Bane vs. The Memory of Heath: Heath Wins

Rating: 6/10 (27 July 2012)

I'm declaring The Dark Knight Rises to be a misfire, a confusing barrage of plot and speechifying without enough sticking to it. Nolan directs with very little of the stylistic energy of Inception or the propulsion of The Dark Knight. Easily one of the most anticipated films of the year, and despite an A-level cast, cutting edge special effects, and a terrifying villain, The Dark Knight Rises sinks.
For a minute, I'm going to focus on Bane, the villain of this third film in the Nolan Batman series. As played by Thomas Hardy, Bane resembles Darth Vader, Osama bin Laden, Sensei John Reese from the Cobra Kai in The Karate Kid with his trademark lapel-grabbing, and a He-Man Masters of the Universe character with swollen arms. Bane's spider-like mask robs us of seeing Hardy's full face, but his voice is wonderfully high-pitched and eerie, supposedly modeled on Eastern European voices recorded in the 1920's. However, I do have to complain if I cannot understand over 20% of the dialogue because of the way it was recorded. Frankly, I needed subtitles or Bane. I'm not saying do without the mask. Absolutely not. The mask ties Bane to Batman as well as the tradition of samurai, as well as it provides endless speculation about its functionality. How is it keeping him alive? Why does he need it? What happens when Batman punches it real, real hard? However, when the recording of a major character's voice is murky and indecipherable, Nolan has just undercut his own film. I lost threads of major speeches because of the sound quality. Bane's philosophies seem anarchic and revolutionary, and yet I'm not sure what drives him. Glimmers arrive in the last third of the film, far too late in my opinion.
I'm not a Batman scholar, and I can't rule definitively on the series. I've read that Nolan did not want to mention the character of The Joker in this film at all out of respect to Heath Ledger's memory, and that to me, again seems like a misfire and a miscalculation. The Joker's decision to kill Rachel Dawes rocked Bruce Wayne to his core; the open-ended decision to leave Heath Ledger's Joker hanging off the scaffolding of a building, tied up and ready for Arkham Asylum begs the question, What would have happened if Bane had united with the recently freed Joker in this film? At one moment, Bane calls the inmates of Blackgate, Gotham's most notorious prison, to join him in his revolution and they overwhelm the guards. Did this film need a slap of Ledger's brilliant, anarchic performance as The Joker? I say whole-heartedly, Yes! Bane seems content during the last third of the film to stand in the shadows, retreat and withdraw, in a way that is sadly disappointing and fails to develop him as a character. I'm endlessly impressed with his quick fighting style, Hardy's ferocious biceps, as well as his WWF-style, fur-coat wearing posture. I'm not at all satisfied by how Bane's story line was resolved as well. It felt like a cheat for a character of his mythos.
Nolan is reaching in the film, reaching for profundity, for connection to world that we live in with banks terrorizing homeowners, with Wall Street destroying Main Street, with the 1% vs. the 99%. Attempts are clumsily made to link the Dent Act to the overreach of the Patriot Act in our post-9-11 society. I admire the desire to be topical and cash in on some of the rage that has boiled over in America. However, beyond a few riotous crowds pushing the rich out onto the street, as well as some destruction, there is little sense of the chaos that has descended upon Gotham during the days of Bane's rule. I didn't get a sense of how the populace responded to the brazen act of terrorism or Bane's order to govern themselves. I was interested in how Commissioner Gordon and other police officers subverted Bane's rules and avoided the death squads, but not enough was ever made clear. Fall turns into winter, and the film boils down at moment to Gary Oldman jumping onto moving trucks which are simply not as guarded and secure as they should be. I'm still unclear who was holding the detonator. Nolan lost an opportunity to present a fully realized universe here, the hidden, cowering citizenry of Gotham with all of their naked ambition and desires unrestrained by police or common order.
In his pursuit of hyper-realism, has Nolan lost something in the telling of the Batman legend? Or, is this film just a minor step backwards from The Dark Knight, a high-watermark of comic book blockbusting entertainment, but still miles above the typical Hollywood dreck? As for this film's ending, Nolan had an opportunity to fully close a chapter forever with his sage and begin a new one. I'll say this; I liked the opening of the new chapter, and the penultimate sequence of shots in Italy robs the film of some of its pathos and power. There was a way to keep some open-ended qualities to that scene, and Nolan chose to avoid his ambiguous Inception spinning top. In this film, he shows us the top falling over which to me is not as enjoyable as the mystery. And, Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker and that character itself casts a shadow over The Dark Knight Rises in terms of performance and passion. It is hard to escape that shadow. But cheers to Tom Hardy for all that he did to make Bane indelible.