I watched The Dark Knight Rises last Friday, and started writing this post after I’ve came home to puzzle out my feelings about the movie; but, typically, I’ve procrastinated finishing it until today.
I thought it was a good movie - the kind of movie that can be considered to be among the class of good movies released this year - but it could be better. It had so much promise. The first half puts into place such an interesting foundation, and the second half didn’t feel like it lived up to the expectations generated by the first.
Ramblings of me trying to make sense of the movie comes after the cut. Will contain spoilers. Writing this has also been more difficult than usual because I could gauge the popular response towards The Dark Knight Rises, and this is not a popular response. Not offensive, either, just that I’ve never seen anyone saying this anywhere:
- the movie addresses society’s present (and growing) discontent with the rich, building it up in ways that make my hair stand on its end in the first half - Catwoman’s well-written loathing of the rich builds up to the heist at the Stocks Exchange, and culminates in the take-over of Gotham City that seals it off to form an autonomous city not seemingly running along the the lines of most capitalistic societies. Bane’s address to the people in the stadium made me feel a strong wave of something that was almost overwhelming, because I very quickly recognised the general pattern of how things like this would end in history, and was preparing myself for very bad things to happen among people of Gotham City.
I have a kind of mental process that’s conceptual and theoretical, that makes connections to other things very quickly to present some realisation in a flash. References make me come alive. It’s not a drawn-out process of conscious thought, or even a deliberate process, but when I watch something these days, I don’t just see what’s presented on the screen by the writers; my mind would, in a flash, connect what I’ve seen to several other things that are tangentially related from many other sources and mediums - books, articles, conversations, realisations, stories, all meshed together to give me something more potent than the storyline presented. In this instance, my interpretation of a couple of those scenes are affected by my guilt for not being poor coupled with my apprehension of social injustice towards the poor (how they’re affected more terribly by a bad economy by the rich), and by articles I’ve read about tax-evasion and the rich not contributing to the economy on a level that’s anywhere equitable. I’m reminded of the dystopic stories I’ve read, Machiavelli’s theories (I think), and my understanding of history, including the beginnings of communistic societies and the French Revolution. So I was excited to see how all these would be addressed in the movie.
But the movie went nowhere with this theme. It was left hanging, and wasn’t dealt with in a satisfactory manner. There just wasn’t a potent climax to the theme, or any satisfying progression at all. I suppose a more effective way of dealing with what they had done thus far (broad suggestion since I’m not a screenwriter) would be by showing more of how the city and its citizens really react to finding themselves under a lawless regime, after moving from one with order so swiftly (there is usually some sort of build-up in revolutions. I predicted a massive fucking disaster and sheer inhumanity after the baseball scene, and come to think of it, that would be a more powerful weapon to hurt Batman with, don’t you think? Every one of those people he tries so hard to protect turning into monsters themselves). I thought weaving something like that more potently (yet seamlessly) into the narrative (which I understand has to focus on the heroes and their cohort) would address a rather major theme Nolan chose to include in the movie. Alas, nothing of that was done. There really wasn’t enough focus on the citizens of Gotham, giving the movie somewhat of an artificial feeling by the second half. And that’s such a shame - it was such a great plot, isolating an entire city in such an extreme manner, and the psychological effect it can have on people could be addressed tangentially, but it wasn’t. Whatever references that were made simply weren’t enough.
- The major plot-twist near the climax of the movie felt like it didn’t belong. So the only purpose of the attacks was to make Batman suffer? And for someone who hated her father so much, why would she want to avenge his death in such an elaborate manner? To orchestrate something that would take so much of time, effort, and obsession, you’d need a very powerful motivation, and I just don’t see that. That bit just didn’t gel well with the rest of the movie, knowing what I know (although I must admit that I’ve never watched Batman Begins, so I wouldn’t know the backstory involving Batman and his mentor).
- And Catwoman? Her character didn’t seem as interesting in the second half as it was in the first. Her character just sort of…petered off, in the end. Which, again, is a shame, because I thought it was well-written. There’s a certain strength about her that I found very compelling.
- (I’m also going to write about my take on feminism in the movie, but I’ve already spent enough time on this today, so I might write about this some other day here as an edit, and reblog my post.)
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