Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.”

Ha ha ha, here it is.

Within the strange world of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, dreams are given concrete, literal meaning, and ideas are seen literally as something as potentially dangerous as a virus. There’s no indication of just how far into the future this story takes place, but it’s obvious that it’s been a while – it’s a science fiction world rife with the possibilities of the exploration of the subconscious, something that seems pretty common knowledge and yet – ostensibly,  still in their burgeoning state – such things seem to have been relegated mainly to the tools of corporate espionage, as much as we’re aware of them, in any case. Our main characters, Cobb and Arthur, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt respectively, are old hats at this game, and the former’s been at it long enough to garner a reputation as “the best in the game” – like you do; but this is a Christopher Nolan film, however. And, all it takes is a little push.

Is it strange that, in a film all about dreams – whether manufactured or real – and figments of the subconscious that the moments that take place in what is ostensibly the real-life are the most surreal and dreamlike? I have to think this is something intentional on Nolan’s part, because – while his multi-leveled dream sequences are filled with visual and narrative expansion and experimentation, they operate with what comes off initially as a very cold, antiseptic logic. It’s only later on, as Cobb’s own mental monsters start bursting these self-created universes at the seams that the pretexts of the sensical are dropped gradually, little by little. But, almost from the beginning – from the moment that they’re first woke up until all of the team has been corralled together – there’s an almost imperceptible sort of haziness to everything; strange turn of phrases that catch the audience and the characters off-guard for a moment, leaving a tonal impression on the scenes to come. Things and events seem to drop into place with the sort of coincidence that is really only found in the dreamscapes and subspaces and, more than anywhere else in the film, Nolan’s graceful-yet-quietly-sudden staccato sense of visual editing from location to location reminds one of nothing so much as the sudden, dizzying hops from context to context  that one experiences during sleep.

On the other side of the coin, while I still find complaints that Nolan’s dreams “just aren’t surreal enough” a little nonsensical, because seriously what kind of dreams are you people having, it’s very true that they operate mechanically – which is a given, in a sense, because inside the narrative it’s acknowledged that these are things being built up by a team of designers and architects to fool the Mark of their whole heist scheme, Cillian Murphy’s  character. They’re meant to be cheats, in a sense – reasonable enough facsimiles of the real world, governed by the harsh, self-contained set of rules that Cobb and his partner have set up to keep the whole thing from falling into disaster and disarray.  And, like all of Nolan’s films, the real drama within results from the inner, personal fragmentation of the main characters bumping up and breaking through their own strict self-governance, resulting in external chaos, and fire and brimstone all around. Here, such a thing is personalized in the form of the constant recurring figmentation of Cobb’s dead wife, first glimpsed only in the depths of his subconscious, locked away as a part of some intentionally half-forgotten memory – and then, constantly intruding into the coldly and almost mathematically designed  shared dreamscapes of the film’s multi-leveled heist scheme, a chaotic variable portrayed by Marion Cotillard whose attacks act as a double-edged knife toward anyone who would intrude on what “she’s” laid claim on. Although, considering that she is only a half-hollow mental representation of the memory of a loved one created by Cobb as the emblem of his subconscious, this complicates matters considerably. Enough for a future post and to spare, I think.

But, this is also Nolan’s most strongly, explicitly formal film – indeed, the whole second half is a breathtaking exercise in building convolution upon convolution while still managing to keep it within the level of clarity expected from a well-orchestrated thriller. But, he takes advantage of this in other ways, as well – several surprisingly visceral set-pieces that utilize the multi-tiered composition of the narrative, all happening at once, and all doubling in emotional and physical intensity, the farther down the levels we go. While Dileep Rao swerves through the rainy streets just one level within Murphy’s head, another level down JGL is engaging in a harsh, ugly hotel hallway brawl, suddenly complicated by the momentary absence of gravity one level up, here multiplied several times over. And, yet another level down, Cobb and co., do their best to push forward past the guarded personification of Murphy’s inner-most mental sanctum – the only one of which that feels just the slightest bit bland, if only because of the monotony of color and the weird, sudden barrage of action movie cliche’, if only for a minute or two.  Whatever minor complaints people might have had about Nolan’s brand of action filmmaking have, I’m sure, all been resolved here – in particular, what little bits and pieces we see of Rao’s chase sequence through the rainy streets of the subconscious, which is loud, stark and even sweaty (not to mention visually clear, for those of you out there and you know who you are) The culmination of all of these things one upon another results in a startlingly lyrical quality as everything slows down, and the van breaks through the bridge barrier, and JGL slowly, weightlessly moves his crew toward the elevator, all of them suspended in mid-air with a crank-handle. That last sequence is one that left me scratching my head, actually – I couldn’t figure it out; it seemed a little too seamless to be a work of CGI, and too fluid to be utilizing any kind of wire-work. I’ll admit, it stumped me. A little ways up I used the word ‘orchestrated’ in a sense to liken this to a well-made thriller – but, there really is no other word for this type of thing. It’s dazzling orchestrating, made all the more astounding in hindsight because you only realize just how daunting it is when looking back at the work as a whole – the narrative swerves and doubles back on itself, in and out, here and there. A dream within a dream within a dream, and still deeper.

Yet, with all of this excessive, almost obsessive sense of composition, I still don’t agree with those who say either the film or the characters comes off as emotionless – indeed, I think the whole thing is motivated by emotion, and it’s also where all of the drama arises from; Cobb’s raw, unchained subconscious emotion batting up against the mathematical expectancy of his mental heist-plot, the dynamics of the relationship between Murphy’s character and his father which acts as both the catalyst and the climax of the plot. And, once the film reaches that arid land of limbo, then it’s boiled down to basically all emotion, without any of the logic that had preceded it. You do find yourself feeling for and connecting with Cobb’s character, the more his story is revealed, and it’s importance becomes larger  to the scheme of things, overall. His overwhelming guilt at the memory of Mal’s death,  or the moment when he tries to reach out both to either Mal or to the older, Limbo-wearied Saito – both of them being, given your individual interpretation of the ending, which I’ll get to below, personifications of certain elements of his own subconscious – two scenes among others that are as strong as anything Nolan has done, yet.  There is a real, beating heart here, working in tandem with the brain of an algebra wizard. The characters themselves don’t really bare out what little insults of monotony have been leveled at them, either – it’s evident that all of them are possessed of internally complex, fleshed out emotional lives – something that’s either completely out in the open or, in the case of JGL’s character, hidden behind the eyes most of the time. But, every so often, as in the scene where he steals a kiss from Ellen Page’s character, there’s a real sense of fun that breaks out from behind them.

Myself, I do have one major problem with the film – and, to be fair, it is a big one, having to do with the ending. That final shot, the one that’s left audiences nationwide gasping – it feels inauthentic, unneeded for anything that the narrative requires. It’s not really an emotional or intellectual conclusion to anything – it just seems like Nolan didn’t want to leave the Cobb character with any kind of  conclusive, even ‘happy’ ending. Sure, some might say that it’s meant to imply that Cobb has resolved to let go off the inner riddle that’s been plaguing him ever since Mal’s death – the question of reality, and how does one cope with the constant perception of multiple ‘realities,’ or differentiate between one or the other – and accept what he’s been given. But, I don’t know – even that seems a little disingenuous, and if that was what was intended, then it’s not an implication that was put forward strongly enough to leave any real impression – on me, at least. Retroactively, it casts a pall over the rest of the film for me, as any bad or at least unsatisfying  ending for a film that had – up until that point – worked wonderfully. But, here it makes one go even farther and question the internal, logical conceits at the heart of the picture. And, the disconnect between the two becomes even clearer. One could cut out that final shot and not a thing would really be different about the film on a superficial level, though – so, whatever that’s worth, I suppose. Also, at certain points this almost seemed like a film paid for, sponsored by and with the total cooperation of Armani and Rolex. These people are so, so unbelievably well-dressed – all the time. Everywhere. It’s eye-catching, but –  a Hawaiian shirt would’ve been nice, here or there.

Nolan’s winning streak of combining auteurism with a true sense of genre subversion and visceral action-movie prowess hasn’t been seen since at least the eighties. Let’s hope it continues for a good, long while.

Summer Fun To Come – July 19th, 2010

Ahoy, there.

Apologies for the longer-than-usual absence, e-readers – lots of summer fun and profit going on over here, as well as a few other things that I’ll be announcing shortly. But, don’t fret – coming up in the next couple of days, reviews of – the Wachowski Bros., much maligned Speed Racer adaptation, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s ambitious 1991 softcore film The Lover alongside a short discussion on the possibilities of pornography (or, erotica – if you want to be even more particular, and exclude those weird, coldly analytical fuckers like Breillat and so on) as a relevant film genre, Christopher Nolan’s new critical golden-goose Inception, which Armond White says “lacks the kineticism and energy of Michael Bay’s Transfomers 2,” and a few short looks at a couple of the other films I’ve happened across in the last couple of weeks, including  the animation blindsider How To Train Your Dragon, Nicholas Refn’s Bronson (which really only has one point of attraction), and – oh god.

Oh my god.

This movie.

You know that movie that you hear about, being called a ‘cult favorite’ by the radio personalities you listen to – in this case, Tom Scharpling who I’m beginning to think has particularly shitty taste in movies in general – but you never actually hear it being talked about, talked about? And, you wonder why? And, then – like, you watch it? And, then you wish you hadn’t?

That movie.

And, a lot of the rest of  my struggle in the last few weeks has been directed toward getting a particular essay of mine published in print, whether or whereabouts. So, we’ll see what comes of that, as well.

So, see you in two or three, readers.

Henry J.

(The Filmist)

“Best of the 2000’s” – #10: Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”

– “The Best of the Decade Project” is an ongoing discussion between Match Cuts and The Filmist concerning the finest films of the last ten years.

Given that I’ve already written up on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, I’ll post this as a basic extension of my original review, posted  on the 30th of August –

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is a film I should have written about a long time ago. Doing so just now makes me feel like a Johnny-Come-Lately, by more than a year. Still, it does give one a lot of time to look at it apart from the pop-culture saturation that it caused – it’s too early to try and reflect on that with any sort of nostalgia, I think. Although right now, entirely by coincidence, I’m wearing a shirt with Ledger’s face on it. Only because it was the only clean shirt in the closet, at the moment.

I can’t imagine that the summer of 2008 won’t be recognized as the second wave of the Batmania! epidemic, and one with a far larger spread than it’s first appearance in 1989 – apart from the film itself, it’s a summer I’m sure is going to be talked about for a long while, well-remembered if only for the oft-repeated name and paint-smeared face of Heath Ledger, his Joker-face something that already can only be called iconic. And, the impact of this film is still being felt – the word is, the world over, that this film marks the game-changer for the superhero genre, raising it upward into more able heights in the same way that Ford and Leone did for the Western, itself an ostensibly pulp genre until the former came along – and it does so, oddly enough, by realizing what it is that comics themselves have known for a long while, now – that the superhero genre is a hodge-podge of every other genre imaginable, not definable so much by itself, but by the individual genres that it’s characters fit themselves into, with Batman in this instance becoming part of a city-wide crime epic not too dissimilar to Michael Mann’s Heat, a cited influence, but also to several similar stories found in the character’s original medium – among them, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween, Ed Brubaker and Doug Moench’s The Man Who Laughs, and Ed Brubaker’s Soft Targets in the Gotham Central monthly.

The film opens relatively quietly, unindicative of what’s to come, pushing through the sky-scrapers of Nolan’s Chicago-cum-Gotham which bares a lot of resemblance to the kind of city that Frank Miller set up in Batman: Year One, until the windowpanes of one building in particular dominate the frame – and, there’s a small burst as the one in the middle shatters. As the scene progresses, it’s very much like something out of Michael Mann’s films (who’s influence has been well noted) – and, then there’s a man standing on the corner, with his face held downward. And, it’s like a wrong note has been struck intentionally during a song. We don’t know just what it is about him, exactly – but this guy shouldn’t be here. In a sense, this scene kind of epitomizes the effect the Joker will have on the rest of the film, and it’s characters – he’s a cog thrown into a reasonably well-oiled machine that’s just had its ribbon cut. He’s ostensibly the one who “show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.” And always, his appearance is pre-announced by Hans Zimmer’s introductory piece, that gives one the feeling of descent, into a maelstrom of some kind. One note, continuously stretched and bent. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, whom we can rightfully credit for the enhancement in dialogue this time around, says his approach to the character was meant to give the impression that he’d “just materialized…right there on that corner,” just before the film cuts to him. He has no defined character arc – although, he does seem to become more confident as the film goes along. He arrives fully-formed as a force of nature to take on a Batman who’s become an emblem to the city.

Nolan’s sense of composition has never been stronger than it is, here – but, there are two scenes in particular that I’d like to pick out and talk about. The first is the SWAT van pursuit scene in the middle of the film, which also showcases how Nolan’s cutting has evolved, since Batman Begins and its frenetic blitzing. Here, Nolan’s rhythm is measured, and steady. While it’s precluded by the slow cutting out of music and it’s replacement by the Joker’s theme, the sequence begins proper with an ear-to-ear IMAX shot looking down, following the line of escort vehicles as they make their way along the barred-off street, as something breaks the line of frame, at the top of the screen –

We’re then on ground level, and we’re properly allowed to measure just what it is, in a continuing shot following a line of police cars past it. It’s a fire-truck – on fire. It’s an alarming site, and a fair symbol of the Joker’s effect on the city. But, given time, the irony and humor of it sets in. It’s a fire-truck – on fire, y’see.

The second that I’d like to look at is the scene after the Joker has been captured and brought into M.C.U. for questioning. Now-Commissioner Gordon’s received word that “Harvey Dent never made it home,” and he enters the room, which is lit on his side by dim and broken lighting, giving everything a very sickly tint.

He sits down, and we see The Joker, his face leering out of the surrounding darkness. His hairline is invisible, as is everything below the neck. Comic fans will recognize this as astonishingly similar to a technique used in Sam Keith’s Batman: Secrets.

Immediately afterward, Gordon leaves, and the lights burst on.

This time around, Nolan indulges himself while never becoming self-indulgent. He actually takes time to craft interesting shots, like the two previous ones mentioned. There’s a real palpable sense of freedom, here. But, one of the main differences between this film and it’s predecessor, I think, is that Batman Begins had a talented director, cast and crew working around a generally interesting screenplay that wasn’t all that well fleshed out. It had it’s director’s mark of non-linear structure, and general tone, that was interrupted every so often when the characters spoke. And spoke. And just kept speaking. Where Batman Begins was very, very overly expository thanks to David Goyer, whose finger-prints still remain on this film in small measures here and there in the oddly inserted one-liners that absolutely permeate a few scenes, The Dark Knight knows how to shut up for a minute or two, and when it does pipe up, it isn’t repeating something we’ve heard several times before in the film ad nauseum. And, there are several times in the film where you can almost feel Nolan’s kind of impish grin when it seems like he’s consciously subverting a certain trope of the genre – as in Rachel’s death for example.

There’s an interesting contrast that could be made here with Snyder’s Watchmen – where that film was ostensibly hungrily faithful to it’s source material visually while missing just what it was that made the graphic novel what it was, this is a film that has quite a few artistic flourishes and licenses – the Joker’s painted skin in lieu of a chemical bleaching, Batman’s armor, the stuff that every nerd you knew was waving his arms about – while at the same time managing to get closer to the atmosphere and essence that the comics have been so emblematic of since 1984 and arguably much earlier. In this, it also makes a rather much-needed leap – with most films based on comic characters, there’s usually a general aura about them that says ‘this is a comic-book movie.’ It’s a little hard to put into words, but with maybe two prior exceptions and those being Bryan Singer’s X-Men films, there’s a very by-the-numbers format to them. The Dark Knight avoids this, and while it’s still of it’s genre, it also transcends it – it could easily be called a crime epic in the same vane as Michael Mann’s Heat with Batman and the Joker in place of DeNiro and Pacino, among other things.

Both of Nolan’s Batman films to some extent take noted inspiration from The Long Halloween, but here – with the presence of Harvey Dent – the basis is more obvious, although his character arc seems to owe more to Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke than TLH, with his eventual destruction the result of The Joker’s purposeful block-by-block breakdown of him over the course of the film, as an “ace in the hole” in the battle for Gotham’s soul, to try and bring him down to the collective level of madness of himself and Batman – that all it takes is a little push. Incidentally, the scene where The Joker informs us of all this, hanging from his ankles, is filmed from a rather interesting and revealing point of view —

There’s a moment in The Dark Knight about  forty minutes in where Bruce Wayne comes back to his pseudo-batcave, underneath an old shipping yard, and strips off his suit, revealing a back worn through with holes and scars, like an old shirt. Alfred, played by Michael Caine, looks on in worry, and distaste, telling Wayne to “know his limits;” there’s a moment of silence, but only a moment, until Wayne responds, “Batman has no limits.” And, in a way, this scene really defines the character for the rest of the film – only just now realizing what toll this great task he’s undertaken will have on him, mentally and physically, and trying to push through it, with his teeth bared, becoming gradually more and more obsessed. And, we feel it, with him – not only the old scars, but the fresh and bleeding wounds that the character takes in great measure throughout the film, and the driving frustration when it seems that the Joker won’t respond to the threat – or execution of – physical violence. There’s a weariness to the main character now, which is obvious particularly in the first scene we see him in, having tracked down Scarecrow, the secondary antagonist from the last film, now relegated to pushing his fear toxin as a rave drug. After subduing the gun-toting Sons of Batman (not actually called that in the film, but they resemble Miller’s creation enough that – well, why not?), he attaches himself to the Scarecrow’s van by way of a hydraulic device, and gets ran into a concrete post. He pulls himself up and makes his way to the rim of the parking lane, and his shoulders sag for a minute. He’s kind of a man at work in these scenes, as well as when he sews up his own arm after being mauled by a dog. This ties in a little to his hopefulness at the coming of Dent, I think. Dent represents not just hope for the city, but for Bruce as well, because at this point, there’s still some small possibility of a normal life for him –  which slowly dissipates as the film goes on, first with the death of Rachel and then with Dent’s eventual progression into Two-Face, and his branding as an outlaw near the end of the film. It’s going to be interesting to see where Nolan takes the character, if he returns. Especially if they find some way to confront the more mainline obsessive character that he becomes while avoiding the pit-falls that most of the writers who’ve written him that way have fallen into.

Alexander Coleman over at Coleman’s Corners makes a comparison between this film’s ending, and that of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which ends similarly with Stoddard spilling his story to the newspaper editor, who refuses to print it and instead opts to burn his journal. He says:

“The film’s concluding passage recalls The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. At a crucial moment, Batman and his friend Gordon choose to “print the legend.” As Batman decides to protect Gotham from a devastatingly ugly truth, Alfred makes the decision to burn a letter from Rachel whose message was precisely not what Bruce believed to be her personal belief between he and Dent at the time of her death. Bruce even decides then and there after Rachel’s death, saying, “She was going to wait for me, Alfred. Dent can never know…” Alfred craftily takes away the letter from Rachel indicating otherwise. Alfred decides just as Batman decides Batman can be whatever Gotham needs him to be, Rachel and her memory can be whatever Bruce needs her to be, allowing him to remain deluded. More sin-cleansing than ever before, taking up the sins of Gotham itself and of one man in particular, Batman becomes a more darkly messianic figure that, coupled with his self-discipline, place him under the broadest possible umbrella of the “superhero” genre. At the end, The Dark Knight not only recalls The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance but also Shane, with Gordon taking the place of Van Heflin’s virtuous farmer and Batman in the role of Alan Ladd’s shadowy, socially outcast gunfighter, with Gordon’s son calling out, “Batman! Batman!” as the Dark Knight, wounded, disappears into the night.”

And, indeed. It’s hard to argue that the film places Batman in an almost mythic “hero” context, by film’s end – the last shot following him through a parking garage, up and through traffic, toward the light.

— Glenn Heath’s #10, 2002’s Bloody Sunday by Paul Greengrass, can of course be found here.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is a film I should have written about a long time ago. Doing so just now makes me feel like a Johnny-Come-Lately, by more than a year. Still, it does give one a lot of time to look at it apart from the pop-culture saturation that it caused – it’s too early to try and reflect on that with any sort of nostalgia, I think. Although right now, entirely by coincidence, I’m wearing a shirt with Ledger’s face on it. Only because it was the only clean shirt in the closet, at the moment.

The film opens relatively quietly, unindicative of what’s to come, pushing through the sky-scrapers of Nolan’s Chicago-cum-Gotham which bares a lot of resemblance to the kind of city that Frank Miller set up in Batman: Year One, until the windowpanes of one building in particular dominate the frame – and, there’s a small burst as the one in the middle shatters. As the scene progresses, it’s very much like something out of Michael Mann’s films (who’s influence has been well noted) – and, then there’s a man standing on the corner, with his face held downward. And, it’s like a wrong note has been struck intentionally during a song. We don’t know just what it is about him, exactly – but this guy shouldn’t be here. In a sense, this scene kind of epitomizes the effect the Joker will have on the rest of the film, and it’s characters – he’s a cog thrown into a reasonably well-oiled machine that’s just had its ribbon cut. He’s ostensibly the one who “show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.” And always, his appearance is pre-announced by Hans Zimmer’s introductory piece, that gives one the feeling of descent, into a maelstrom of some kind. One note, continuously stretched and bent. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, whom we can rightfully credit for the enhancement in dialogue this time around, says his approach to the character was meant to give the impression that he’d “just materialized…right there on that corner,” just before the film cuts to him. He has no defined character arc – although, he does seem to become more confident as the film goes along. He arrives fully-formed as a force of nature to take on a Batman who’s become an emblem to the city.

Nolan’s sense of composition has never been stronger than it is, here – but, there are two scenes in particular that I’d like to pick out and talk about. The first is the SWAT van pursuit scene in the middle of the film, which also showcases how Nolan’s cutting has evolved, since Batman Begins and its frenetic blitzing. Here, Nolan’s rhythm is measured, and steady. While it’s precluded by the slow cutting out of music and it’s replacement by the Joker’s theme, the sequence begins proper with an ear-to-ear IMAX shot looking down, following the line of escort vehicles as they make their way along the barred-off street, as something breaks the line of frame, at the top of the screen –

We’re then on ground level, and we’re properly allowed to measure just what it is, in a continuing shot following a line of police cars past it. It’s a fire-truck – on fire. It’s an alarming site, and a fair symbol of the Joker’s effect on the city. But, given time, the irony and humor of it sets in. It’s a fire-truck – on fire, y’see.

The second that I’d like to look at is the scene after the Joker has been captured and brought into M.C.U. for questioning. Now-Commissioner Gordon’s received word that “Harvey Dent never made it home,” and he enters the room, which is lit on his side by dim and broken lighting, giving everything a very sickly tint.

He sits down, and we see The Joker, his face leering out of the surrounding darkness. His hairline is invisible, as is everything below the neck. Comic fans will recognize this as astonishingly similar to a technique used in Sam Keith’s Batman: Secrets.

Immediately afterward, Gordon leaves, and the lights burst on.

This time around, Nolan indulges himself while never becoming self-indulgent. He actually takes time to craft interesting shots, like the two previous ones mentioned. There’s a real palpable sense of freedom, here. But, one of the main differences between this film and it’s predecessor, I think, is that Batman Begins had a talented director, cast and crew working around a generally interesting screenplay that wasn’t all that well fleshed out. It had it’s director’s mark of non-linear structure, and general tone, that was interrupted every so often when the characters spoke. And spoke. And just kept speaking. Where Batman Begins was very, very overly expository thanks to David Goyer, whose finger-prints still remain on this film in small measures here and there in the oddly inserted one-liners that absolutely permeate a few scenes, The Dark Knight knows how to shut up for a minute or two, and when it does pipe up, it isn’t repeating something we’ve heard several times before in the film ad nauseum. And, there are several times in the film where you can almost feel Nolan’s kind of impish grin when it seems like he’s consciously subverting a certain trope of the genre – as in Rachel’s death for example.

There’s an interesting contrast that could be made here with Snyder’s Watchmen – where that film was ostensibly hungrily faithful to it’s source material visually while missing just what it was that made the graphic novel what it was, this is a film that has quite a few artistic flourishes and licenses – the Joker’s painted skin in lieu of a chemical bleaching, Batman’s armor, the stuff that every nerd you knew was waving his arms about – while at the same time managing to get closer to the atmosphere and essence that the comics have been so emblematic of since 1984 and arguably much earlier. In this, it also makes a rather much-needed leap – with most films based on comic characters, there’s usually a general aura about them that says ‘this is a comic-book movie.’ It’s a little hard to put into words, but with maybe two prior exceptions and those being Bryan Singer’s X-Men films, there’s a very by-the-numbers format to them. The Dark Knight avoids this, and while it’s still of it’s genre, it also transcends it – it could easily be called a crime epic in the same vane as Michael Mann’s Heat with Batman and the Joker in place of DeNiro and Pacino, among other things.

And, there’s a weariness to the main character, now. Particularly in the first scene we see him in, having tracked down Scarecrow, the secondary antagonist from the last film, now relegated to pushing his fear toxin as a rave drug. After subduing the gun-toting Sons of Batman (not actually called that in the film, but they resemble Miller’s creation enough that – well, why not?), he attaches himself to the Scarecrow’s van by way of a hydraulic device, and gets ran into a concrete post. He pulls himself up and makes his way to the rim of the parking lane, and his shoulders sag for a minute. He’s kind of a man at work in these scenes, as well as when he sews up his own arm after being mauled by a dog. This ties in a little to his hopefulness at the coming of Dent, I think. Dent represents not just hope for the city, but for Bruce as well, because at this point, there’s still some small possibility of a normal life for him –  which slowly dissipates as the film goes on, first with the death of Rachel and then with Dent’s eventual progression into Two-Face, and his branding as an outlaw near the end of the film. It’s going to be interesting to see where Nolan takes the character, if he returns. Especially if they find some way to confront the more mainline obsessive character that he becomes while avoiding the pit-falls that most of the writers who’ve written him that way have fallen into.

Alexander Coleman over at Coleman’s Corners makes a comparison between this film’s ending, and that of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which ends similarly with Stoddard spilling his story to the newspaper editor, who refuses to print it and instead opts to burn his journal. He says:

“The film’s concluding passage recalls The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. At a crucial moment, Batman and his friend Gordon choose to “print the legend.” As Batman decides to protect Gotham from a devastatingly ugly truth, Alfred makes the decision to burn a letter from Rachel whose message was precisely not what Bruce believed to be her personal belief between he and Dent at the time of her death. Bruce even decides then and there after Rachel’s death, saying, “She was going to wait for me, Alfred. Dent can never know…” Alfred craftily takes away the letter from Rachel indicating otherwise. Alfred decides just as Batman decides Batman can be whatever Gotham needs him to be, Rachel and her memory can be whatever Bruce needs her to be, allowing him to remain deluded. More sin-cleansing than ever before, taking up the sins of Gotham itself and of one man in particular, Batman becomes a more darkly messianic figure that, coupled with his self-discipline, place him under the broadest possible umbrella of the “superhero” genre. At the end, The Dark Knight not only recalls The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance but also Shane, with Gordon taking the place of Van Heflin’s virtuous farmer and Batman in the role of Alan Ladd’s shadowy, socially outcast gunfighter, with Gordon’s son calling out, “Batman! Batman!” as the Dark Knight, wounded, disappears into the night.”

And, indeed. It’s hard to argue that the film places Batman in an almost mythic “hero” context, by film’s end – the last shot following him through a parking garage, up and through traffic, toward the light.