The Dark Knight Rises (review)

I’m “biast” (pro): love Nolan’s films in general, and what he’s done with Batman especially

I’m “biast” (con): how Warner Bros. has doled out press screenings and handled a review embargo had me worried that the studio was trying to hide a possible dud (unlikely as that seems)

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

We’re discussing the Aurora, Colorado, multiplex shooting here. Please post thoughts and comments related to that over there. Thank you.

Darkest Knight

[no spoilers! minimal plot!]

There are no heroes here.

This is where Christopher Nolan has been going with his masked avenger trilogy: to a place where there are no heroes. Not the comic-booky sort of hero with his cape and his high-minded ideals. Not the ordinary sort of hero: the cop on the beat, say. There is no noble sacrifice, only selfish and self-serving acts in defense of institutions or systems that are not worth saving. If there is temporary good, it comes only as a whim of the rich and/or powerful. The peasants of Gotham are lied to, or have the truth withheld from them, because the rich and/or powerful decide that delusion is preferable to reality — they decide that delusion will best maintain their positions as the rich and/or powerful. The peasants of Gotham may or may not be the beneficiaries of the largesse of the rich and/or powerful, depending entirely upon their passing fancies, or what they think is in the best interests of the peasants. The peasants are not consulted about what might constitute their best interests. And even if such largesse does come, it may be withdrawn at any moment.

This may be the darkest, the grimmest, the most depressing summer popcorn movie ever. It is not summery. It is not popcorny. There is no adventure here. There is no escapism. There is only grinding reality to be endured in the harsh mirror it holds up to us in the audience. For there can be no mistake that the peasants of Gotham are us, we 99 percent huddled in the dark and frantic for a hero we will not find.

In Nolan’s first Dark Knight film, Batman Begins, Gotham was a clearly fictional place: oh, inspired by New York City, no question, but the Gotham skyline was emphatically a fantasy. Here, there is no longer any pretense: The iconic buildings and bridges of the Manhattanscape are not disguised or altered (added to, yes, but not themselves altered). That is Fifth Avenue, symbol of luxury and wealth. That is Wall Street, symbol of excess and greed.

Who occupies this city? The 99 percent are a colony of men who’ve been discarded by society living and working in the sewers and subway tunnels, a literal underground of outcasts. They are janitors and delivery guys who are ignored and pass invisibly through halls of power. They are a cat burglar, Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway: One Day, Rio), who steals from the rich because it’s a good way for a clever girl to make a living. They are the idealistic young cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt: 50/50, Inception), whose romanticism will be shattered as he confronts the realities of his hero, police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2). Gordon is on the other side, among the powerful who cheat and deceive: he has been abetting the elevation to City Savior of district attorney Harvey Dent and the demonization of the Batman, who took the fall for the crimes and sins of Dent at the end of The Dark Knight. (That’s no spoiler, even for those who haven’t seen the previous film: Gordon’s inner turmoil but ultimate decision to continue with the lie is one of the film’s opening gambits.) And of course there’s billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale: Public Enemies, Terminator Salvation). He has now turned recluse and is presumed to have gone all Howard Hughes, but over the course of this story — beautifully, bleakly written by Nolan and his returning Batman writers Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer — we will learn that even hidden away in his stately manor, he wields power, and that we cannot, should not trust to his good motives, for he likes to play god, or at least master of the universe.

What happens in such an unfair world? Enters a villain, the masked Bane (Tom Hardy: This Means War, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), who takes advantage of those who are hurting, those who have been taken advantage of. It takes only a little mass urban blackmail before Gotham is on Bane’s side, and despotism descends with the hurricane force of inevitability. The peasants of Gotham become a citywide mob, following a madman because it sounds like he understands them. It’s authentic French Revolution time. Nolan has said Rises was inspired by A Tale of Two Cities… except here, the two cities are merely the two sides of Gotham.

Two sides of a coin, too, are the Batman and Bane, both former disciples of Ra’s Al Ghul and his League of Shadows: they are physically and, in some ways, philosophically matched, garnering mythic power from their anonymity — “No one cared who I was until I put on the mask,” Bane notes bitterly — and from their steadfast adherence to a certainty about what’s “right” for everyone else. And around them, men die willingly and worshipfully for Bane and lie willingly and worshipfully for the Batman. The cult surrounding both of them is chilling.

This is a dysfunctional world that cannot continue, and yet it seems intractable. (In this it feels much like our world on the other side of that harsh mirror.) Even the day of reckoning for the 1 percent that is foretold by Selina Kyle to Bruce Wayne and comes to pass with Bane’s rise doesn’t seem to change much of anything. This mess feels unfixable. And yet… the cast here is altogether extraordinary, carrying a weight of tragic, unavoidable destiny with them throughout. (Hardy deserves especial mention: His eyes and his body language are about all he has to work with as an actor, with most of his face covered through the entire film, but he is a terrifyingly brute presence.) They make a dark movie for our dark days even more gloomy, and less dismissible as mere “entertainment.” This is a beast of a film… a beast that has us all in its red and rageful glare.