(Revisionist) Movie Review : The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christopher Nolan released the last chapter of his Dark Knight Trilogy eight years ago, but it already seems like a lifetime. I remember being blown away by the Wagnerian energy and grandiloquence of the film then, but it was greatly overshadowed by the Aurora tragedy on opening weekend. The Dark Knight Rises became the cursed Batman movie. The flawed final chapter to a bombastic cinematic masterpiece. So which one was it? Wagnerian or fucked up?

Or both?

In case you’re unfamiliar, The Dark Knight Rises tells the story of an aging Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), eight years after the demise of Harvey Dent. A new terrorist threat (Tom Hardy) has set up shop in the city’s sewers at the behest of Wayne’s business rival John Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn). While trying to set up the billionaire, they are ratted to the police and the hulking psychopath named Bane takes over Daggett’s operation. Things do not go well from there.

Here’s the problem with this movie: I don’t know what the fuck it’s trying to say. It is half an indictment of corrupt institutions who attempt to control masses with lies and half an indictment banana republic fascism. The difference between them is that the social leaders who framed Batman in order to preserve Harvey Dent’s memory actually feel sorry and Bane doesn’t give a fuck. The future doesn’t concern him because he wants to blow up the city.

That’s a problem because the moral imperative of the movie becomes “not blowing up the city with a nuclear bomb”. Can I just have a better reason to root for someone than not wanting the world to be destroyed? Making the villain want to blow up everything is a cheap shortcut that forces you to like whoever in the movie who’s not a suicidal nihilist. Suicidal nihilists are difficult to relate to unless you want to blow up the world yourself. It’s kind of a niche thing.

It’s too bad, because everything else about The Dark Knight Rises is kind of cool. Bane is, by far, the most complete “dark reflection” of Batman. He’s angry, charismatic and hyperviolent like him. He loves to hang around in dark places actually more than aging Bruce Wayne. The pit is a great real world mirror of the pit Wayne fell into when he was a kid. It’s bigger, scarier and by the end of the movie, he needs to master it in order to spiritually resuscitate.

That is the kind of bold symbolism and imagery I live to find in films. Bonus points if it’s a blockbuster like this.

In hindsight, The Dark Knight Rises is a film about spiritual transformation. Without a purpose, numbed by wealth and comfort, Bruce Wayne was rotting away in his manor. But the imminent threat to Gotham City’s precarious balance helped him integrate past traumas in order to better serve the city. Then again, a major problem with Batman is that it’s always about him. He’s a selfless protector that doesn’t protect shit except his own toxic patterns.

I guess you could say that of every man who self-identifies as a “protector”. That would make Bane his psychiatrist. He’s not as likable as Heath Ledger’s Joker, but he feels powerful and commanding. His brand of terrorism is also not very real. It is short-sighted and ambivalent. He’s more of a fantasy of what a terrorist looks like from a politician point of view than believable character. That made The Dark Knight Rises somewhat of a right-wing fantasy in itself.

The Dark Knight Rises is a slick (and Wagnerian I suppose) movie with a completely muddled sense of purpose. It basically says that terrorism is inevitable and that we need obscenely armed law enforcement to keep it at bay. Which is… the opposite of what you should hear. I get it, it’s not the point of the movie. The point is the spiritual transformation of Bruce Wayne. I guess you could say The Dark Knight Rises is a movie that doesn’t see the forest for the trees.

7.8/10