A movie of its own landmark standing

Rating: 10/10 (25 July 2012)

That trademark impeccable pacing that glued us to the big screen in The Dark Knight and Inception? Absent through much of the film. The gritty, obvious tension that kept us on our toes from the opening shot to the closing titles? Almost gone. The notion of having exclusive access, as viewers, to the superhero's highly secret vigilante life? Not there. The safe feeling of reliance on someone's character and extraordinary abilities? Ripped from under our feet.
This movie is not about a superhero, it's about what we do when he's not taking care of it all anymore. We find it too easy to ground our best intentions, all the culminations of our better qualities, in the last screening of a blockbuster. Want to do something great? Wait, you already did last week in your local multiplex. Want to change for the better? Wait till this next release, it'll sure make you feel just like you did, if only for the couple of hours of screen time and a short while after it.
This film is different. It tells us something. There are no Hunger Games. No Sky Crawlers. No Royal Battle. No frontline thousands of miles away. We're the battlefield. The only seeming escape is an unconditional surrender, which only plunges us further into the inescapability of our predicament. The only true escape is fighting.
It looked like Nolan's arms were twisted quite a few times, but he succeeded in posing a profound and resonating challenge to whoever watches this. Who are we? Why does it always take a war to wake us up? Why does it take the death of a leader to make us feel involved in the reality and fully responsible for it?
Let's hope we at the very least start thinking about it more often.