Dark Knight Rises

***WARNING - SEVERE Spoilers Contained Within -WARNING***

I’m not a huge fan of either of the first two films in Nolan’s trilogy.  There are structural problems with both narratives. They suffer from similar excesses in the form of  grating minor character tropes, poor (bombastic) sound design and Nolan’s inability to handle character drama without resorting to melodrama. Or perhaps his inability to tackle melodrama well - melodrama can be very emotionally gratifying when handled with a deft touch as Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrated with Magnolia. In addition I have a litany of separate issues with each individual film.

So why might you ask, would I bother with The Dark Knight Rises in the first place? The simplest answer is that I am a very big fan of many archetypes emerging from The Batman universe, and their narrative potential. Like a tarot deck, I’m always on the look out for beautiful designs that resonate. The thing that I  enjoy immensely about Nolan’s vision of Batman is his aesthetic interpretation of elements from Gotham’s menagerie (both its confines and denizens), balancing a spare kind of realism with just enough elements of fantasy to be visually compelling. Note that I apply the term “realism” here only to the way they look. A notable exception is the disappointing Two Face make-up in The Dark Knight (TDK) whose cartoonishness severely diluted the psychological impact of Dent's scarring for me and made it difficult to take his physical pain/inner emotional turmoil seriously. 

Anyway, Overview.

Do you, gentle reader, remember your reaction to Inception when the crew arrived in layer three (Eames’ dream) of the dream/heist - the snowy landscape with the fortress? I do. I found it kind of boring. Not terrible, just bland and a bit uninspired, certainly in comparison to the first two layers, particularly the second (Arthur’s Dream).

Well that was my overall reaction to The Dark Knight Rises.

The first half of the film is an accelerated phantom menace thread in which antagonists are successively introduced and then promptly peeled away like the layer of an onion; exposed as hench-persons of yet another higher up. This is dropped by the middle of the film to be picked up on again briefly for one final reveal at the arse end of the final act. The second half is an extended ticking clock sequence that telescopes by way of a shift in tempo; the first phase takes place over months with heavy reliance on montage, the second phase over a period of hours, comprised of action set pieces punctuated by very standard stalls. 

Even given three-hours to play out, this composition is realised in an unwieldy way (it may have seemed a lot better on the page and in conversation). That it works at all is a testament to no small amount of skill on Nolan’s behalf in his role as a focal point for the project. Nonetheless, the pacing is all over the show with a post-prologue, accelerated first act crammed full of rushed introductions for largely redundant characters (Stryver, Daggett [Ben, you still rule], Foely). The film fails to generate any tension, a matter not helped by the fact a lot of emotional big-guns get fired off too early (to the tune of scoring so bombastic it could drive the actual climax of several films at once). Alfred does so much hand wringing and emoting at these early stages you’d think these scenes were lifted from the immediate post-peripeteia of the previous instalment. 

And then, after what might constitute as The Dark Knight Rises’ major reversal occurs at roughly the half way point, the film becomes fairly ponderous. While the pace eventually picks up enough (but not too much) in the films final scenes for the action sequences to play out smoothly, the antagonists’ character arcs are completed in a flurry of exposition after which they are simply tossed out of the narrative so we can focus on The Batman’s transformation into Jesus. That being said the interplay between the characters results in a surprisingly coherent narrative progression and while I never experienced any profundity, at least its doesn’t feel like a superficial graft (aka the forcedness of The Joker’s hospital flipping of Harvey over to Two-Face, a low point for me in TDK’s storytelling).

There are plenty of other things to write about, such as how well the film is fits with the rest of the trilogy to form an overarching story; how it negotiates the self/other balance in this regard (It shares more problems with The Matrix Revolutions relating to its ability to stand alone as a film than devotees may be psychologically comfortable with). There are a range of sociopolitical discussions to be had also, but these things would require their own 1500 words to adequately treat. Anyway, I offer a few extra random observations below.

The rest, in bullet point form.

The Good:

• Bane looked great, moved great, projected menace through his physicality and for the aircraft hijacking scene at least, his intellect. Hey, maybe it’s just all that training from David Milch’s gloriously convoluted, speedily delivered, Shakespearean-esque dialogue, but I didn’t find Bane hard to understand. I really liked both the mask, the sound of the voice and the way the stifled mouth keep forcing my attention to the characters eyes. Tom Hardy pulled off some great crazy-eyes acting courtesy of the stasis around the mouth.
• Catwoman was a really pleasant surprise. Her interactions with The Batman and Bruce Wayne made for my best moments. A little bit of moral ambiguity goes a long way – if for no other reason than it give a character a place develop from, as well as to.
• Christian Bale actually had something to do this time around when the mask was off– Bruce Wayne’s character had an arc of sorts.
• Wonderful Craftspersonship. Sweeping (literally) IMAX shots of urban landscapes from the air. Thrilling sense of motion in the chase scenes.
• The “Pit” and the climb to freedom/”rise”, associated for much of the film with Bane, had a pleasingly mythic feel to it. It made a good for a good emotional centre to the second half of the film, thematically connecting three of the important characters. Sadly, like a superb wine not given sufficient time to breath, it could have been a lot, lot better.

  The Bad:

• Bane didn’t have a hell of a lot to do. His elucidation as a threat, particularly through interactions with The Batman, was sub-standard: Two talky fist fights and a gloating scene that doubled as a more or less incoherent justification for the plotting in the second half – meh.
• Bane again. As a close friend pointed out "foxy creation-myth deception" can be awesome (linked to comments about the pit above), but reducing him to a henchman completely depowered the character - suddenly he's not even a mere fanatic, just a love-lorn pet.
• Dialogue [paraphrased]. What is worse than incessant unnecessary exposition of events clearly shown visually, often in the previous shot, or spelled out/clearly telegraphed for the audience in a previous bout of exposition? A few incidences of the same in what is an otherwise absorbing/entertaining film – they jar even worse.
• “The city’s safe, the bomb detonated over the bay” JUST AFTER we saw this happening. For FUCKS SAKE!! Though not quite as egregious as the “Paradox!” line in Inception. That was unforgivable

• Trying to realise the Islamic terrorists League of Shadows’ mission as something other than the hysterical scheming of an eco-ninja illuminati = epic fail. When something is that silly and incoherent to begin with, trying to imbue it with “gritty realism” just increases its stupidity.
• There are trade-offs when trying to tailor elements of your film for 12-year-old boys. Bloodless and otherwise sanitised warfare isn’t just dull, it’s somehow crass.
• “Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these Motherfucking terrorists on this Motherfucking plane”! Pun intended. Its all just too parochial for this non-American. "Everybody strap in - we're about to open some fucking windows".

 The Ugly:

• The politics. Its one thing to utilise a nation’s sociopolitical backdrop to evoke a mood, a zeitgeist of fear. Unfortunately it’s quite another to expect that an actual political stance won’t emerge from such a practice and then, if you haven’t really thought out a coherent political position for your film, what you end up with is a naive and muddled embarrassment.
• Bane as Osama Bin laden, hiding out in desert Tunnels Gotham’s sewers? Anyone? Anyone?
• Islamic terrorism is somehow fused with the Occupy Wall Street movement and populist renderings of the French Revolution - that all ultimately wasn’t about insurgence or grass roots political struggle, but about revenge-tempered sadistic nihilism? What The Fuck?
• Greed (global financial institutions) and deception (the patriot Dent act) are bad, but were necessary evils, those good ol’ boys were just doing the best they could, and thank The Batman Jesus for the boys in blue and philanthropic billionaires - they will sort the resulting shit out. Seriously, What The Fuck?

• Dialogue [paraphrased]. Daggett to Bane: “you are pure evil”. I mean what the fuck? It comes out of nowhere, too early in the piece.  As an audience we had barely encountered Bane except in his role as a kind of military commander. Yes the dude had crazy eyes, and was ruthless, but even so. For that pronouncement to evoke the gravity its striving for, I  first need to come to that conclusion myself - as a witness to action, and then have it confirmed by other characters as a point of identification. Not have it force fed to me.
• In complete, confusing contrast this scene provided the best sense of Bane’s physical power – it was chilling. Just beautifully done. Why couldn’t fights with The Batman do the same?

• Terrible craftspersonship. Overwrought jarring flourishes: Foley’s beatific, bloodless dead-swan shot like something out of 16^thC religious iconography.  The dreadful scene with the school bus on the bridge as Blake tries to convince the authorities to let them across. Not only disruptive to the concurrent action and a clunky, crude way to develop the Blake character (perfect for a 12-year old's attention span, maybe), the set looked cheap and under populated. Where were all those good citizens the plucky Gotham orphans had gone off to roust?
• The “featured extras” reminiscent of Studio films from the classical era (1920s through the early 1960s). Keystone Cops and Business men getting their shoes shined are gifted dedicated shots at the expense of key players and contextualisation. Some of them don’t even have dialogue. And during action sequences too. Fucking amateur hour.
• Batman-as-martyr flying off into a nuclear sunset. Amen.

Feedback and counterpoints welcomed but no death threats, thanks.