Flawed but Unbroken - A Fitting Finale

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2012)

Following a movie event like Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008) is a dangerous game, but then Nolan is a dangerous player. His curious obsession with masculine identity, psychological schisms and the dark night of the soul gave "Batman Begins" (2005) a sense of edgy 'reality' that ingratiated him to critics and a good deal of the public, even if it alienated some hard-core Batfans with its customized and highly Nolan-esque take on the Caped Crusader. When his second installment braved the frontier of openly post-9/11 superhero parables, and in so doing gave the late Heath Ledger platform to truly wow audiences and critics the world over, the British director seemed to have galvanized 'superhero noir' as the new benchmark in comic book film adaptation. "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012) is his final word on the subject, and while this reviewer feels that it is not a film fit to win over any dissenters or greatly deter any fanatics, it is very largely successful in what it tries to do and its failings are certainly not for a lack of trying.
The first hour or so of the film is a whirlwind of plot necessities that, despite the running time of 165 minutes, probably needed another half an hour or so to unfold with sensicality. They involve introductions to John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - a rookie cop raised in a city orphanage who apparently "still believes in the Batman", even though as far as the audience is concerned he may as well have just moved to Gotham last week – Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) – a cat-burglar who is therefore Catwoman – and Miranda Tate (Marion Cottilard) – a high society Gothamite monetarily invested in a renewable energy program at Wayne Enterprises that has apparently gone bust, even though it seems to work just fine. Excusing a twist in the tale that seems to be there for its own sake, however, Nolan and his co-screenwriter (also known as his brother Jonathan) do not really abide loose ends, and by the commencement of the film's some hour-long climax all the story elements that feel disparate and murky in the beginning have intertwined and solidified into the kind of philosophically powerhouse narrative that made the first two films so effective.
What makes the Nolan films effective is how they appropriated the inalienable tenets of the Batman legend in pursuit of an apocalyptic allegory about the post-9/11 western world. "Batman Begins" was a film about fear; the double edged nature of fear's power over a people and how the conquering of fear is invaluable for the pilgrimage of moral valor. "The Dark Knight" was a film about Terror, the kind George Bush Jr. declared war against in the early twenty-first century, and about how the greatest tool against Terror is the adherence to moral principles, even if sacrifice and compromise must be allowed for.
"The Dark Knight Rises" provides a more accurate depiction of terroristic motives in its central villain of Bane than the "The Dark Knight" did with The Joker, because he holds Gotham in contempt for its status as a symbol of American first-world 'imperialism'. There has been some critical backlash against Bane as a Villain Without A Face, but this severely undermines Tom Hardy's performance, which actually achieves remarkable presence through nothing but body-language, vocal theatricality and disturbingly expressive eyes. Even without a face, Hardy effortlessly paints a convincing portrait of one who wants to dismantle the lie of Harvey Dent's legacy and incite Gotham into class-warfare riots. He purports to "liberate" Gotham's people, but his ultimate goal is to feed Gotham false hope before destroying the whole darn thing and everyone in it. Bane's genuine ideological conflict with western civilization is centered around the power of hope in the eventuation of despair. More than it is a film about fear or Terror, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a film about hope.
In accord with the rest of the trilogy, Bruce Wayne is not the only protagonist whose arc is built around the movie's central thematic concepts. Even the arc supplied for Selina Kyle ends up justifying her seemingly arbitrary insertion into this filmic imagining by providing a suitably dubious object of moral faith for the fallen Dark Knight. She begins with similar outlook to Bane, but the Nolans don't buy into Ra's Al Ghul's assertion that criminals aren't complicated. Everyone, and everything, is complicated.
Oddly enough, it's this principle that is behind most of the shortcomings of the film. It's a little *too* complicated, with the rushed series of first-act events seriously paling in comparison to the emotional impact of the conclusion, and an aforementioned twist that doesn't make much sense. There are also a lot more impossible feats performed by Bruce Wayne here than before, including a near-superhuman healing ability. And where "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" stood alone very effectively, one can't help but feel that both films are practically required viewing for this one.
But none of that really outweighs the sheer, touching veracity of this finale and its philosophical/moral ambitions, which are all up to par with the predecessors and pay off a great deal of things with a genuine craftsmanship. This "Batman" series has always been about the power of symbols in a corrupted world and personal accountability in a society of structural shackles, and when Batman returns to Gotham at the top of the final act to brand his symbol in flames upon the city's largest bridge structure, we are reminded of the paradoxical purity of his message. Even as part of a system that is broken, even funded by a wealth that would perhaps do more good dispersed amongst the third world, even if no one ever knows his name, the Batman fights for the goodness of fallen people (be they cops, cat-burglars or orphans) who may otherwise have never had the chance to rise.