The fool (no Joker-vision)

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2012)

I believe we are badly in need of a new logic, one that is not logic and is not thought. There is subtle disharmony in the spheres that our current tools cannot adequately support, I am faced with this in a variety of recent films I see about some cosmic dimension, from Cremaster to The Avengers. Something like this, that has room for discord and emptiness, was discovered several millenia ago in India at around the same time as the mathematical zero (and by the same folks), but the world went with the Greek symmetrical model for reason and drama.
And there is nothing particularly reasonable in a mother-child relationship, or deep love, or even good sex or humor, or anything that is powerful in life. The sun always rises from the east, that is reasonable enough, but feelings don't: sometimes they rise from the west, sometimes night bleeds into day, sometimes they rise from both places at once and we get two moons at noon.
This is dismaying to me, because film can and should be, by inherent design, the tools to explore and deliver infinite extra-logical variations of that mysterious noon sky that is illogical and dissolves reasonable thought, and we use it to illustrate plays that aim to solve.
And here is a film about inherent chaos in the universe and the failure of logical tools to adequately solve and explain.
Nolan is just not up to it. He crafts a solid film, no doubt. The action is a bit less generic than previous. The storyline more coherent and believable. But he is an entirely logical being, simply not mad enough. He's all about exerting control over the world he creates, and that is reflected inside the film as several schemers vying to manipulate the narrative and reality (a motif carried over from Begins). And this is a film about chaos, which means you have to let go at some point and see what pieces of the story fall from the sky, which is the essence of what was discovered in India: being still through the thing (the mind)(the world) spinning by itself until the machinery dissolves.
Nolan simply can't do this. He knows The Joker is closer to the center of the universe than anyone. He knows everyone else is going to be inadequate and profoundly boring in their quest for responsibility, compared to the sexiness of that destructive force. Ledger knew this, and brought together in his role rude , illogical swagger from George Carlin all the way to Johnny Rotten.
Up until a point, they really get it right: this man cannot be trusted, to tell his story or otherwise, and us sorting through the false stories looking for truth is moot in the face of this man embodying in action the truth of what he is. Everyone in the film seriously puzzles to communicate what he's all about and why.
But Nolan just can't bring himself to not explain, again and again, that some people just want to see the world burn. We just don't have actual Joker-vision, something fluid from the other side of reason.
This is important. This character affects so deeply, because there is nothing to think about or explain, since he won't give away anything, so you are left with no other option than to be still as he spins the world this way and that. He has the role played by invisible fates in film noir, and the allure of that was there was something you couldn't fathom but apparently had mechanism, agency. This is a backwards step. And you just know that every explanation is going to be profoundly disappointing, which is precisely the gist of why our cognitive tools are inadequate: that deeply-rooted illogical self that is capable for motherhood and awe-inspiring sex alike can recognize that words are never the thing they describe. They are at best the campfire tale between hunters about the day's hunt.
I am not saying chaos is good, or simply that it affects. I'm saying everything that is unreasonable does, because it confounds and dissolves thought. I'm saying the presentation here disappoints, because it doesn't have truly irrational flow. We need more of both in our meditation.
The film does reflect everything it's about in its solid structure, all of it a matter of static engineering, control, opera. It's dockyard work.
In terms of cinematic flow, I envision what I'm talking about - the new set of tools - as something that requires a combination of aeronautics and telepathy, a design for both how the object moves and how the air moves around it.
Have a look at Nolan's aerial views and tell me what you think. .