher Nolan
Written By:
Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, based on a story by Christopher Nolan and David
S. Goyer (characters created by Bob Kane)
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman,
Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldman, Matthew Modine, Ben Mendelsohn,
and Nestor Campbell.
Director of Photography: Wally Pfister, Editor: Lee Smith,
Production Designer: Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh, Original Music: Hans
Zimmer
The
idea of “superhero movie fatigue” has been an issue raised by film critics again
and again for the last few years. Another Spider-Man?
An X-Men spinoff? More? Nevermind
that we had three Maltese Falcon
adaptations in less than ten years, but outside the point of all this yawning
of superheroes, sometimes it’s forgotten why they exist in culture at all.
Superheroes are myth stories. The Greeks had Achilles. Medieval times had
Beowulf. And we have Superman. Sure, when you wait only three years between a
film, perhaps not much changes in our perception and meaning of this myth. But
the point is that a superhero can mean something different depending on time
and circumstances. This is what Christopher Nolan believes. Unfortunately, I
don’t know if he knows what his heroes want to stand for.
It’s
hard not to know that this weekend sees the release of The Dark Knight Rises, the third (and final) “chapter” in Nolan’s
vision of the Batman myth. Such hype and speculation has fueled the world since
the release of 2008’s The Dark Knight,
a box office bonanza that attempted to not only take superheroes seriously, but
to extract as much “super”-ness as possible. And with Inception out of the way, Nolan, writing the script with his
brother Jonathan, has returned to make something of an epic in the Charles
Dickens sense. The Dark Knight Rises
is truly a big film—three hours long, with a good portion of the film shot on
IMAX cameras, and featuring at least 10 plots that somehow mesh together at the
end. It’s also a total mess of conflicting ideas and emotions and flat
filmmaking, marred by it’s desire to simply do too much. But it kept me glued
to my seat while watching it nonetheless.
Who
exactly does this Nolan guy think he is? His films are large-scale Hollywood
epics that are unlike any other mold at their scale. His films have ideas, but
they are “ideas,” the thing certain circles like to point to, even if they
spent a minute examining those “ideas,” they might realize the fallacy of
those. And there are a lot of “ideas” running through Nolan’s #OccupyGotham
fairy tale. Where to begins with what goes on in this movie? We’re eight years
after the events of The Dark Knight,
and since Harvey Dent’s death, a new law called The Patriot Act The Dent
Act has put countless criminals in jail. Bruce Wayne has all but retired,
leaving both his bat suit, and all reality behind. Then there’s Selina Kyle,
played by a frisky Anne Hathaway doing her best to make Catwoman into a real
femme fatale. Plus let’s also follow Marion Cotillard as an investor attempting
to get close to Bruce in order to restart a sustainable fusion energy source
(Chekov’s Plutonium). And don’t forget Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young, go-get
em’ cop who believes in the Batman myth. Plus, all your old favorites—caretaker
Alfred, machine expert Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon, (and more, but that
would be spoilers!)—are all back for another round.
Something’s
amuck in Gotham after eight years of peace, which brings us our latest villain
to this series—Bane, played by Warrior
and Bronson muscle man Tom Hardy. A
towering blub of pure muscle, kept together by a mask and a (still slightly
incomprehensible) East European accent, Bane has come to Gotham to destroy it
once in for all, and force the Batman to watch his city fall into chaos. Hardy
makes the most of the role—it’s kind of difficult to emote when we never see
his entire face—and Bane presents a real challenge to the Batman. As we learn,
he’s a force born in nihilism, driven by pain and giving it to others in an
all-consuming fascist dictatorship.
But
Bane’s role in The Dark Knight Rises
is cluttered by the fact that while he presents a physical challenge to Batman,
his thematic presence is more questionable. He and his minions (the 99%) take
over and cause carnage on a Wall Street trading floor. He forces citizens to
take from the rich and force them to murder each other. Why? A late film twist
finally clears the motivations for Bane, but it makes his rhetoric pointless
and a bit silly when Nolan is clearly trying to make some sort of a political
allegory.
The Dark Knight Rises often feels like
five movies at once, all stuck and strung together (I’m now imagining Nolan
could have made a trilogy of films just out of the one he made here). Gone are
the city streets of Chicago—Rises is
clearly a New York set tale of chaos and rising up against the tyranny of those
who have everything (and like The Dark
Knight, the film may in the end suggest more of a right wing justification
for our Post-9/11, and now Post-Financial Crises actions than question it).
Nolan wants to make something big and he has—the film never drags too badly,
and by the time he gets to his huge climax, he really goes for big and bold and
had me on the edge of my seat. His action scene continuity has slightly
improved—I still found a few sequences baffling in terms of narrative space,
but they were much easier to follow than in any of his other films.
But
there are issues that continue to stand that constantly make me question his
status as the great filmmaker of our time (he is the one we want, but not the
one we need). Despite working on such an epic scale, his visual compositions
continue to be flat and lifeless (Nolan evokes Mann without ever understanding
his use of negative space). He has a great production designer that has created
a sleek and realistic Gotham, but his lack of expressive filmmaking gives the
film a dull palette, and even the gadgets are made with utility in mind. Only
one sequence—easily the best in the film—reaches something of pure cinematic
pleasure, as a character finds himself trapped in a Middle Eastern prison, and
must escape not by physical strength, by facing a fear of death.
But
that’s just about twenty minutes, and there’s so much more in The Dark Knight Rises—not just in its
exposition-filled narrative (which is still confusing) but also thematically:
Capitalism Vs. the little guy, body vs. soul, symbols vs. heroes...all to fill
those bounds and bounds of PhD dissertations. But despite the lousy visuals,
the slight ideas, and the overbearing Hans Zimmer score filled with intense
chanting, there’s something in The Dark
Knight Rises to commend, though I’m just not sure what exactly. When The Avengers got to its third act, I
felt ready to head out—everything felt so inconsequential, so small. The stakes
at the heart of The Dark Knight Rises,
and Bruce Wayne’s journey from man to legend, somehow got to me, and I never
felt like I could take my eyes of that screen. There was the sly smirk of
Selina, the bitter tears in Alfred, the first shot of Bruce reclaiming his spot
in Gotham’s eye. I don’t know what to make of The Dark Knight Rises, and what Nolan means for Hollywood
filmmaking in general. But I know I want more of it. I want more not because I
think it is good, but because it wants so badly to be good. And one of these
days, someone will come along and truly give our superheroes the legends they
deserve.
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