Film Review: The Dark Knight Rises *** 1/2
*** Contains spoilers! You have been warned! Do not read if you do not want details about the ending of the “Dark Knight Rises” revealed****
This conversation probably never took place, but I can imagine that it did between the brothers Nolan. Upon hearing that Christopher would have a chance to re-start the Batman film series, his brother, Jonathan Nolan, after writing such masterpieces as “Memento”, asks his brother, “Are you sure you want to make a superhero movie? You’re better than that. You could make some of the most ambitious films of our time (Chris had been playing with the idea of “Inception” even way back then).” And Chris Nolan’s response, “I think I can do both.”
Upon seeing both “The Dark Knight” and even more so “Dark Knight Rises,” one thing cannot be in doubt and that is the ambition of Nolan to push the boundaries of storytelling and deliver epic films in the tradition of films no longer made: “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Apocalypse Now”. Granted, no film could match “The Dark Knight”’s near perfection and “Dark Knight Rises” does not. It is simply too long, starts too slowly, loses the audiences’ trust in some stretches of story logic, and stretches that trust even further in characters’ decisions, like Batman’s refusal to use his utility belt while battling the more physically dominating Bane even though he used them on the less physically dominating Joker and the League of Shadows. But that being said, “Dark Knight Rises” remains an ambitious film that in some ways attempts more than “The Dark Knight” did, and although it fails at times, it is still a masterpiece of the superhero genre; however, this is not your ordinary superhero film.
Nolan has never seemed satisfied in making a simple didactic morality tale, which in essence has been the battleground of the traditional superhero movie. Some of those movies transcend that genre by creating memorable characters who struggle with their powers (“Spider-man 2”) or superheroes who are anti-heroes (“Iron Man” at least in the beginning before he falls in line as he’s supposed to), but more typically than not, a superhero stands as the last line of defense against evil; however, in Nolan’s world, evil is never so simply defined.
The Joker from Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” best represents this, defining himself as an agent of chaos bent on proving the sinful nature of the inhabitants of Gotham, of freeing the masses to be who they really are; a goal Bane achieves in “Dark Knight Rises”. But even “Batman Begins” places Ra’s Al Ghul into this struggle as he sees himself as an avenging angel to bring down a Gotham that has become the symbol of decadence and self-interest. Looking at how Nolan deals with evil, he constructed a Gotham not unfamiliar to us (unlike Burton’s towering Gotham so obviously based on the fictional Metropolis), but instead a city constructed out of familiar sights, one we might know intimately. Crafting a much more realistic world than in most superhero films, Nolan in “Dark Knight Rises” draws on a post-9-11 fear of terrorism and images seared into the American soul. When Bane detonates his bombs around the city, can anyone not immediately think of the images of the towers collapsing? And perhaps one of the most beautifully shot images is the tattered American flag blowing in the wind… is this what American freedom promises?
At the end of the series, what stands clear to me is that the film is ultimately about hope and the price that hope costs. I think this can best be seen through one of the major motifs of all of Nolan’s work which is the mis-en-scene of home. The concept and visual of home has always played into all of Nolan’s works. In “Memento” it is that home is a lie as seen by the flashback and memories to a home with the main character’s wife and his attempt through revenge to return to that home that no longer exists. In “Inception,” Frank’s wife hates houses and prefers to live in hotels, which are temporal homes that don’t force you to be held down or develop identity. It is in this hotel room that Mal kills herself and that her soul exists in Frank’s dreams. In the end in limbo, he knows that Mal will not be found in any of the houses, but in a hotel room. There are also clues regarding the dreaming contained in that stark pure white hotel room as to what is really a dream. Finally, in the Dark Knight series, home has continually been represented by the ever expanding mansion that is Wayne manor.
In “Batman Begins,” Wayne manor is the symbol of decadence and failure that Ra’s al Ghul warns Bruce Wayne about. It represents the façade that Rachel keeps talking about in terms of wearing masks. It must be destroyed for Bruce to discover who he actually is and rebuilt by himself so that it is his home rather than his fathers. Until that happens, Bruce will never succeed as Batman. Standing the ruins at the end of the first movie, Rachel tells him that Bruce is the mask and Batman is who he actually is. Bruce can now build not only Wayne manor but the Batcave, making it his own home.
Hope in this movie comes in the form of a man deciding to cast away his past, literally represented in the burning of Wayne manor and the fake story that he burnt it down while drunk. Bruce Wayne as Batman represents the hope that Ra’s tells him in the beginning that Gotham is without. Gotham must be destroyed because it is not capable of being saved. By rebelling against this notion, Bruce becomes the hope of a city that succeeds in the end.
In “The Dark Knight,” Wayne manor has been destroyed and Bruce is reduced to living in a hotel until it is rebuilt. This is the time when Bruce has trouble deciding who he should be, but of course he does, he has no home to allow for the creation of an identity. He struggles and struggles and two characters arrive to exacerbate this struggle: Harvey Dent, the white knight, and the Joker, the prince of darkness.
The hope in this movie is both personal to Bruce Wayne, in the hope that Gotham will not need him anymore, and symbolized in another character, Harvey Dent. Dent represents what Bruce believes is the real hope of the city. Batman has succeeded because he has caused ordinary people like Dent to stand up against the darker elements of their own society. It is important that ordinary cops are the traitors in Gordon’s unit, showing that Gotham although being inspired certainly has not been saved by Batman. In the end, Bruce’s hope of living a life out of the shadows is destroyed with the Joker’s mutilation of Dent into the villainous Two-Face. The only hope that can be salvaged from the end is the idea that Batman can be blamed for the death of Gotham’s White Knight and inspire people to stand… the problem, that hope is a lie. A house built on a false foundation will not stand and that is where “Dark Knight Rises” begins.
“Dark Knight Rises” begins with the foundation of Gotham’s hope, peacetime, coming to an end because of the coming storm. Selina Kyle tells Wayne that the rich must baton down the hatches because the storm is coming that is going to make them realize that there is a price to pay for them living so high while the rest of society has so very little. These populist themes along with images that evoke the French revolution twist the notion of freedom into something dangerous proving Ra’s al Ghul’s point that Gotham is in fact hopeless. This hopelessness is seen in the nuclear bomb roaming Gotham’s streets which the audience knows will go off regardless of what anyone does, providing the city with the false hope that Bane says is necessary for despair to really take place. Think seeing the sky from the pit.
Before moving further on hope, let’s return to Wayne manor. Wayne manor in “Dark Knight Rises” is a tomb. This is the first time we have seen the manor in all of its glory. It’s larger than we ever would have thought and looks beautiful on the outside, but inside, it is hollow and empty, clothed in white clothes and not lived in. This is Bruce Wayne since Rachel died, since he lost hope. This movie is obviously about Batman rising out of this tomb to reclaim the image he gave up when he decided to place hope in someone else’s hands.
By the end of the film, Bruce has finally returned home. We see the graves of Bruce’s parents on the grounds with his own next to theirs. He has finally been reunited and his home becomes a symbol of hope both by becoming the house to orphaned youths and by giving Blake “Robin” access to the Bat gear.
However, the method of Bruce becoming the hope of the city again begins and ends in many ways with his confrontation with Bane. I know that the coin has always in the Batman universe represented Two-Face and chance. I think the old expression “two sides of the same coin” are incredibly apt for Batman and Bane. They have such similar backgrounds. Both were trained by Ra’s al Ghul and both expelled from the League of Shadows. When you combine their costumes, they literally become one person with Bane’s mask filling Batman’s mask. They both were “raised in the dark”, Bane literally in the Pit where he has been imprisoned for who knows how long, and Bruce by the death of his parents. Bane’s pit also looks eerily like the well Bruce fell into as a child in “Batman Begins”, meaning that if he climbs out of it this time, it will be without the aid of his father (the rope). While Bruce rebelled against Ra’s, disagreeing about Gotham’s fate, Bane seems to be fulfilling his former master’s wishes. As a result of their interactions, Bane is almost always shot on the left hand side of the screen (the place where evil usually sits) looking right at Batman / Bruce Wayne who occupies the hero’s side. Bane is often seen descending (the airplane drop, the journey to the tunnels, blowing up the arsenal floor) and Batman / Bruce Wayne is often seen for a lack of a better term, rising. Bruce is lifting himself up to become what Gotham needs him to be, what Gotham has asked him to be since the beginning. Only slowly is Bruce seeing that it may cost him his life, something that Alfred has always known and feared. The final image of rising of course belongs to “the Bat”; the jet that takes off carrying a nuclear bomb away from the city and in it, Bruce fulfilling his role as the hope of Gotham. As Ra’s al Ghul or one of the prisoners in the pit tells Bruce Wayne, there is more than one way to be immortal. Ra’s al Ghul of course has used aliases, and children as a means of overcoming his own death. Batman will live on in the minds of Gotham and the actions of Robin, which is why the image of Bruce in Florence is cheating the movie’s own theme. He has become hope by allowing others to act. The lack of development in Bruce’s personal life overcoming Rachel’s death means the movie does not earn that image at the end.
“Dark Knight Rises” in many ways operates better as a conclusion of a series than an independent film. The fact that Nolan choses to use flashbacks to the previous two movies which without some context are not really understood only emphasizes the trilogy. There certainly are problems with this film. One of my major ones being, although Talia was easy to call from the scene where she kisses Bruce Wayne for no reason (there are no beats leading to that action) and therefore cannot be trusted, her reveal happens as the end of Act II leaving little time to develop her as a character. There was so much more there. She and Bruce share the fact that she lost her father to Bruce’s hands and the amazing chance to develop the idea that Bruce shares some guilt for killing Ra’s becoming the person who took away someone else’s parents is lost. Her genius of masterminding what Bane has done is diminished, just as Bane is diminished by a final fight that is solved by Batman way too easily, providing a false victory, but one that should have been more difficult.
Even with all of these thoughts, after seeing the movie twice, I continually return to a sense of awe at Nolan’s ambition. I can’t help but believe that he sought out to do two things: make a movie dealing with the themes and subjects of his own desire and to create a superhero movie. By attempting to do something more with a genre known for rather simplistic storytelling (this refers to superhero films NOT comic books which have definitely transcended their pulp origins to produce masterpieces like “Watchmen”, “The Dark Knight Returns”, and “The Sandman” series), Nolan succeeds in giving us something original, something epic and yet intimate, the story of one man who does indeed, as Lawrence of Arabia sets out to do, changes the world.
Jim Emerson’s somewhat negative essay on “Dark Knight Rises” http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2012/07/the_dark_knight_rises_a_hero_a.html
Mr. Canavese’s positive review on Grouchoreviews.com
