The Dark Knight Rises

“Do you feel in charge?” This is exactly the kind of hard-hitting ending to an epic saga that you would expect from a maximalist like Nolan. With the exception of the overwrought action scenes and the expanded number of characters, Nolan couldn’t take it much farther than he did in The Dark Knight. There was nowhere else to go. So he returned to the roots instead. Batman must rise again, start over and definitively come to terms with the burden that he has carried since Batman Begins, which is represented here by the character of Bane. ___ Whereas the Joker used uncontrollable chaos, Bane employs brute, straightforward physical force. His objective is not to destroy Batman only as a symbol, which is what the maniacal clown managed to do (while his success is reaffirmed when the long-term unsustainability of the status quo built on lies is exposed), but also as a person. The villain and the mistaken and doubting supporting characters again overshadow the titular hero, who admittedly gets more space to deliver his clumsily written lines (with literally expressed thoughts that the film’s creators are unable to convey to viewers simply by hinting at them) without his mask and in his human voice, but his “developmental arc” is merely a variation on that from the first film (with the difference being that his father doesn’t help him out this time) and he is rather predictable in his behaviour (much more so than Bane or the excellent Selina Kyle, whom I’d like to see played by Anne Hathaway in a separate film), just as the rest of the film is predictable. ___ Based on proven narrative formulas, the story generates situations that assault the eye with their calculated nature. The characters’ decisions are not rationalised very well. The degree of care with which the whole film was designed and calculated for effect is apparent in the casualness with which Bruce Wayne puts on the bat costume again after eight years of living in seclusion, the large number of characters appearing in the right place at the right time, and the sudden and correct decisions made by those who had previously been hesitant. Characters make dumb decisions so that Nolan can offer us epic scenes (such as the fight between Batman and Bane) and to serve a particular purpose. Of course, in any fictional film, things naturally don’t happen for any other reason than a conscious decision on the part of the screenwriter, but this fact is more skilfully disguised in other films. ___ Like The Dark Knight, the third instalment is elevated by an uncompromising villain who is well aware of the power of money and of the game (in this case, American football), two phenomena that bring rich and poor together. The villain’s radically Marxist plan with an unclear objective (does he want to destroy Gotham, or leave it to the rabble?) include a forceful attack on both of these pillars of capitalism. Unlike in our reality, the financial crisis in the film is caused by outside interference, not by gradual internal decay, and the culprit is thus easier to identify, track down and punish (e.g. in Skyfall from the same year, whose directing Sam Mendes admits was inspired by The Dark Knight, the evil is of a much more unique nature). However, the attempt to depict the anxieties of today is apparent, but leftist liberals will not be enthusiastic about handing over responsibility to heroic members of the police force. ___ At the stylistic level, Nolan doesn’t come up with anything new, but only clarifies and intensifies what he did before. Nolan again pulls out his favourite shot dyad comprising “static dialogue scene – cut to camera moving over the city with a bird’s-eye view”, the exceedingly epic music of Hans Zimmer is again heard from the opening minutes (and thus cannot be further intensified in the truly important scenes, though the musical motifs assigned to the individual characters and their intertwining work very nicely), and there is again a disconnect between the psychologically believable background and the exaggerated action scenes (the assault on the plane in flight is just as good as the tanks and submarines in the Fast & Furious movies). Thanks to the longer shots and more proportionate use of parallel montages, the hand-to-hand fighting and shootouts are clearer.  ___ The structure of The Dark Knight Rises is more ambitious and more clearly arranged than that of the two preceding films. After the fight between Batman and Bane (which happens roughly at the mid-point of the film), there is a fade-out and the initial distribution of powers is overturned. Evil comes to the surface; good is sidelined. In the second half, with its livelier plot, the pace is significantly faster, because there is the necessity of developing motifs and concluding the storylines not only from the first half of the film (the bomb, the removal of Selina from the most-wanted list), but also from the first two films (Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow, the lie about Dent), which leads to the sometimes ridiculous attempt to convey truly a lot of information in a short time (I was impressed by the scene in which the characters are waiting for Marion Cotillard’s character to slowly say what she has to say while a bomb ticks a few meters away with only a few tens of seconds remaining until it is set to explode). The narrative, which is made more suspenseful by the establishment of a rapidly shortening deadline (23 days, 18 hours, 45 minutes, then 11 minutes pass, and then five minutes remain), basically doesn’t slow down until the end. In retrospect, the first half thus seems like an eighty-minute, mostly dialogue-driven, character-developing prologue for eighty minutes of thrilling action. ___ The Dark Knight Rises succeeds in being both truly dark and incredibly thrilling, albeit at the cost of unconvincing plot twists, odd confusion of ideas and expressive ponderousness and literalism, but if every attempt at making a monumental cinematic spectacle ended in a similar "failure", I wouldn’t complain. 85% Appendix: A lot of reviews address the speed with which characters travel between the prison and Gotham. According to one of the lines uttered in the film, the prison is located in the “ancient part of the town”, not somewhere in Africa or the Middle East, so it shouldn’t be such a problem to get to Gotham even on foot. (21/07/2012) (less) (more)