The Dark Knight Rises - Dir. Christopher Nolan

The last time I reviewed a Batman movie on Flying Houses was shortly after its birth.  See http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/07/dark-knight-dir-christopher-nolan.html.  As noted in the previous post on the recent Batman Massacre, I saw that one on opening night.  And while it took me a while to see this one, it had not been spoiled for me.  Well, I will try not to spoil it, until the bottom...

The basic feeling about The Dark Knight Rises is that it is a very good film, but it is not as good as The Dark Knight since Heath Ledger is not in it.  Now, I will fully admit that Heath Ledger is probably the main reason that last film was so amazing, but Batman Begins was a better Batman movie than most, and while this film is somewhat similar to Batman Begins, it certainly surpasses it.  In my book, this is the third best Batman movie made after The Dark Knight and Batman (1988).

First, it is worth noting that this is Christian Bale's best performance as Batman.  True, he has had many better performances (American Psycho, Harsh Times, Rescue Dawn, The Machinist, The Fighter...) and may be considered one of the best actors in his prime--but that Batman voice!  Nobody will ever stop making fun of it.  I do believe it is toned down to an extent in this film.

As Bruce Wayne, however, he is excellent, and has truly grown into the role.  He is a reclusive, cantankerous, graying, hobbled, broken-down man at the beginning of the film, and is quite funny.  He also delivers his only funny line as Batman in this movie (a scene with Catwoman, who disappears promptly, and his reaction, "Now I know how that feels.").

Anne Hathaway I had great misgivings about, but she is not all that bad in this film.  However, she cannot reach the catharsis and insanity that Michelle Pfeiffer brought to the role in Batman Returns.  Perhaps this is because she is denied an origin story (as was Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight).  Nobody knows why Catwoman does what she does, but she is portrayed as a "cat thief" living in "Old Town" (a vague reference to Chicago, though this film appears shot primarily in New York City and Pittsburgh, from what I understand).  She is portrayed as something of a "Robin Hood" but no information is given about her upbringing or what led her to her life of crime.  She is NOT a sympathetic character, which is why I did not mind hating Anne Hathaway (except for the end, ugh.).

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is serviceable as a cop that may or may not be Robin in disguise.  He has done better work in the past, but he plays the blockbuster action star as well as most are able.  While he is not annoying, per se, there is one questionable scene--HERE IS WHERE THE SPOILERS BEGIN!!!!!!

Why does he say to Commissioner Gordon, "Your hands seem pretty filthy to me!"  for not telling the truth about Harvey Dent's death?  And then two seconds later go on to being BFF with Commissioner Gordon?  (By the way, Gary Oldman gives his best performance, by far, in this trilogy).

Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are excellent as always--but I felt that Michael Caine in particular also gave his best performance in the trilogy, and I would go so far as to say he deserves an Oscar nomination for this film.  Nobody brought me closer to tears than him.  I always love Michael Caine (See Hannah and Her Sisters, etc.) but when he turns on that emotional side, it is hard not to lose it.

Of course, there is Bane.  Now, Bane is not as good as the Joker, in terms of being a horrifying villain--but he comes pretty darn close.  He has a great voice.  He sounds like Darth Vader.  The opening scene with the airplane is one of the most awesome scenes I have ever seen in any film, period!  And I love how he is huge, and mysterious--but smart!  He is one of the few villains to outsmart Batman.  (The Penguin outsmarts Batman in Batman Returns when he blows up the Batmobile).  Tom Hardy will probably be passed over for an Oscar nomination, but I do believe one is not totally out of the question for him.

By the way, I think Whitney Houston will win for Best Supporting Actress.  Just a guess.

And as The Dark Knight was denied a nomination for Best Film, I hope The Dark Knight Rises makes that cut.  These are both oddly similar films (that may be what seems to make it "boring" for some people), but they are both every bit as expertly crafted as the other.  You do not have Heath in this one, but you have everything else, and more.

The only problem I have is with the editing.  (Why I would give the film 3 1/2 instead of 4 stars).  Like, the cops are trapped in the sewers for 3 months?  What?  Or, there's 28 days until the bomb goes off, then 12 hours?  And a day hasn't seemed to pass in either instance?  These seem like easy fixes to make, so my assumption is that this was supposed to be a much longer film that got edited down to 160 minutes.  If you can overlook a couple of these relatively minor "editing mistakes," I think you will find it to be a very fine film.  And worth seeing on a big screen, if only for the first scene.

Special Comment: Batman in Aurora

While this was intended as Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #14, my co-editors at BLS Advocate did not feel that it was appropriate for the site. They did not know where I was headed with this, and they felt that some of it might be offensive due to the nature of the shootings. This is totally understandable as nobody wants to touch this topic unless they accept "one-dimensional thinking" as an appropriate analytic process. Also, I fully admit this article jumps from idea to idea with little apparent "connection," but believe that within the totality of the piece, a meaning arises. While it is upsetting that BLS Advocate is not interested in the piece (for I believe it is one of the best I have ever written), and my audience will therefore be smaller, I am glad I do not need to edit out all of the seemingly irrelevant details. For BLS Advocate purposes, whatever I write next will be NIED #14, and this will remain simply a "Special Comment":

Batman in Aurora
by Christopher J. Knorps
On July 20, 2008, I went to see The Dark Knight at the movie theater at CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood with my two friends Mike and Molly.

On July 21, 2012, I called my friend Emily. I told her that, while Mike and Molly’s wedding was surely going to be a beautiful occasion, I was a tad upset that I would have to miss seeing The Dark Knight Rises during its opening weekend, given that Mike, Molly and I had done it four years previous. Emily responded that I should be happy that I hadn’t gone to a midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado, as a massacre had taken place there the previous night.

This was the first news I heard of it, and the last for a few days. The wedding took place in Big Sur, CA, and the majority of its attendees did not have cell phone reception or internet access. When I got back to Chicago and put the final touches on my ACA Analysis, I saw that far more releases had been posted on the www.whitehouse.gov website in regards to this massacre than in regards to the passage of the ACA. Clearly this is no small matter.

For those of you that do not already know, I am filming a shot-by-shot remake of the 1989 Tim Burton version of Batman, which will be titled Batman in Brooklyn. While I do not care to get into the particulars of my inspiration here, I will note that Charles Hynes has tentatively agreed to play himself (in the analogous role of D.A. Harvey Dent) and we will be needing student volunteers to play extras in one or two of his scenes, so please stay tuned.

Only July 27, 2012, my friend Joe texted me. Joe has recently taken a job in Albany, NY and is leaving Astoria. His text read as follows:

“Jack, i know this is late, but i think this whole shooting Colorado thing just made what you are trying to create all that more incredibly prescient and important. I know i cant be around for your production. Can i shoot some b-roll or secondary stock footage for your movie....”

He went onto describe the cobblestone paths of Albany, but I have since deleted the texts. Regardless, many people doubt my ability to pull this off next year since it will be such an incredibly busy one, but this has become a personal mission. As soon as Hynes became involved, I could not let the project peter out. Now that a mass-murderer (whose name I will not even deign to learn) has taken the “corporate opportunity” provided by a multi-billion dollar franchise to immortalize himself with a heinous act, Batman has undoubtedly become the most notorious comic book superhero of all time. And another Batman remake must be filmed.

Batman’s moral compass is not at issue here, though it is a subject of frequent debate amongst his fans. Superman is essentially a government tool (and probably a Republican if one takes Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns as his “true story”) and Spiderman is a nerdy kid whose morality is rarely, if ever questioned. It is unlikely that this killer was a fan of Batman, but more likely a fan of the Joker (I have seen his hair). 

In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger cemented his status in the pantheon of American cinema with an iconic performance of that role and led many to write-off Jack Nicholson’s virtuoso accomplishment (which also made him the highest paid actor of his time) as nothing more than a footnote. But Ledger’s performance was seriously dark, the type of thing to spur imitation (in contrast to Nicholson’s--which was much funnier, and more inimitable). He also made it seem “cool” to be criminally insane. He supposedly took inspiration from Sid Vicious in the similar way that Johnny Depp took inspiration from Keith Richards for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean films. Sid Vicious died young of a heroin overdose; Keith Richards lives on; Heath Ledger died young of an “accidental” overdose; Johnny Depp has been a Hollywood heart-throb for the past thirty years (and worked with Tim Burton more than any other actor); Jack Nicholson lounges in Los Angeles, and goes to far less Lakers games.

Kurt Cobain once said, “Punk rock is freedom.” Sid Vicious is a more popular figure in punk culture than Johnny Rotten because Johnny Rotten lives on, lounging in Los Angeles, collecting on the commodity he helped to create by branding himself an “anarchist.” Kurt Cobain also died young of a heroin overdose.  

It’s no secret that “living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse” has been a mantra of the counterculture for the past sixty years, and while it is doubtful that this massacre will prevent similar future acts of self-destruction, it reinforces the “Columbine” issue, raised some thirteen years ago, raised on the campuses of Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech more recently, and now in the national spotlight again.  

Do video games make people more violent?  Do films make people more violent?  Can we blame a film for the deaths of 14 innocent people?  Should Warner Brothers pay for their funerals?  Does Christian Bale have a duty to visit the injured victims in a hospital?  

No. In Video Software Dealer’s Ass’n v. Schwarzenegger, the 9th Circuit held that California did not have a compelling interest in preventing psychological or neurological harm to minors allegedly caused by violent video games and that even if it had a compelling interest in preventing psychological or neurological harm allegedly caused to minors by violent video games, the law was not narrowly tailored to further that interest.  John Hinckley tried to shoot President Reagan to impress Jodie Foster, but no one goes around trying to be like Patrick Bateman (because he is a “dork”). Warner Brothers doesn’t have to pay for the funerals, but the movie theater showing the film offered to do so. And Christian Bale is not required to visit the victims, but he did because he knew it would mean a lot to them, and it probably did. It was the right thing to do.

This murderer was clearly imitating the Joker (the Ledger version) but his regime is over. The murderer will not escape from prison, or a home for the criminally-insane in Colorado (one of which incidentally housed my younger brother’s assailant after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, after being previously tried for attempted murder, and allowed to work in the school cafeteria). The Dark Knight Rises will still be an enormously successful film. Batman will remain as popular a figure as ever, and Batman in Brooklyn will be shot this Fall and Spring.

I will be playing the Joker in Batman in Brooklyn. And to me, there is a fine line between Batman and the Joker. Batman does not hate the Joker, and does not want to kill him, but feels that he must for the good of Gotham City. The Joker kills hundreds of innocent people.  Batman’s fans hate it when Batman kills, but he only kills when he has good reason to do so. Perhaps an analogy can be made to cops who shoot when presented with a threat to bodily injury, but Batman is never overzealous in his defensive measures. The fine line comes in where writers draw psychological parallels, namely, childhood trauma as a cause, and violence as an effect.  

The Joker, this murderer, the Columbine shooters, et. al. have been traumatized (as have many others who alternatively make positive contributions to society). The Joker has been disfigured by Batman. The Columbine shooters were bullied. And I don’t know about this murderer except I think he was getting his PHD in something and that he told his psychiatrist that he was planning some kind of “big event” (while graduate degrees may not be considered traumatizing, I think everyone at BLS knows earning one can drive you at least a little bit insane).

The interesting legal issue that arises to me is not gun control (which will be debated until the end of American history) but tort liability. Nobody had a duty to anyone in this case, except perhaps the psychiatrist. And while Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California held that a psychiatrist has a duty to report to the police if their patient expresses a desire to inflict harm upon a particular person, a potential civil action may arise in this case which may extend that policy to generalized groups of people. This is now certain to be a moral dilemma for psychiatrists: at what point does the patient cross the line that demands notification of the authorities?  

As the Joker states in The Killing Joke, an excellent story by Alan Moore, all it takes is one bad day to cross that line. Whatever it is that drives these people to violence may be one small remark (a stray gay joke, a slight regarding choice of clothing), or something more major (being forced to assist the Mob with an inside job after you’ve just learned of the deaths of your wife and unborn child), but it can be enough decimate hundreds of people’’s lives.  

Very few lessons, if any, can be learned from this tragedy. But I can think of one: we all need to be more sensitive to the needs of others. Hate breeds hate and if these people were happy, if they never had their “one bad day,” then they might have lived to help improve society, rather than harm individuals within it. It is entirely possible that The Dark Knight glorifies criminal violence and insanity, but the attraction towards that glorification is felt most strongly by the disaffected, the outcasts, the losers. This is not to say that any semblance of a glorification of violence should be purged from every film. The catharses that art can provide are every bit as valuable as the laughs derived from a stand-up comedy routine.

The solution is not to stop telling stories with morally ambiguous characters, but to ensure that people treat one another with love and respect. We are all on this bumpy ride together and we are all going to die anyways, and we shouldn’t be mocking people that have problems: we should be looking out for them and trying to improve the conditions for happiness across society as a whole. Once the most disaffected among us have the opportunity to attain happiness, senseless crimes will subside.  

            On August 5, 2012, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises in downtown Chicago at a 9:00 PM showing.  There was no security checkpoint, as I feared, nor any inappropriate jokes shouted near the opening.  There was only applause at the end.  A full review should be posted here in the next couple of days.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School.  He enjoys studying bankruptcy law.

The Dark Knight - Dir. Christopher Nolan

Due to my moroseness over the fact that I was not able to attend the 4th Annual Pitchfork Festival in Chicago for the 4th straight year this weekend, I am going to attempt to assuage the pain from not being able to blog about it to blogging about the only vaguely sociable thing I did this weekend, which was to see the Dark Knight, a movie that was filming in Chicago around this time last year, which was wrapped in mystery and with good cause. This is one of the few movies that doesn't give away that much in the trailers, at least up until now. Who knows if that will change as the marketing strategy changes after opening weekend, if such things as trailer editing for television spots does change after a film opens, the whole business of this industry mystifies me, but up until now the marketing strategy was not to give too much away, and I will attempt not to do that in this review. However, I have to say this marketing strategy is also in your face everywhere, at least here in L.A. Practically every single page of the Calendar section of the L.A. Times is plastered with an ad for the movie. I went to IMDB.com on Friday and it was plastered with a "Dark Knight" template. Also, the movie earned a 9.6 out of 10 rating, and was currently rated as the #3 film of all time.

Is that accurate? Is it a 4-star, 9.6 out of 10, Best Picture nominated, all-time classic film? I hate to overhype anything, but I have to say I found it immediately better than the original Batman directed by Tim Burton, and that is a film that I grew up with and have loved for ages. So yes, I think Nolan's re-imagining is more relevant for our times, and never seemed to drag in any segments the way Burton's original did and does. Unfortunately, there are no Prince songs, but they would have seemed uncommonly out of place in this film. It is a very dark, nearly solemn film, though not without its sense of comic relief. There is a very large cast, and every actor does exactly what they need to with their role, and in several cases, more. The screenplay is a rather extraordinarily balanced thing, with this thought in mind. The action sequences, a few notably filmed in IMAX, are as good as any that have come before. Ultimately the Dark Knight should get its share of nominations. It would be ridiculous at this point to say it would win Best Picture, but I do not think it would be wrong to say it should get nominated for it. It is an excellent achievment on every level.

It bears mentioning how one views the movie, because if it is possible to see it in IMAX, that is what I would do. We went to see it at the Universal Studios CityWalk, and were duped by a non-informational website into buying regular tickets, so not only do we pay $10 for parking, but we also just get to see it in a regular theater. In any case it was fun to see Universal Studios for the first time, though of course we weren't going to the theme park. CityWalk was interesting enough, with its outdoor-bar-atmosphere and notably, the machine that simulated skydiving, where people get inside with some weird suit on and fly up like fifty feet inside this tube powered by wind. It was pretty sweet--I may do it sometime, but also it seems kind of scary now that I think about it. We went inside to the movie and waited in a line maybe thirty feet long roughly forty minutes before the film was to start. They were nice enough to let us into the theater about a half hour before it started, but most of that time was spent voicing our disappointment that we weren't in an IMAX theater. However, this is mostly a personal anecdote and not really relevant for regular would-be viewers of the film, except to say, if you want to see it in IMAX, be careful about which ticket you buy if you do it online, because at least during opening weekend, most of the shows were sold out.

An opening night show at 9:10 was something of a spectacle, with many teenagers wearing newly minted Heath Ledger t-shirts, which at first I mistook for merely being a Sex Pistols t-shirt or something like that, but then I realized more than a few were wearing the same one. I found this rather offensive, that a t-shirt company is opportunistic enough to capitalize on the tragedy and to mass-market it to teenagers in a "punk rock" styling. I remarked that I wondered if the profits went to his family. Who knows, in any case, the culture of death that surrounded this film was singularly remarkable. The nearest comparison I could make would be when The Crow opened like fifteen years ago or whatever. Except Brandon Lee was not quite as popular a figure, and his manner of death was so bizarre as to simply confound. Also, The Crow kind of sucks and The Dark Knight is really awesome. It is without question the best Batman movie that has been made. However, one has to admit that the tragedy which befell its most consummate performance has cast an entirely different shadow over the film, and has given the film a weight unlike the vast majority of films are ever capable of bearing. The separation between fiction and reality is blurred and skewed just vaguely enough so that the film becomes a document of the psychology of our times.

The only annoying thing about the movie was the kid sitting next to me who was audibly moaning in pleasure after the first three or so of Ledger's scenes. He would say quietly, "Oh my God, that's so scary," or "That was the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life" or "Jesus Christ that was so amazing," and I wasn't quite sure if he was saying it for the benefit of his friend on the other side, or for our general five foot radius. In hindsight, I almost wish I had joined in with him, and been like, "Oh my God, I know, I'm like creaming in my pants now." Regardless, this was only a minor inconvenience (of a similar variety and less burdensome than the one when I went to see There Will be Blood, when an elderly man gave his own running commentary of the film for the whole 150 minutes), and there were many true moments of solemnity in the sold-out theater, a rather amazing thing. Though when the Warner Brothers logo came up at the beginning, some kid shouted, "Finally!" and some guy shouted, "Shut up!"

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film, beyond Ledger's performance, is the metaphor for our current national situation--that is, Gotham as a symbol of America. True, it does not seem anywhere near as corrupt, however this government has certainly given us our doubts as to whether the "good guys" are really on our side or not, an element that is echoed in the film by the seemingly untrustable nature of the police force. To be honest, that is one element I did not understand. However, when Morgan Freeman sets up the cell phone signal surveillance system, and Christian Bale sets it up so you can see around the immediate vicinity of every cell phone that is on in the city, and Morgan Freeman sees this, and becomes upset by this method of spying on people, a political message emerges. Of course the technology in this scene and the year-long current-event the FISA Bill are not all that unrelated. One might be going too far, however, to suggest that Aaron Eckhart's performance is representative of this current regime's notion of right-versus-wrong when it comes to pursuing and capturing evil-doers. Nevertheless, the manifold associations one draws, the emotions stirred up, and the plain mastery of the storytelling all establish The Dark Knight as the most outstanding feature of the year thus far. The only problem with blogging about it is that it seems kind of redundant. It's not exactly like I'm saying anything different from everyone else.