No Twilight tonight, because I had a long day and those posts take forever to write. Snark is an artform, and art can't be rushed.
Went to the Batman movie last night. My girlfriend, incidentally, is what she refers to as a "recovering comichead." Beautiful, smart, and a complete nerd. How did I get this lucky? Anyways… I'd been interested to see this more than any movie in the past couple of years. Reviews have been mixed. Travers loves it, Ebert is enthusiastic but careful, the dude at Slate calls it a masterpiece, Denver Post says it sucks. Weird, since all four usually fall for anything with technical skill and something resembling intellectual ambition.
I see why people are lukewarm. The film takes its sweet time getting to the good stuff, and even that is oddly muted. Batman has two big hand-to-hand scenes in nearly three hours, and one of those consists of him getting his ass kicked. Not what you'd expect, from the ungodly-budgeted sequel to the ungodly-grossing critical darling of all comic-book movies. The fights are centered around vehicles, which by definition have no personality, and the film's big dramatic payoff comes with a dude doing the longjump, basically. All legitimate criticisms, and obstacles to enjoying what I honestly think is the best movie I've seen this year. So why the diference? Well, aside from a bunch of good critics walking in expecting The Avengers and blinking when Nolan hit them, a few things.
First, this is a film about age. For all his ability to shrug off knee injuries/concussions/vertebraestickingoutofhisfuckingspine, Bruce Wayne is older and physically broken. He's skilled enough to handle the various faceless henchmen, but against Bane (a stronger, more savage version of himself) he has nothing. This is important, because his emotional arc leads to the acceptance of that age, the knowledge that he no longer has the edge of insanity that gave him his abilities in the first place. The clock spins backwards for a few key moments (the second fight), but this is a Batman with grey on his wings. Yes, there are less fights, but there is less fight in his personality. In TDK, he took a savage joy in his work- watch him slam Joker's skull into a table and tell me didn't enjoy that- but not anymore.
Second, the villain. Tom Hardy is a spectacular actor, and gives us a Bane for the ages, but with that mask he doesn't have the raw charisma of Ledger in the second film. Nor should he. The Joker is frightening because he represents anarchy, but for that exact reason he is not a threat to Batman on a psycological level. Crazy people are just crazy, even when they temper that quality with intelligence and organization. Bane, though, isn't a lunatic. He knows precisely what he is doing, and works towards intelligently determined goals. That, I think, is the reason for the high-culture Brit rasp coming out from behind the mask. He is cultured, and civilized, and so very close to what Bruce could have been, in another time and place and life. The Joker is an agent of chaos, but Bane is the dark mirror held up for Batman to look into his own soul.
Last, and this is where we get meta, the role of comic book movies. Look, I applaud Marvel for their accomplishments in the last five years. The Avengers is beautifully done and great entertainment, as are all the films leading up to it in that universe. Thing is, that's all the Marvel films have, surface and gloss and punchlines. That's ok. They're tons of fun, and cinema is about entertainment. But Nolan is after something deeper and darker and more complicated. TDKR isn't a particuarly fun film, and I say that as someone who enjoyed it immensely. This movie is about one man commiting suicide, letting the second personality hidden under his skin drift into the night and die quietly. The joy we feel at the end, watching Alfred's eyes tear, is earned. In order for it to be so, we have to take a very dark journey indeed, and some of the reckless fun of other, easier comic movies is lost in the process. So yes, this is a hard film to enjoy. Its called The Dark Knight Rises, people. As yourself: rising from what?
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