Has "The Dark Knight" signaled a change in the way superhero movies are perceived by the mainstream? Will it "legitimize" a so-called "disreputable genre" (if comic-book superhero movies can be said to comprise a genre)? Has it become to signify a desire for larger acceptance by comic fans, or a crossover hit that aficionados feel can only be fully understood by those well-versed in Batman mythology?
In his indispensable new essay, "Superheroes for sale," David Bordwell takes on the new (tidal) wave of comic-book and superhero movies, examines their historical reputation, their development, reasons for their popularity, critical attitudes and misconceptions, comic-book acting styles...
First -- well, first go read it. DB says he came away from both "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" "bored and depressed. I'm also asking questions":
Christopher Nolan showed himself a clever director in "Memento" and a promising one in "The Prestige." So how did he manage to make "The Dark Knight" such a portentously hollow movie? Apart from enjoying seeing Hong Kong in Imax, I was struck by the repetition of gimmicky situations-disguises, hostage-taking, ticking bombs, characters dangling over a skyscraper abyss, who's dead really once and for all? The fights and chases were as unintelligible as most such sequences are nowadays, and the usual roaming-camera formulas were applied without much variety. Shoot lots of singles, track slowly in on everybody who's speaking, spin a circle around characters now and then, and transition to a new scene with a quick airborne shot of a cityscape...
I share DB's reservations about "TDK"'s screenplay: "I cant resist feeling that some weighty lines were doing duty for extended dramatic development, trying to convince me that enormous issues were churning underneath all the heists, fights, and chases. Know your limits, Master Wayne. Or: Some men just want to watch the world burn. Or: In their last moments people show you who they really are...."
(And yet, not in this movie. The Joker hasn't seen any such thing and neither have we. We certainly don't see his last moment, if he has one. We just know he doesn't much care if he's left hanging.)
The relentless/monotonous style of "The Dark Knight" also left me unimpressed. The 360 camera move is repeated, but not to memorable effect. What bothered me most was Nolan's predictable strategy of quick-cutting to anonymous bystanders (or by-drivers) in mid-action-sequence, just so he can cut back to them when the "action" arrives where they are: Anonymous extra, back to action, effect of action on anonymous characters. Set-up, punch-line, reaction shot. Yet the movie fails to supply these extras notable characteristics or bits of business, except for the kids playing in the car. Nolan seems to be trying to imitate the funny little bystander bits from other action movies, but he can't pull 'em off. His timing is flat and he doesn't know how to make an impression before he moves on.
I began to think of director Nolan as Seth Rogen's character in "Knocked Up," overdoing his dice-rolling dance move because that's pretty much all he's got.
But stylistic questions aside, DB expresses his skepticism of reading too much political or philosophical significance into the ill-defined mechanisms of some "zeitgeist movies," as he calls them:
Nolan and his collaborators have strewn the film with references to post-9/11 policies about torture and surveillance. What, though, is the film saying about those policies? The blogosphere is already ablaze with discussions of whether the film supports or criticizes Bush's White House. And the Editorial Board of the good, gray Times has noticed:This is the principle I attempted to illustrate in "The 'World Trade Center' litmus test," contrasting various critical interpretations and evaluations of Oliver Stone's movie:
It does not take a lot of imagination to see the new Batman movie that is setting box office records, "The Dark Knight," as something of a commentary on the war on terror.
You said it! Takes no imagination at all. But what is the commentary? [...]
I remember walking out of "Patton" (1970) with a hippie friend who loved it. He claimed that it showed how vicious the military was, by portraying a hero as an egotistical nutcase. That wasn't the reading offered by a veteran I once talked to, who considered the film a tribute to a great warrior.
It was then I began to suspect that Hollywood movies are usually strategically ambiguous about politics. You can read them in a lot of different ways, and that ambivalence is more or less deliberate.
One of my friends (also a film critic) who was favorably impressed said she thought the portrayal of the heroic Marine at the end [Michael Shannon] was sad, because he was deluded into thinking the war in Iraq was about avenging 9/11. I don't know if that's what Stone intended. I didn't see it that way. But it's a legitimate interpretation of what's up there on the screen. And make no mistake, this is a political movie. It makes choices about what to show and what not to show (including worldwide reactions on television), and in 2006 those choices in a film about 9/11 can't help but be political as well as dramatic or cinematic.That movie was explicitly political... but in what way? The choices Stone made were deliberate, whatever his reasons, but to what end? As DB clarifies, movies do sometimes make intentional statements:
More often, I think, filmmakers pluck out bits of cultural flotsam opportunistically, stirring it all together to see if we like the taste. It's in the filmmakers' interests to push a lot of our buttons without worrying whether what comes out is a coherent intellectual position. "Patton" grabbed people and got them talking, and that was enough to create a cultural event. Ditto "The Dark Knight."As I noted about the Toronto Film Festival either last year or the year before, after a while it became difficult to find any movies that could not be interpreted as political metaphors or commentaries about 9/11 or the invasion of Iraq.
Years from now, will these movies still be interpreted the same way? As I am uncommonly fond of repeating, movies always reflect the times in which they're made. They have to, because they're made then. But, for example, Don Siegel's 1956 horror/science-fiction film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has been interpreted both as a nightmare about the dangers of soulless Communism and a warning about the Red Scare witch-hunt tactics of McCarthyism. Choose your nightmare metaphor.
It all depends on how you see the pod people.
I wonder if "The Dark Knight" is internally sophisticated enough to hold up beyond its current "phenom" context. Does it explore its arguments about order vs. chaos, heroes vs. villains, or does it just bounce these things off one another, alternating black and white until it looks like gray? You can't take the zeitgeist out of the movie, but what happens when times change and the movie becomes detached from the zeitgeist that spawned it? We can't know to a certainty, but we can make our own arguments...
A similar conflict occurred with On The Waterfront. Terry Malloy's conviction in giving testimony because on what he believed to be right, despite all pressures from his peers, was seen as Kazan defending his HUAC testimony. Just as Malloy's ability to stand up to an intimidating, destructive political figure when no one else had the guts was seen by others as a denouncement of McCarthy.
I think that Bordwell's points about Hollywood films generally playing it safe with politics is dead-on. It's a little more complicated when addressing whether this is a good or bad thing. A smaller film would feel less of a need to remain neutral, and such a stance may actually probably hurt such a film overall. In general, since Brecht we've liked plays and movies that take a stance and dare you to disagree. But in a massive Hollywood film that's meant for audiences across the political spectrum, it would be artistically not to mention financially irresponsible to shift towards one side of an issue, unless you're doing a JFK-like think piece.
I will, however, respectfully disagree on what you call the "relentless, monotonous style" of The Dark Knight. From my experience, the film's use of a consistent tone and level of intensity kept a consistent, upward sloping level of engagement. I can understand why some may have found it overwhelming, but for me, after the jarring opening, the film kept getting better and betterm, reaching its peak at the very end. The power of the ending is why I think so many fans were willing to overlook many of the flaws that indubitably popped up throughout the film. And there were certainly flaws that even non-critic fanboys would and have pointed out, (the use of Scarecrow, and the "over-underplayed" Batman voice, in Bordwell's words, etc.).
(spoilers)
I don't think the movie's points are political so much as they are personal. In the end, Batman is the hero because he's not the hero - because he's willing to compromise his own morality for the well-being of others (he kills Two-Face to save Gordon Jr.).
I don't think it's a fantastically deep movie, but if Nolan wants to add weight and high stakes to make it more engaging, why not? Can't a movie just be a lot of fun? "Star Wars" is one of the best movies ever made, but it doesn't have to be as complex as a Bergman movie, so why does Batman? It's still a comic book movie, just one with characters that have personalities and issues and make choices, and don't just exist to build up to the big climactic fight scene (like pretty much every other superhero movie out there).
You ask how we can take the phenom out of Batman, but let me ask you, how can you take Batman out of the phenom? It's this big for a reason - it connects with people. They might not all be film critics who are familiar with the works of Renoir, but even so, that's gotta count for something.
PS. I'll just add that the Joker only says that "people reveal who they are in their last moments" to manipulate the cop into doing what The Joker wants him to do. The cop might even understand this himself. It's like the scene in the hospital, Joker's speech about "schemers," despite him having made several epic plans himself throughout the movie. The Joker is sort of like an artist, using lies to garner the right emotional reaction out of his listener.
I'm very happy you posted about Bordwell's article, because I usually agree with him, but here, I really felt like countering some of the things he's saying about Nolan's direction. Yes, there were parts of The Dark Knight that were filmed in an easy or even cliche manner, but there were also scenes that were masterpieces. The opening bank heist was a perfect example about the "arc within a shot, told through space and camera movement"-way of directing Bordwell praised about Spielberg a few articles back. Only, it crosscut between two or three events happening at the same time. 5 minutes later, a completely ordinary scene was masterfully filmed.
Shot 1 - Alfred arrives at container
Shot 2 - shot from the outside, walks toward container and starts opening door
Shot 3 - shot from inside the container, Alfred closes the door, making the screen black
Shot 4 - in the black, light slowly comes from below, revealing a close-up sideshot of Alfred going down the elevator, slowly revealing the batmobile out of focus in the background
Shot 5 - long shot showing the batmobile and Alfred stepping out of the elevator walking towards camera, saying something. The camera is constantly slowly tracking to the right, casually revealing Bruce's shirt hanging over a chair
... and so on.
After that I got too pulled into the film to think about style anymore. Except the tunnel-chase, which I agree was too confusingly filmed (probably intentionally, but I don't think it worked).
Also, why are so many people trying to look for a commentary in the film? Why should it be a commentary? To me, it isn't at all. The film doesn't take the Batman idea to tell something about the real world. It does the opposite: it takes elements of the real world, to make the universe of Batman more interesting, more based in reality, and as a result, more riveting and dramatically exciting than a fantastical take like Tim Burton's. That's what Nolan tried to do with Batman even in the first film: make him more plausible and realistic, with certain dramatic/storytelling results. Which is - in my eyes - the perfect take on Batman, because that's exactly what differentiates him from other superheroes: he is no superhero, he's only a man with a lot of money.
We certainly can make our own arguments, but to what end? Does it serve any purpose, really, to try and guess how a film will be perceived in five, ten, twenty years time? I suppose if one is hoping that the general public will come around to one's point of view, it might give someone hope who despairs that the rest of us "just don't get it."
As for what message, if any, the movie is making, I've seen a case for Batman-as-Bush, but while I think the comparison is facile and simplistic at best, even if it's accurate it would still be damning since, as Drew McWeeny put it on Ain't It Cool News, the movie might as well have been called Batman Fails. If he is a Bush avatar, then the movie is an examination of how reactionary policies fail to get results - most damning of all is Batman's interrogation of the Joker, which has obvious parallels in the horror stories of CIA torturing suspects. The point it makes though, is that it doesn't work. The Joker doesn't tell Batman about Dent and Dawes because Batman beat it out of him.
But really, though, as I said, the comparisons overall are the most surface of comparisons that fail to take into account that one of them is fictional wish fulfillment who has sworn no oaths and the other is a President who has failed to uphold his.
I think people, in general, are overplaying The Dark Knight's relevance to current political situations. Yes, there is a scene involving torture (but, honestly, is that unusual in a crime drama, or a vigilante film?), and yes there is a scene involving illegal surveillance, but these are maybe ten minutes out of 150--and both feed the film thematically in other respects.
I suppose my problem may be with the term "political" as opposed to "culturally relevant". "Political", to me, says that the film is concerning itself with the petty crimes committed by our current government, or a specific situation in our present day that has little relevance beyond our specific context. I see very little in The Dark Knight that falls into that category. The film deals with terrorism--but it deals with terrorism as a concept, not the specific form of extremist terror that our political leaders are concerning themselves with now. It seems to me that the film says less about what anyone specific in our political arena is doing or saying than it does about a basic philosophy regarding humans, fear, chaos, and order.
I think what's making people see this as "muddled" is the need to fit the film's ideas into a black-and-white context: The movie approves of the Bush administration! No, wait, the movie opposes the Bush administration! No, wait, it seems like it's doing both, therefor the movie is muddled!
I think the movie is very consistent--just not consistent along the axis people seem to want it to be. Batman does whatever he needs to do to save Gotham City. Period. But he realizes that in order to save the city, he needs to affirm the rule of law that he so routinely breaks, hence his insistence that Dent remain an untarnished, by-the-book, legitimate hero. Yes, there's a paradox in his breaking the law to defend it, but that's because there is a fundamental conflict in human nature--we need laws to function as a society, but sometimes doing the right thing means breaking the law. I think this may be the first vigilante movie I've seen (or even Rogue Cop movie) that deals with that issue head-on, rather than brushing it aside by making the "traditional" law enforcers look useless and ineffectual.
I still contend that Pineapple Express is the best action movie this decade.
That sounds like a bold statement, but come on, between vomit-cam, pretty boy action stars, cuts that last less than a second, and a disproportionate amount of reaction shots, is Pineapple Express up against any real competition? When I watch The Dark Knight, where some of the action scenes actually take place in the background, behind a crowd of people, I know that Christopher Nolan isn't a fan of action films. When I watch Pineapple Express, I know that these guys Love the genre, and they give it the respect it so fully deserves and so rarely receives.
I think there are many modern american movies that I predict will go down in reputation and one of them is The Dark Knight because we are already deciding where it belongs in the film canon(It's already number one on IMDB top 250 ,which is a list that I think is outright populitism)and it has nowhere to go but down since it has been praised to the skies by everyone but of course this is just my opinion.I personally think critical acclaim does affect how good a film will be in the future.
Now I don't mean to dismiss The Dark Knight because I liked it alot but I don't think it is the greatest film ever made,the greatest sequel ever made, the greatest superhero movie ever made(although its pretty high up there) or even the summer's best(I enjoyed Iron Man and Hellboy II alot more) but let me say that I think it's a good and worthy sequel to "Batman Begins".
I feel this way because I think there problems I had with film.First,I thought that the film was too grim for me to enjoy it.Second,like jim I have problems with the films rushed storytelling which made it hard for me breath in and sink in powerful moments.Third and finally,I don't think the villains were well developed because although The Joker was creepy and Heath Ledger gave an excellent performance but I don't think the film really knew what to do with him and we only saw Two-Face for only the film's last half.
Yet there is alot of things that makes The Dark Knight that overall make succeed.I think the film story and visual look has alot of richness to it.Also it breaks ground rules being a super-hero movie that isn't the greatest of its kind but something of its own and unlike any other.I said that I didn't find the film enjoyable but that doesn't mean I didn't find the film thrilling and intense.I also admire the boldness that the film giving us hidden metaphors to terrorism.I think because of these aspects about the movie that I mentioned in this paragraph that will legitimise it's genre even though I don't think it is best film of it's genre.
So I liked The Dark Knight and admire it very much even though I didn't love it but I do think it is a good movie.I do hope that a third intallment is made. I still think that Christopher Nolan is the best person to make superhero movies that work.
Oh...One more thing I think everybody is making a big thing out of the parallels and metaphors to terrorism that are in Iron Man and The Dark Knight because I think the parallels and metaphors in those films are shown in a subtle way and not big,loud and frank way.I think everybody is reading into it way too deeply.
The reason "The Dark Knight" is doing so well is because people perceive the country as going down the toilet. The current Zeitgeist should remind historians of the the 1930s, during the Great Depression and Hitler's ascent. The 1930s spawned Batman, Superman, and Doc Savage. Read the early Superman stories. He fought corrupt businessmen and warmongering dictators way before he fought Lex Luthor.
It's just too bad that a good movie, when called a great one, becomes such a warzone for people trying so hard to put it back where it belong that they end up saying it's complete dreck. I think this is what we're seeing here with The Dark Knight.
And about the clarity of a movie's opinions, the same people saying that a movie isn't clear enough in its political/social views will say that it's simplistic and moralistic if it wears those views on its sleeve.
I do not understand the incredible amount of critic dissension regarding the Dark Knight. It is an attitude almost as if to discredit actually liking a "superhero" movie. Despite the 95% tomatometer, I have read so many reviews stating that the Dark Knight is just pop entertainment and nothing more. First of all, I want to say that I do not think TDK is even close to the best movie ever as it is too long and the boat scenes were too contrived. However, can anyone name many movies in the relatively sparse crime genre that are more creative and epic? Please don't say the Departed which was formulaic, lacked any character development, and consisted of completely unorginial Scorcese leftovers. Usual Suspects was flawed (read Ebert's Review) and Dog Day Afternoon was limited in scope. And why are the action scenes in TDK being dissected continuosly as too fast-paced with flashes that do not show the full action sequences in detail? The concept of Batman is impossible so in order to make it as realistic as possible, Nolan made the action sequences in quick cuts as opposed to a stationary cam that would make the action seem cartoonish as in the other Batman movies. Critics like Emerson need to get off their pedestal and appreciate a movie that provides both thrilling suspense and action required by today's movie culture with an enthralling story with rich, colorful characters. Appreciating the movie as it is does not mean that you have to deem it a masterpiece. It just means giving it the respect and credit it deserves.
First, @Evan: Clearly, you don't know how geekery works. If there were flaws, the hardcore fanboys and fangirls would be the first ones to point out that they didn't like it. I'd be willing to wager that only a tiny fraction of those individuals offering death threats to critics offering a contrarian opinion of TDK even bought Batman comics before, let alone made anything close to a lifestyle out of them.
Secondly, I don't mind ambiguity in the "messages" on film. All people bring their preinformed notions to every movie they see; that's human nature. But a movie that is informed by certain aspects without necessarily saying something definitive about them allows those notions to inform the film, rather than conflict with them. I suspect that that's why, more than anything else, TDK has struck such a tone with the general public; most everyone feels they saw a movie that spoke to them and their worldview, even the people that just wanted to see cool action sequences and great characters. It's the perfect movie for an age defined by confirmation bias.
Is that a negative for the film? I don't think so... though I could see, if one thinks that films should be defined by the statements they make, that one could find it to be the biggest strike against the movie.
Also, one more thing. Can reviewers actually do research on a movie rather than relying on each other's inaccurate statements? Batman's voice which has received much criticism is clearly explained in the source material for the movie, the comic Batman Year One. Bruce Wayne masks his identity by changing his voice when he is Batman in order to conceal his identity thus adding to the attempted realism in the movie. Critics, pass it along.
Sometimes respected critics will differ on the overall quality of a film. Some people seem to assume that the critics who disliked the film had some special insight, as if they had practiced deeper critic-fu and thus managed to see the flaws. I personally don't buy this argument, as sometimes it's deeper critic-fu to see the greatness of a film.
I think it's flat-out hubris, though, when a critic seems to assume that they themselves must have had some deeper insight, and then uses this assumption to divine FURTHER insights into popular culture as a whole.
This discussion over zeitgeist reminds me of a favorite Seinfeld moment when Elaine visits the office of the New Yorker to inquire about a typically cryptic cartoon from the latest issue. Her interrogation of the editor leads to a brilliant (and hilarious) exchange of dialogue:
Elaine: Why this is supposed to be funny?
Editor: Ha! It's merely a commentary on contemporary mores.
Elaine: But, what is the comment?
Editor: It's a slice of life.
Elaine: No it isn't.
Editor: Pun?
Elaine: I don’t think so.
Editor: Vorshtein?
Elaine: That's not a word.....You have no idea what this means do you?
Editor: No.
Elaine: Then why did you print it?
Editor: I liked the kitty.
There are a few interesting lessons we can draw here from Ms. Benes:
(1) As Mr. Bordwell points out, it always helps to ask, “what is the comment?” Filmmakers like to equate two-sided ambiguity with sophistication and often boast that their films open the door for audience interpretation. There’s no need for another ad nauseum discussion about a movie like “Crash”, but it fits perfectly in this vein. The manifested commentary is not a very interesting one: essentially, one’s actions and reactions depend partly on background and circumstances. Yawn.
(2) Zeitgeist seems to be the new mise en scene; i.e., a word that carries a certain cosmopolitan gravity in critical circles, but has been so overused and misused that its applicative value is roughly that of Vorshtein.
(3) I liked the Kitty. Can we all admit what we really loved about The Dark Knight? Mr. Nolan treated us to an enormous visual and aural feast. If we really wanted hefty zeitgeist, why weren’t we all at home reading Dickens during that third weekend in July?
In your piece on War of the Worlds you wrote:
I think this applies perfectly also in the case of The Dark Knight: Do we need to know what the commentary is to appreciate the movie? Do we need one clear statement? I'm reminded of Sam Goldwyn's dictum: "If I look confused it's because I'm thinking."
As Woody Allen would say, the brain is the most overrated human organ.
True, any movie has themes and ideas to investigate but movies are primarily emotional experiences. I think the critics who miss the point with superhero movies miss it mostly because they think too much without feeling. (Maybe this is a my counterpoint to your 'critics who feel too much' article Jim.) I'm gonna call upon my man Roger Ebert to assist me in explaining this concept as it relates to TDK:
“Iron Man and even more so The Dark Knight move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration."
I think TDK does play off the film noir tradition in many ways. Actually, a movie to compare its approach to is The Manchurian Candidate (original). MC's screenplay is addled but it works by speaking to an emotional truth: how we feel about the mess that is politics. TDK's screenplay is similarly addled but maybe that speaks to how we feel about the war on terror? Or if not that... peace and destruction in general?
Batman and The Joker are timeless archetypes summing up the ongoing battle between good and evil. I think there is something about these characters that speaks to all of us, in one way or another, but on a level that's emotional more than intellectual; primal even.
And if it gets us talking... in this case that might be worth more than if it answered questions for us.
I agree with what Alberto Di Felice had to say: Do we need to know what the commentary is to appreciate the movie? Do we need one clear statement? I'm reminded of Sam Goldwyn's dictum: "If I look confused it's because I'm thinking."
Alberto: Love that Goldwyn quote -- and that's the process many artists describe, working through something on a largely unconscious level. Some begin with, say, a character or an image or a snippet from a newspaper article and just see where it takes them as they develop something out of their own imagination. I do believe in what I said about "War of the Worlds," and you'll notice that I write about it almost entirely in visual terms. Among my problems with TDK is that it too often presented its themes literally and explicitly, by putting them in the form of dialog pronouncements. It's that other old dictum: I felt it was telling me too much and not showing me enough.
Why, Emerson, do you continue to put up Dark Knight posts over and over again? Actually, the real question is, why do I keep reading them? I know you have nothing to say about the film, and your complaints really amount to nothing more than film snob pseudo-speak (with a Knocked Up reference thrown in). You're the epitomy of style over substance, and a good example of why film studies are total bunk. It's clear you're only doing this to get attention (and are succeeding, damnit, because here I am).
But, in the end, The Dark Knight is a better movie than you are a writer, and it's obvious that it makes you mad. Because you're a film "commentator" (I guess) and movies like this (and There Will Be Blood, which you also went out of your way to prove your coolness by disliking) basically throw how useless and hollow your work really is. People liked it because it's a great film. End of story. Please go fix the alphabetical listings on Ebert's Great Movies section and leave the Batman discussions to people who actually know what they're talking about and can still enjoy cinema. The movie's a classic, sorry.
"TDK...too often presented its themes literally and explicitly, by putting them in the form of dialog pronouncements."
I don't even know what you're talking about here. Apparently you didn't see the movie. Harvey Dent saying the "die a hero" line once, and then having it repeated at the end, is called storytelling. It's not presenting a theme over-explicitly "too often." What would you have preferred, the characters never speak at all? How would they develop their personalities? Oh, wait, that's it: you're mad they turned Batman, The Joker and Two-Face into three-dimensional characters. Clearly no faux-film snob would like that. After all, it's just a "superhero" movie.
Jack: I just get so mad when a movie is a better movie than I am a writer. That's what this blog, and these discussions of TDK, are all about.
P.S. If you don't like my writing, did you read David Bordwell's? Maybe his will impress you more favorably.
Jack--
My guess is that Jim keeps making Dark Knight-related posts because much of the film-loving world is still talking about the film, and there are many discussions to be had about it. Everyone seems to enjoy talking about it, even those of us who disagree with Jim's assessment of the film. When a movie is both worthy of some intellectual discussion and so widely popular that its very popularity is worth discussing, guess what--people will want to discuss it!
I imagine we'd be having some very similar conversations if the site had been around when, say, The Matrix had come out.
Jack: "Why, Emerson, do you continue to put up Dark Knight posts over and over again?"
Because it drives traffic to his website. The movie made $450 million. And it's beloved by geeks, who are easy to draw into these kinds of debates ("Something is WRONG on the Internet!"), as the comments above show. Unfortunately, a lot of talk about movies is driven, not by criticism of the actual films, but by whether the public loves the movie more or less than it should. We've definitely entered that stage for TDK.
Anyway, is the philosophy of TDK really any more or less muddled than what we got in "No Country for Old Men"? (Another great movie with an over-the-top, scenery chewing super-villian.) Isn't it the same theme: how can society stop men who are purely and relentlessly evil? Answer: even if you're smart and capable, you can't, and certainly not without paying a very high price? And isn't it that theme that's related to the War on Terror? Sure, TDK stops short of McCarthy's black-hole-dark ending, but still, aren't they otherwise just the same?
Among my theories (well-articulated by Stephen and James) about why I've devoted two posts to "The Dark Knight," and made two others in which "The Dark Knight" has been used as one of several examples, are the following: 1) because of the movie's near-unprecedented popularity and cultural impact (see Bordwell's quotation from the NY Times editorial), a consideration of TDK drives traffic to the site and encourages comments; 2) not only is it popular, but people have strong opinions about it and (based on the evidence of my first post) have much to say about it, which they have done eloquently, at some length, and with exceptional insight; 3) they really seem to enjoy getting into it; and 4) I maintain that no matter what my evaluation of a movie may be -- great, good, bad, mediocre -- it can still be really interesting to discuss. I chose just two aspects of David Bordwell's post to concentrate on here: the directorial style and the movie's thematic statements, especially as they relate to contemporary issues of prominence (hence, the invocation of the "zeitgeist"). I'm sure there's lots more to talk about. Why not? Those who see movies as mere "entertainment," disposable commodities to be consumed and discarded, aren't likely to visit this site, which is all about analysis, argument and discussion.
While watching TDK it never really occurred to me that Nolan was trying to make any bold statements about Iraq or the state of our nation. Does the Joker represent terrorism? Does Batman represent the Bush administration? Maybe two face represents a divided Iraq. I don't think any of those things are true (well, maybe the Joker does represent terrorism), but I don't think it would work if Nolan did go to the effort of making it that complex. It would suck the joy out of Batman to know that he was nothing more than a representation of some political idea. Draining out the fantasy of a comic movie seems to defeat it's purposes.
And no metaphor, no matter how delicately constructed, will work if it's in a poor story. And if the story hangs on interpretations of those metaphors, then who cares about the metaphors? Why not just talk about the real thing?
Last week I finally caught up with "Johnny Guitar". While watching it I don't think I explicitly thought about McCarthy, but knowing that the movie was made in 1954, I kept the mood of America in mind while I watched. Ray's movie holds up pretty well with or without the metaphors. It works as a blistering, over the top, psychological thriller/western. It was like a more bizarre, female driven version of an Anthony Mann western, and I'll watch it again for sheer entertainment value. Knowing that the movie is about McCarthy doesn't make or break it for me, but it does add a little spice. I'm glad that Ray didn't try to get too explicit or complex with his metaphors. The broader it is, the better. The more complex, I believe it starts to weigh a story down.
Mr. Emerson mentions "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in the post, and I think it's a good example of how a metaphor can work. Simple, not exact, and easy to work into the framework of the story and genre.
p.s. What is it with some of the derogatory comments about Mr. Emerson's writing. This is the business of criticism. If you loved TDK and need to read someone who agrees with you, then hop over to Roger Ebert's review of it. But I don't see Mr. Ebert on here ripping into Jim. I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Ebert reads these posts (and subsequent comments) with delight, even when he wholeheartedly disagrees.
Yes, there's lots of dialog in The Dark Knight. There's lots of dialog in any Eric Rohmer movie of your choice, too. I have trouble believing one can convincingly argue that the movie doesn't work on a purely visual level. Just take the way Nolan decides to strip Gotham of the old gothic (Burton) or fluorescent (Schumacher) look at once: Isn't the fact that we no longer see a replica of New York, but a shapeless and relatively more naturalistic city, a key aspect of the movie? I was impressed, for example, by how swiftly we move to Hong Kong, to the point that -- remove the necessary establishing shots -- one wouldn't even notice. There's no clear visual "jurisdiction" as Batman decides jurisdictions don't matter and flies off to snare the bad guy abroad. I think Nolan, among other things, is saying something about the permeability of (moral) borders: He does so visually, and this appears to me to have relevance to the issues at play within the characters and the story. This is just one example.
Also (I'm referring here to David Bordwell's contention that The Dark Knight, unlike Memento and The Prestige, is "hollow"), consider how this connects in particular with Nolan's previous movie, The Prestige, and its reflection on identity. Think about the Joker (Batman's dark half) left hanging near the end of the film just like Angier (Borden's double -- hell, there are doubles in that movie) in the tank in the very last shot of The Prestige. I see clear signs of the work of an auteur here.
I guess one could even make a point that War of the Worlds too relied on some vigorous expository dialog: I remember moaning when little Dakota Fanning had to ask: "Is it the terrorists?", or when Tim Robbins let loose his invective. Honestly, I'm not convinced. Plus, I'm confused: can one say that the movie is too obvious because it has too much blabber, and that at the same time it's impossible to detect what the blabber is all about?
I suspect we would like a clear message accompanying all the often contradictory blabber -- perhaps, coincidentally, also coming in the form of another piece of dialog. I'm glad there's none. Especially because the movie feels so much as a commentary about current events that some of us would like to know exactly what Mr. Nolan thinks about, say, Guantanamo. Is he saying that Batman is George W. and that, all in all, he's doing the right thing? Or is he downright condemning the guy? What if he's just letting us know how his Batman would react -- yes, contradictorily -- while letting us decide if we agree or not? Isn't this just about what a movie should do, ask you questions?
Jim, you don't need to justify yourself to the likes of Jack, who clearly can't tolerate any dissenting opinion on his beloved Batman movie.
Personally, I don't see Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an ambiguous movie. It's central metaphor is that the Pods represent conformity, which is pretty unambiguously presented. It's just that different viewers will see the threat of conformity coming from different corners. For the Right it's Communism; for the Left 50's social conservatism or McCarthyism.
Ambiguous or not though, you could never accuse Body Snatchers of being muddled. It takes it's concept and pursues it relentlessly. It's concise, fast and straightforward building to an almost inevitable conclusion. A brilliant piece of B-Movie storytelling.
Contrast that with the convoluted, disjointed and episodic plotting of TDK. It has so many different characters spouting so many different moral/philosophical points (Batman, The Joker, Alfred, Dent, Gordon, Lucius Fox, Rachel) that it can't help but feel confused. It seemed like every other scene felt it had some point to make but none of it added up to a coherent viewpoint. I know this is seen as a positive for some but in the end it just made my head hurt.
This makes it sound like I'm really beating up on TDK. I really like the film overall, just think it had a lot of problems and when I hear the extravagant praise I can't help but want to point out it's flaws.
Something always bothers me when people insist that something has to stand for something else. My annoyance stems from being a Tolkien super-freak. Tolkien hated alligory, as anyone who has read is personal writtings on his own work. And I think that true allegory in major works of art are rare still. So, Tolkien's fix for things standing in for other things was "applicability". Not as sexy a word, but certainly a sexy concept. So, in The Dark Knight, things are not necessarily stand ins for other things, but we can certainly apply themes to real-life themes. Thus, by 'reading' the art, we can apply what we learn in our own life. That really, is the goal of most good art anyway, taking the artwork, and applying it in the context of real-life to learn something about humanity, if only to see parallel themes. So ... surviellance, torture, bleak moral choices with no good outcome, these are not direct one-to-one stand ins for real things, but darn it, we can see the drama unfold on the screen and try to apply what we think it reveals about humanity in the story to real-life and try to learn something. Art need not be a mirror, but it sure can be a lens!
I, for one, really like the way that the characters in TDK talk about the ideas in the movie. It doesn't feel like they read the screenplay; it feels like they're real people interpreting their lives. They sit around in restaurants going, "I don't know Dave, I don't think it's healthy for a city to celebrate a vigilante." If there were actually a guy in a costume running around beating up criminals, these are the same kinds of discussions we'd be having in real life. A city faced with a terrorist fighting a vigilante would really be having these discussions, and nobody more so than the people on the front lines.
Anyway, the movie does illustrate its ideas, it's just subtle. (The odd thing about The Dark Knight is that so much of it simply flies by, because you get so sucked into the fast-paced story.) The Joker is an excellent example--Nolan explicates his character through dialogue, but matches those statements with visual representations. The shot in the beginning with the empty mask demonstrates his lack of a true identity ("Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint"); the shot in the cop car, his gleeful anarchy ("Upset the established order"); his nurse's costume, Joker's transgression of values ("I'm an agent of chaos")... etc., etc.
It's hard to see these things for what they are because the film moves so damn quickly, and rarely lingers on any single moment long enough for you to realize "Oh, this is a metaphor for that". But it's absolutely packed with them. It's hard to remember a single scene without iconic, symbolic images--Harvey Dent standing while everyone else ducks in terror of bullets, Batman haunting the ruins as a failed protector, a burning firetruck in an empty street, a life saved when a coin is caught, a warehouse with drums of gasoline stretching as far as the eye can see, Rachel leaving Bruce Wayne alone with the city when she walks to Harvey...
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And the film's themes aren't muddled, just layered. You could write essays on little pieces of it and still never capture the whole thing at once. For instance, this is a movie as obsessed with identities as Zodiac was with chronologies--faces, scars, masks, make-up, costumes and disguises, names, aliases, DNA, fingerprints, secret identities, public personae, cameras, the media, cover-ups, fake deaths, shifting and multiple personalities, and so on and so forth. Look at the movie that way, and there's a throughline of ideas all the way from the Joker's sad mask hiding a scar smile to Gordon deciding Batman is both a hero and not a hero, a dark knight. But that's just one piece of it.
Perhaps a coherent statement can only be found if you put together these layers of ideas. I don't know, I haven't taken the time to figure it out, even in all the time I've spent analyzing it. It's about as difficult as Fight Club to explain succinctly. You might try putting political themes about how disorder can lead powerful men to blur the line between hero and villain with ideas about twinning and the duality of humanity (and society), with ideas about the mutability of identity (which in this film is as situational as the ethics), with ideas about the individual's responsibility to the collective and vice-versa... Somewhere in there exists a one-sentence synopsis of what The Dark Knight says, exactly, but it would be a long sentence, with lots of subordinate clauses.
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By the way, this movie absolutely demonstrates the idea that you see who people really are in their last moments. Joker reacts to his imminent death by laughing all the way down, exulting in the free-fall; Rachel chooses Dent and decides to sacrifice her own life; Brian (the fake Batman) dies bravely, still proclaiming that he doesn't have to fear guys like Joker; Dent has the opportunity to put down the gun and be the good guy, and he refuses. People either stand up for what they believe in or fall back on human weakness; either way, it reveals the depths of their character.
I'm glad that you linked this article so that SOME kind of discussion could be made about it (Mr. Bordwell has "closed" his comments... why? What is he afraid of?).
The piece, for one thing, is barely about The Dark Knight. He makes some valid points on the cinematic trends of the last forty years, but in talking of decades he really fails to commentate on the film itself. I always find it ridiculous when somebody says that the cinema is any different now than it ever was. Details change, but audience expectations don't (drawing differences between "acting" and "character impersonation" is really hair-splitting of the highest magnitude).
There's one point that Bordwell, Jim, and others have made: The Dark Knight doesn't know what it's politics are. I would contend that this moral fogginess is exactly what the film is about. Take the climatic ferry scene. The question is: is it right to kill your neighbor in the face of your own annihilation? Or is it better to sacrifice yourself and spare the equally innocent other party? And what if that party has done something to deserve punishment? I don't expect an answer to this, for me it's enough that the question was asked.
The film completely condemns neither The Joker nor The Batman. Sometimes they're right on the money, other times not... but when is this? If there's anything that captures "the zeitgeist", that uncertainty is it.
Jim, I love that you keep coming back to this film. I hope I hear plenty more on it too.
Of course, let us cut to chase.
You say – “wonder if "The Dark Knight" is internally sophisticated enough to hold up beyond its current "phenom" context. Does it explore its arguments about order vs. chaos, heroes vs. villains, or does it just bounce these things off one another, alternating black and white until it looks like gray? You can't take the zeitgeist out of the movie, but what happens when times change and the movie becomes detached from the zeitgeist that spawned it? We can't know to a certainty, but we can make our own arguments...”
I’m from India, and far removed from the zeitgeist under and into which everybody is hammering The Dark Knight. I most agree with you and Bordwell, that connections to 9/11 are extremely easy and outright unimaginative. Yes, they could be done, allusions can be made to the administration, but then anything can everything could be. And I believe that is unfair to the Nolan film, simply because it is much more than what’s happening around. It bites, it chews, and it digests much more than that.
With The Dark Knight, what we have is a film that is enhancing and disintegrating the superhero mythos. People are waiting for Watchmen. This film has already done what Watchmen might strive to do. That is, a clash of two men larger than life. The film isn’t as much about people and the world, as it is about two of its men who are striving to have them shape their way.
But then, I have already stated the same in a different post, and wouldn’t want to repeat myself.
What I intend to say is, here in India, people have loved this film more than anything that has come out for more than a year. Audiences are flocking to watch it more than twice, and I sense a growing sense of respect and fascination for the Batman-Joker mythos.
The reason behind it isn’t hard to pin down.
Here, I would like to disagree with you on one of your comments – “Those who see movies as mere entertainment…” I think you wrapped entrainment in quotes to use it in the same dispensable sense many people do, and I believe you immensely respect entertainment. I would like to say though, - entertainment, magic is why we watch cinema. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, greater about films than their ability to awe us, to transport us.
Speaking of which, I love blockbusters. Big films. Larger than life films. It is a tragedy we have so very few of them, only a handful, because so few know how to do them. Maybe Terminator2, maybe The Matrix, maybe The Godfather (it isn’t a blockbuster in the traditional sense, but it is larger than life alright.)
Matt in one of the comments, in one of your previous posts on The Dark Knight hit the nail why this is such a great film. It is two words – scope and amplification. Your gripe – “the film has its themes explicitly stated by means of dialogues” – comes from a very basic taste we all have. That is, we like stories and we would want to find the themes for ourselves. I very much agree.
But a film like The Dark Knight isn’t a story in the first place. It maybe set in a real world, but all this talk of its realism is just an illusion. The landscape is epic, and it has its own rules. Own boundaries. The Dark Knight is an epic. Stories are too small, and they often do not have a sweeping effect to them. They deal in our worlds, and people in it speak like us. Not the characters in The Dark Knight or for that matter any epic blockbuster. Batman is larger than us, The Joker is larger than us, and they speak different. Think of the great literary epics – The Mahabharata, or the Iliad – and they do have their themes explicitly stated. That is part of the reason of their grandeur, and that the illusion they’re dealing in a situation we haven’t.
Of course, today’s blockbusters are rife with phony apocalyptic predictions and big television screens which as well might telecast the World Cup. The Dark Knight, The Matrix, Terminator 2 showed us how it ought to be done.
But I don’t agree with you or Bordwell when it is claimed that the film doesn’t work on a visual level. For me, this is a visual experience right up there, with its indelible images. Each one of them has been shot on such a grandiose scale. The Dark Knight is what makes for big screen bonanza, and I believe cinema has its roots in that sentiment. Yes, small films, personal films are important, but I would never trade anything for those grand westerns or a film like The Dark Knight. I’m glad and proud to say I love films, and that is because of films like this, The Godfather and The Good the Bad and The Ugly.
Of course, everything that needs to be understood about Joker the person, is there stone written in Fight Club. Nolan doesn't give us a back story, and wisely so, but more than any place his Joker seems to be inspired from Palahniuk's Tyler Durden.
You know, self improvement (Batman) isn't the answer, self destruction is. And he has nothing to lose.
Warren Peace:
"I'm glad that you linked this article so that SOME kind of discussion could be made about it (Mr. Bordwell has "closed" his comments... why? What is he afraid of?)."
The comments on Bordwell and Thompson's site are always closed. Nothing to do with the particular article in question.
I was just thinking of this idea, sitting in the balcony, and reminiscing Fight Club. The Joker seems to be so spectacularly similar to Tyler, in the way he is gunning for Credit Card companies and thus total chaos, in the way he attracts people (tapping into not their material fantasies but into their emotional problems).
I think Nolan and co. saw Tyler as just one inch away from rock bottom, of course rock bottom being The Joker. He doesn't care good, he doesn't care bad, he is just lack of order. He is a joke, everything's fun, and that is what is so amazingly captured in the tone of Fight Club, both the book which is the root, and the film.
I wonder, where does it all come from? Fight Club sure is a product of fantasies (there's a beautiful essay on the similarities between Fight Club and Calvin and Hobbes down at Palahniuk's site), it is more about the boy in us rather than the adult.
I wonder if Palahniuk read comics, and wonder if there's a case of Bremer, Bickle and Hinckley Jr. triangle.
Satish Naidu -
It's great to hear that the film is striking such a chord in India. It's doing awfully well in many other parts of the world as well.
I don't think most of the themes are so specific to their time and place that they won't resonate in future decades, internationally.
Cheers.
I prefer movies that are "strategically ambiguous" to Michael Moore-ian one-sided diatribes. I hope that TDK signals a return to more morally muddled anti-hero movies.
To paraphrase the quote from Daniel Dennett, there is nothing I like worse than watching a bad movie making an argument I hold dear.
I completely disagree about the action scenes (I think they are staged fine and get across what they need to), but when you give us a reference like this:
"I began to think of director Nolan as Seth Rogen's character in "Knocked Up," overdoing his dice-rolling dance move because that's pretty much all he's got."
I almost want to agree with you. You sir, are a genius.
It's awesome how you and this David Bordwell are bashing quality films just based on the fact that the particular genre isn't your cup of tea. You don't like action movies or comic-book movies, and think the fact that this is both means it's dreck. We get it, you think comic-books are a lesser medium. You're entitled to your close-minded opinion, but there's a reason why both Iron Man and The Dark Knight are universally praised by both the public and critics, and you're in the vast minority.
I'm going to have to agree with jack on this one. There is a difference between film criticism and pretentious bombasity, and I think this blog can fall a bit too often on the side of the latter. The italicization to make a point, the seemingly profound phrases to make a point, a point that may or may not exist. This is not to criticize you, as a person, Jim, just your writing. That's not to say it's all bad. Quite often it's very good. Probably better than anything I could write, and the number of posts you write is very impressive. Jack, too, was criticizing your writing. There is a difference. As a film critic (and the film critics that came to Jim's rescue on this one) I don't think you shouldn't be so surprised if people have some sort of problem with this blog. Because the author of this blog makes a living having a problem with other people's movies! Many people will resort to the cop-out "well, if you don't like reading this, go someplace else." This is always true, but remember that your blog is attached to the website of Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize winning film critic, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise if people hold you to a higher standard. Again, this is not a personal attack against you, just something to chew on. I imagine I’ll get slammed for writing this by all those “free thinkers” out there.
james: I accept the criticisms. As for "the point that may or may not exist" -- that's the fun (and, I'd argue, the unique value) of writing a blog. I often have no idea what "point" I'm heading for when I start a post. Sometimes I'm not sure I have one -- even when I've finished. It's the process of "thinking out loud" that I find rewarding. After that is when everybody picks up the ball and the discussion gets rolling in comments. Most of these posts aren't structured reviews, or even essays. They're blog entries, and they rely on a community of commenters to flesh them out, refine and expand ideas, and contribute new ones I'd never thought of. I love that. I wrote for newspapers and other publications for 20+ years, and this is a whole new interactive (if you'll excuse the cliche) medium that's never been possible before.
Some reviewers make a living having problems with other people's movies. But evaluation and criticism aren't necessarily the same thing, reviews aren't necessarily criticism, and (as I always say) whether a critic likes or dislikes a movie is (I hope) the least interesting thing he/she has to say. If not, I'd have a real problem with that particular piece of criticism/reviewing.
Jim, I hope you aren't too lonely in your "vast minority". Apparently, a genre lover can be objective but a non-lover (if that's what you are)can't. Now if you started out your review with: "Man I love superhero movies! Especially if everybody else does!" then we would know it was safe to read your opinion.
No sarcasm intended, I think that is a very good validation for this blog, and it makes me almost embarassed for what I wrote. Keep writing, though I kind of realize that such advice is not necessary.
Jack, your cantakerous defensiveness doesn't do you or the movie any favors. Asserting that The Dark Knight was great is not an argument; it's a bludgeon used to whack those who don't agree with you. I enjoyed the film, but it wasn't mind-blowing like Taxi Driver or The Godfather...at least not to me. I'll take your visceral enjoyment on good faith - care to extend the same courtesy to the film's detractors? And putting aside that visceral enjoyment, dealing with the movie on more objective grounds, there are plenty of things to criticize.
Anyway, I tried to tackle the significance of The Dark Knight's themes and why I responded to it (despite several problems with the film and the superhero "genre") on my blog. Rather than retype my thoughts, I'll link to the post here:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-knight-revisited.html
I can't speak for Jim, but I've kept returning to the subject of The Dark Knight because a) it's the biggest movie of the year, so it's obviously touched a chord with viewers and b) it offers a lot of compelling food for thought. Which should be a good thing, no matter how one digests that food.
Dane: "Apparently, a genre lover can be objective but a non-lover (if that's what you are) can't." You nailed it. One's values, opinions and passions should always be strictly objective!
Jim,
"One's values, opinions and passions should always be strictly objective!"
That's so g*ddamn funny, it's gotta be art! :)
Hmmm, I think this whole debate in itself illustrates just how good TDK is. For the first time a "comic book movie" has stuck one foot in the serious film corner. As Mr Ebert pointed out, for those of us who take comics seriously we've known for a long time that this is how comics can and do exist.
The mistake I think you're making Jim is that you think that means the film must be judged next to the Renoir's and Bergman's out there. You have to realise that one of Batman's feet is still in the comic book world.
It's the average Joe argument. As much as the intellectuals out there hate the idea, Mr Joe doesn't want to have his/her brain taxed too much when watching a movie. That's just the reality of it. Then we get a movie like TDK which can satisfy our entertainment bone but still touches on such grand themes of the chaos inherent in the universe, surveillance, torture, vigilantism, moralism, and leave questions about these things planted in our brains. Instead of serving up some wham, bham, thank you Mr Clown it actually gets us to think about these things without being pretentious and verbose. Sure, it didn't offer any answers to these big questions but why should it? Isn't it even more realistic for not doing so? The real world throws these questions at us daily but doesn't answer them for us. We're the ones who have to decide how we react. I for one stand up and applaud any film that can touch on such themes in what is at the end of the day a piece of popular entertainment. In fact that's why Batman has always been joint favourite of mine (along with Judge Dredd) because he brings up these complex themes and makes you think about them.
Now, as for the shortcomings of the direction, you have some very valid points. The cuts were definitely too quick in parts, especially the scene where the Joker was hanging out the window after escaping. There were a good few scenes I wished had taken the time to linger and imprint their emotion on me that little bit more. And some of the shots were a bit cliché. However these were only small niggles in what was an overwhelmingly positive experience for me and as far as I can tell, the majority of the film going public.
As a fellow thinker I just think you and Mr Bordwell are just overthinking it.
Weeks later: And still the discussion rages...
When was the last time a hugely budgeted Hollywood film inspired this kind of examination? Atkinson, Ulrich, Denby, Scott, White, Emerson, Bordwell- gents, deal with it.
Now, if only Nolan had prolonged that shot of The Joker, head craning out of the speeding police car's window, horrifically anarchic and exuberant. As it is, it's very effective, but to have lingered in his utterly psychotic head-space at the exact moment when we realize the nature of what we are dealing with, would have been stunning. For Nolan to have cheated himself of that moment is enough to make me question his instincts as a filmmaker.
Devious,
I think the problem many people have with The Dark Knight is the desire to have its cake and eat it too. To partake in the praise usually reserved for "Bergman and Renoir" but then retreat behind the protected fortress walls of comic-book land when the criticism gets too harsh. I think The Dark Knight should be judged as better-than-average when judged as a genre picture and as not-quite-up-to-par when judged as a "great film." It would not be judged at all as a "great film" if people hadn't been proclaiming it one of the masterpieces of the past few decades.
Movieman--
I have a problem with the duality you lay out there--comic-book-land vs. great films. I see absolutely no reason why a movie can't exist in "comic book land" while still being a great film. A great film doesn't need to be entirely realistic, or opaque in its themes, or even a precise portrait of human nature. It just needs to have something to say, and say it powerfully and artfully.
When Bordwell calls Ledger's work in The Dark Knight easy because the part "demands" hamminess, I think he is mistaken about the difficulty it takes to give a performance like Ledger's. Yes, Ledger could have "underplayed it or overplayed it or over-underplayed it" like Bordwell says and it still would have been fine, but half an actor's job is deciding what the best way to play the part is, i.e., when to use subtlety and when to go over the top.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what his problem with ambiguity in movies is. When a movie preaches one side of a moral equation, I find that condescending to the audience, as if we could not reach moral conclusions without a movie's guidance. It also suggest that we (like Bordwell, apparently) cannot handle moral ambiguity and so we must have our answers forced down our throats. The best that any movie can really do, I think, is to showcase and explore an issue, not to force moral generalizations upon us.
I agree that the seeming neutrality is one of the strengths of the film. Nolan’s choice is representative of a mature director and the appropriate angle for a “superhero” film.
In my opinion, any attempt to either impose one cohesive pov on the film seems to be the result of either political bias or gross over-simplification. For example the Bush = Batman approach really doesn’t hold up upon closer scrutiny. Yes, you can draw the analogy that both Batman and Bush have made politically unpopular choices. However, whether these individuals made a morally correct choice depends on your worldview. At the end of the film, Batman seems to make a morally correct decision by taking reasonability for the murders. I don’t think you can view Batman’s decision as an approval of Bush’s approach to terrorism, however. If Nolan is making this arguement, he is equating murder with National Security and I don’t think that’s a rather convincing case to make. I would also point out the fact that Bush is an un-reluctant executioner and Batman is not. For whatever reason, this seems to get lost when the comparisons are made and these disparities speak volumes for how different the two really are.
Overall, you need to look at Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns to understand the roots of Nolan’s approach. In the TDKR, Miller places the story in relation to the current political climate of the mid 80’s. Like most of Miller’s heroes, Batman is a overly masculine wraith who has very conservative punitive approach toward criminals. Yet at the same time, Miller manages to skewer Reagan, the US’s approach to the Cold War, and by extension the nature of war itself. As with the TDK, it’s not easy to draw one overt message from the book.
One exchange seems to sum up this view. In the book, Gordon is being replaced as police commissioner. The new commissioner views Batman as criminal and wants to know why he has been tolerated by Gordon. Gordon simply states that “He’s too big.” In essence, he is saying that Batman is too morally complex to compartmentalize into conventional terms. I think you can say the same thing about Nolan’s Batman and to a certain extent, the themes addressed in the film.
As side note, I’m surprised that most people seem to miss the symbolism in the final Joker scene. During this sequence, Joker’s dialogue explains how he and Batman are opposites of one another. Visually, Joker’s upside position places him physically opposite of Batman. He is in fact a reverse mirror image of the Batman. The juxtaposition seems to be a variation of the Joker/Batman playing card on the back of The Killing Joke.
It seems appropriate to have Joker exit the film in his weightless position. Metaphorically, Joker is always going to being free hanging “out there” as a smiling foil for his grim longsuffering rival. It’s sort of like the opening sequence of Vertigo. The audience never sees Jimmy Stewart’s rescue from the overhang, and figuratively, Stewart spends the rest of the film in a type of suspended state.
I think that narrowing TDK down to politics is straying too far from the point it's actually trying to make. Yes, you can easily see parallels to modern events and politics but I think those are there to serve a broader theme: attempting to do good and actually doing good are not the same. And when you try to do the right thing, you have no guarantee on what the actual outcome will be or how others will perceive it. The point isn't that Batman represents Bush or fascism or anything like that. The movie doesn't take a stand on it's politics because it's not making political judgments. It's saying that just because you see something a certain way doesn't mean it's true, whether you are looking at your own actions or the actions of others.
This is easily seen in Batman but you can easily apply it to characters throughout the film. Look at how Gordon's actions impacted his family. He hurt them emotionally by faking his death. His family was put into harms way just because he is who he is. In both instances, he was trying to do the right thing. And he did, right? Well, ask Gordon's wife what she thinks about it.
Scene by scene, shot by shot, word-for-word, the Dark Knight is unimpressive. Taken as a whole, however, the experience is other-worldly.
I consider myself a very jaded moviegoer and cinema-buff, but very rarely has a movie's pacing gripped me so hard, and HELD that grip throughout the entire movie. It may not have had this effect on everyone, but on myself and others it certainly did. You hear a lot of talk about the 'palpable sense of dread' filling every scene; one story talks about a woman who had to take her child out because he just suddenly felt very nauseous. Upon the movie's end, I felt LITERALLY exhausted, in the same way I might upon setting down a good novel; that inarticulate, awed, "FFFffffffffuuuuuuuck."
And the movie's message is certainly portrayed, it just does so on its own terms. Batman is, for the majority of the movie, the picture of compulsion. But the movie is a build and a build and a build towards one single moment, when the two meet in the interrogation room. I'm reminded of a similar scene in the movie American Gangster, but as the meeting between the titular characters took place more towards the chronological end of the plot rather than the climax, the effect was slightly different. In Dark Knight, this is Joker's entire point; we have been waiting the ENTIRE movie for him to build batman's psyche into the proper context, scene by scene, and gradually ratchet up the dramatic tension. Bale guturally roars 'WHERE ARE THEY?!' and attacks the villain; we've seen this scene a thousand times, but here, this time, for me at least, it had EFFECT.
Nolan doesn't deal in details or specifics, he deals in emotion. Think of the haze you felt watching Memento. The excited confusion watching The Prestige. With Dark Knight he took it darker; was it possible, he asked, to keep audiences gripped with black dread? From the moment the fake batman corpse hits the window, the movie becomes a psychological assault.
Brandon,
I agree on most of what you said in your last post, except for this line:
"Nolan doesn't deal in details or specifics, he deals in emotion. Think of the haze you felt watching Memento. The excited confusion watching The Prestige. With Dark Knight he took it darker; was it possible, he asked, to keep audiences gripped with black dread? From the moment the fake batman corpse hits the window, the movie becomes a psychological assault."
Nolan is indeed a wonderful character designer, and that's why we can connect so easily with his characters and undertand them... but I don't see him as an emotional director as much as an Intellectual one. Nolan has showed how many intellectual questions he has and keeps designing his character on archetypes. They're not really people, but ideas that are confronted with each other to see the final outcome.
This brings two particularities:
- Those outcomes usually are at odds with the worldview of most viewers and they are morally and intellectually challenged in the process. Archetypes often are larger-than-life concepts which every person can relate to, in more than on sense (his psyche, his intimate personal world, his social sorroundings, or the natural world). When you can deeply relate to those ideas embodied by characters (something that increases the rapport) but the outcome of the plot is surpirsing and/or contradicts our worldview, the result is a powerful and disturbing emotional response. But its basics lie in intellectual mechanisms... not unlike Bergman or Welles, but very different to, say, Antonioni, who deals more with style instead of content.
- Nolan is subtle enough to the make his plot keep progressing over and over, with enough twists and turns to make it enjoyable and absorbing, so his archetypes are not easily understood at a first view. But not impossible. Many critics think of him as a lesser director (as opposed to Bergman, Goddard, etc.) because he is a COMUNICATOR. He is very interested in those topics and never has the last word on anything. He is puzzled by those themes, and then engages in something not very different to a debate with the audience. He shows his doubts about something, and explains it... and then waits for reactions. That makes him a GOOD director, not a bad one. He's not burdened by stylistic fetishes or representations that are completely soliptsistic, scenes that can only be understood by their filmmakers. No, he doesn't allow those things to get in the way. He is a Communicator, and he's very interested on the conclusions of his audience.
That's why his movies have to be "ambiguous". Because he does not know the answers to his own questions. And I'm glad he doesn't. That's the difference between being Preachy and being Aware. And Bordwell can't see those things because he's grasping at straws to make his point, instead of presenting doubts about something, much more like Jim is doing.
What I find disheartening, Jim, is that you seem to agree on so many things with Bordwell (you quote him on many of your articles) but he is more prone to grasp at straws and get his point across tahn formulating the right point. There are too many holes in this article of his, and I find it really insulting to all the people here who are intelligent enough to formulate great counter-arguments that they cannot post any comments on his site.
Well, whatever works for him...
I saw this in IMAX and it was quite an experience. The bank robbery was excellent, the rooftop scenes appropriately gave me vertigo, the hospital explosion -- awesome. And yet, so many other action scenes, I disliked. The underground garage scene (with the Batman wannabes) made me cringe. Visually, it was like so many latter day action movies done by hacks. The truck chase scene was semi-incoherent, and by the time it got to the final battle I just gave up trying to follow the action.
I had the same problem with Batman Begins, except Batman Begins had nothing as good as the bank robbery. I think Nolan needs to stick close to classical/Spielberg mode for his action scenes, because when he tries for the new style, he ends up being an inept Michael Bay rather than Paul Greengrass (and I can barely stand Greengrass, even though I admit he's probably the best at that particular style).