| CULTURE & SOCIETY |
|
SPOILERS AHEAD |
|
|
|
|
From
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 31, Dated 04 Aug 2012 |
|
| CULTURE & SOCIETY |
|
SPOILERS AHEAD |
|
The Bat Goes Nuclear
By Shougat Dasgupta
THE SLEW of admiring reviews in the international press of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) is cause for sorrow. Not just because, as with the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter octet, crashing dullness is now universally celebrated, but because adults, thinking, educated adults are expected to engage with the reductive banalities of these films’ Manichean battles. It is as if after 9/11, Anglo-American audiences (and those of us in thrall to the Anglo-American world, including your reviewer) seek the crudest of comforts in popular movies, seek uncomplicated ‘good’ in opposition to equally uncomplicated ‘evil’.
In wars, whether in epic literature or real life, victories are always pyrrhic; war may be necessary at times but man is always diminished by its demands — think of the moral subterfuge required of the Pandavas. But combat can also inspire empathy, courage, even kinship among opposing soldiers, recognition of a common humanity.
But this is not the stuff of superhero movies. The enemy is always, to quote a character in TDKR, “pure evil”. In Nolan’s vision, Batman, the poor little rich boy, is transformed into a figure of Christ-like stoicism, achieving through his suffering salvation for the people of Gotham city.
Appropriately, there are those in Gotham who believe in the Batman, those who don’t and the majority who are mostly ambivalent until their time of need. In TDKR, it’s been eight years since Gotham has had need of the Batman, eight years in which the city has held him responsible for the sins of their false idol Harvey Dent, eight years in which the Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, has led a reclusive life mourning Rachel Dawes, the love of his life. I too mourned the loss of Maggie Gyllenhaal, who played Dawes in The Dark Knight and whose relaxed irony and intelligence leavened a plodding, male film. Her replacements — the skeletal Anne Hathaway, playing Catwoman, the Batman’s reluctant sidekick, and Marion Cotillard, who looks out of place, particularly when her marginal character becomes pivotal — are mostly peripheral figures, unable to soften the film’s thudding heavy metal aesthetic.
|
Bale is peripheral to the film, ceding the ground to Hardy’s Bane who looks like a WWE wrestler |
|
It’s not their fault. Even Christian Bale, Nolan’s moody muse, is peripheral to the film, ceding the ground to Bane (Tom Hardy), whose pneumatic pectorals and Lecteresque mask give him the appearance of a WWE wrestler (it is that kind of film). His heavily muscled physique sets the tone for TDKR, as Heath Ledger’s antic, capering Joker did for its predecessor. Liam Neeson’s Ra’sal Ghul makes a cameo, as does Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow, in the film’s one moment of sustained wit, as the judge in a kangaroo court presiding over mock trials from a towering desk, a figure out of Dickens. Since Milton, devils have always had the best lines.
Hardy delivers those lines in a painful, prolonged rasp, as Bale does his. Part of the 165 minute running time is explained by the torturous wait for Bane and the Batman to wheeze out a single sentence. For once, I am glad of the small space given to film reviews. I don’t have to discuss the confused politics in TDKR, as if it has anything coherent to say about terrorism, capitalism, anarchy, revolution, good or evil. It’s a film for teenage boys (spiritually and literally), a fitting conclusion to the trilogy: a series with all the philosophical grace, but only some of the entertainment value, of a demolition derby with monster trucks.
Shougat Dasgupta is an Assistant Editor with Tehelka.
shougat@tehelka.com
|
