“The reactionary . . . is likely to start from a profound conviction of the evil of the natural man. Instead of worrying because people do not get enough freedom, he is obsessed by the need for police — authority, discipline, order. How else can you keep the Devil under control?”
Edmund Wilson on Joseph de Maistre, 1932
“The Dark Knight” is “Dirty Harry” stripped of Don Siegel’s ambivalence and ambiguity. Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio). The two figures are identified as morally equivalent (“You complete me,” says Ledger to Bale, nastily referencing “Jerry Maguire”), but where Siegel’s camera literally recoils in horror at the moment Harry leaps into madness (when he steps on Scorpio’s wound in the football stadium), Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior. Is the Dark Knight just George Bush with a better outfit, demanding that he be allowed all of the available “tools” to combat terrorism, even if they include torture and eavesdropping? Like Bush, Batman has his own warantless wiretapping program, but Nolan is kind enough to assure us that, once his goal is accomplished, the superhero will blow it up. Is he suggesting that we can count on the Dark President to do the same?
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal concurs, and is down with it: “A paen of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.”
Sounds right. Let’s hope that this will all lead to some happy antithesis like a “A Perfect World” or, dissing temporal sequence, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” (Off to Costa Rica where a rather benign Communist spell in government c. 1940 scared the Center-Left into nearly six decades of a little rational humanism and there is neither Joker nor pretext for a Black Knight.)
Batman entrusts his weapons designer to deep-six his own creation. Yep, it’s a fantasy (and not a very good one, but suggest that out loud and the droogish fanboys stalk you online).
The buzz is very average in paris, where the film will be released in august. I liked Nolan’s “The Prestige” a quite moving and beautiful film. I don’t know what to think of “Batman begins”, except that I love the shot of Batman looking down on Chicago, which was shot using a real stuntman, with no special effects or digital imagery. But French can be blamed for creating the Batman franchise. Victor Hugo wrote his best novel, “The man who laughs” in the mid 1800. The story of a disfigured man, whose mouth is wide open as a contuinous laughter, and who inherits a kingdom in 17th century England. The book was turned into a well known Paul Leni film in the 1920′s (quoted in Ellroy’snovel and then De Palma’s The Black Dahlia).
The silent film made a very strong impression on a young movie goer, Bob Kane, who stole the idea of a disfigured laughing man to build his character of The Joker for the Batman comic book.
Another case study of an “historical thread” that permeates popular and “high” culture. Raymond Durgnat could have wrote a whole volume about these beautiful “equivalences”.
“Continuous smile”: “Permanent grin” would be more suitable for the description of “the man who laughs”.
Durgnat “could have written”.
Sorry. English is alas, my second language.
“Here again, one madman (Christian Bale’s Batman/Clint Eastwood’s Harry) is posited as the only effective way of combating another (Heath Ledger’s Joker/Andy Robinson’s Scorpio).
…
Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior.”
Huh? Did we see the same movie? I have never left the theater after one of these comic-book movies feeling as ambivalent and un-reassured about the superhero as The Dark Knight. On the contrary, Batman is a fairly pathetic, and essentially weakened, figure by the end of the movie; the temporary defeat of “evil” feels like a pyrrhic victory. And the movie’s onslaught is not, contrary to Dirty Harry’s cheap thrills, particularly pleasant–I found it relentless.
I mean, I totally agree about the War on Terrorism echoes but I strongly disagree that Nolan is embodying a Bush approach through Batman. The movie seems far more concerned with conveying how awful any aggressive approach is. And as far as romanticizing goes, Heath Ledger is far more charismatic than Batman, whose comic-book philosophizing invariably sounds clunky and uninspiring.
Batman’s actions may have been, as Lucius Fox points out, unethical, but they were done for the right reasons and ultimately save us all.
I was wondering why the film’s attitude to its moral dilemas didn’t sit well with me, and then it hit me.
The president is a hero and the Patriot Act is justified. He will stand up and do the right thing, and even take the fall afterwards, because he has our best interests in mind. Gosh, if only we would just trust him.
I don’t think “you complete me” was a Brokeback reference, Dave…it’s Tom Cruise’s line from “Jerry Maguire” which subsequently entered the pop-culture lexicon (as so much of that film’s dialogue did, regrettably).
“Nolan seems to embrace, and even romanticize, his hero’s obsessive, abusive behavior.” Were we watching the same movie? Nolan goes out of his way to emphasize Batman’s dubious morality–the whole notion upon which this installment rests is that Batman’s presence in Gotham *invites* chaos, that the Joker couldn’t have seized power without Batman’s vigilante stranglehold on crime.
Dave, maybe you should go back and take a look at “Batman Forever” and let us know if you still think this new one is lacking “ambivalence and ambiguity.”
*spoilers*
I don’t see how the plot would have developed differently whether they had parallels to our current political situation or not. The interrogation scene, for instance, is supposed to represent a significant breach of code for Batman, but it’s forgotten almost as soon as he gets the information he needs. Morgan Freeman has a line about how Batman’s surveillance system is unethical, but his qualms don’t actually prevent him from using it, and both him and the machine are totally acquitted at the end. It seemed to me that, in spite of how it presents itself, The Dark Knight is at heart like any other action film in that it is mainly interested in creating effects then moving on quickly, like the victim of the “disappearing pencil” trick who himself disappears from the movie the second he falls out of sight. Overt political references never rose above the level of Manny Farber’s “gimp”.
Brian, I haven’t seen the film, but I have seen the trailers, and came to a very similar hypothesis after the first trailer was released in December. I think Dave is focusing on the formal aspects of the film, and less so on the script, which may indeed “emphasize Batman’s dubious morality”. Nolan has clearly made a film which embraces the rhetoric of its genre on a stylistic level. This film features all the bells and whistles of a blockbuster, some scenes shot in IMAX no less, with motorcycle chases, trucks that flip over themselves in impossible ways etc. These elements might have compromised whatever nuanced political discourse he tried to build into the dialog. Indeed, it has been a common facet of this decade’s spat of comic-book films that they wear a somber veneer suggesting levels of social and political commitment that the stylistic strategies implemented do not actually support. There are exceptions like Bryan Singer’s ambivalent and uneven “X2: X-Men United”, which seems like it can’t decide whether it’s a high school debate on racial prejudice or an action film.
Ahh, flimsy political allegory… the last refuge of a critic who can’t come up with a reason why he just wants to be contrary.
Thanks for the correction on that line of dialogue, Brian. Too many catch-phrases crowding my tiny brain. But I think it’s exactly Batman’s dubious morality that Nolan is romanticizing — he’s the guy willing to go where no one else is, to do the dirty jobs that need doing, just like certain recent administrations. Normally, I’m not prone to political analysis of blockbuster movies, but “The Dark Knight” seems to beg for it with its consistent references to current events, most spectacularly in the wiretapping sequence. The most pernicious moment in the movie is the little smile of satisfaction that plays across Morgan Freeman’s face as he walks away from the self-immolating console. He knew all along he could trust the boss to do the right thing, appearances to the contrary. Whether these references have been absorbed from the zeitgeist (as I imagine they are) or have been deliberately and self-consciously built into the film by its authors, is, of course, unknowable and irrelevant.
The Bush apologia case can be made stronger. First, the lie at the end can be connected to a Platonic/Straussian “noble lie”: the common people cannot handle the truth, in this case the evil actions of an apparently good person, and so they must be lied to for their own good. Second, Batman must take the fall for the apparently bad things that have happened, though in the future the people will come to see that what Batman has done was actually good. While Bush will currently take a beating for the things he has done, in the future we will praise him.
Brian, the film does state that the Joker arose as a result of the madness of having a figure like Batman fighting for goodness in Gotham, but it doesn’t go in depth as to why beyond merely asserting this.
I think that is a significant weakness. Figures like this don’t just come about because they ‘want to see the world burn’. We create them, and not just through our conviction and the strength of our dedication to justice. The Nolans don’t seem to be interested in dealing with this, and in the end, by advocating Batman’s use of unethical methods and force, they seem to be arguing that we shouldn’t deal with them either. Batman is proved to have been right and his methods justified, and any ethical dilemmas within the film seem to have been abandoned. We shouldn’t question those who operate outside of what we consider acceptable codes of morality, but rather just shut up and trust the hero. No matter what he does, he’s looking out for us, whether we realise it or not. A few hours after watching this film I realised that the final scene was showing me conservative America fleeing from the scorn of dissenting voices and the rest of the world.
I checked out of the Batman franchise after the two Burton films. i was only ten and twelve years old at the time so i suppose my main concerns had more to do with Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer and the campy malevolence of Jack Nicholson than with a full contemplation of Burton’s dark vision. I also, boringly, found it very hard to get past the musical inferiority of depp and carter in Sweeney Todd as devoted a Sondheim fanatic as I am.
I must second the praise for Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend. The full restored version shows up on Tcm from time to time. Twiggy is irresistable singing some of the delightful Sandy Wilson songs. The Busby Berkeley type numbers nearly equal the originals. The only other sventies musical I like as much(admittedly a small breed)is Darling Lili.
Perhaps this is not the thread for it, but i would like to put forward my contention that the early thirties is, perhaps, the richest period in American cinema before the seventies. There are still so many films waiting to be rediscovered by a larger audience-Vidor’s Stranger’s Return, Gabriel over The White house, Half Naked Truth, Safe in Hell,Me and My Gal, Wild Girl, Laughter,One way passage, Jewel Robbery, Gay Deception,Last Flight, Million Dollar Legs,Man Wanted,Bed of Roses,She Married Her Boss,Miracle Woman… So many directors did their best work in this period-Wellman,Capra,Dieterle,Garnett,Fleming,Mayo, Bacon,Green,Vidor,Milestone,Lubitsch, Mamoulian… It was the best period for Laurel and Hardy, Mae West and W.C. Fields as well.
I think there’s a pretty big difference between Bush and Batman. Thanks to it being a fictional world in which you can know, to a solid degree, a person’s intentions, one knows Batman is truly trying to do the right thing for the citizens of Gotham even if he steps into gray (or black) areas. Did the wiretapping save dozens of lives? Yes. Did he use it for any other purpose? No. Was it destroyed after it was used to capture the most dangerous criminal in Gotham? Yes.
Now, does anyone believe the words that come out of Bush’s mouth or that he genuinely has the interests of the entire American public at heart? The film is fiction, afterall, and even though in real life one could never be so trusting as to condone some of the actions undertaken, you can with Batman.
I think it’s a big leap to see the idea of wiretapping used in a fantastical film and say it’s advocating its use in the real world. Is Professor Xavier’s mind-reading abilities approval for wiretapping? Seriously, I think there’s a limit to where you can draw all these political allegories.
Craig wrote: “Perhaps this is not the thread for it, but i would like to put forward my contention that the early thirties is, perhaps, the richest period in American cinema before the seventies.”
What happened to the 1950′s? “A Star is Born”, “Touch of Evil”, Some Came Running”, “Bigger than Life”, “Vertigo”, “Written on the Wind”, “Steel Helmet”….
Jeff, I don’t think you noticed that Lucius Fox chose to resign after the surveillance job because he believed it was a breach, so he was not acquitted by any means. The resignation of Fox (by typing his name into the system at the end) was a clear-cut consequence of Batman using it.
Just saw THE DARK KNIGHT. It seems to me that big-budget movies of the blockbuster variety avail themselves freely of whatever is floating around the culture. Their creators are like scavengers, using their cultural resonance detectors to find material and strategically deposit it throughout the story. The result is that it skews in different moral directions at different times, occasionally in many directions at once. Sometimes this is done clumsily (INDEPENDENCE DAY, WAR OF THE WORLDS), sometimes more deftly. This seemed to me extremely deft. Not to mention extraordinarily intense and upsetting. I guess it will intensify feelings of fear and paranoia that are already there, but whether or not it offers some implicit endorsement of Bush-era ethics, consciously or unconsciously, is impossible to measure. I think one could make an equally good case for it as pro or anti or both. On the other hand, the business with the two detonators and the people on the boats wasn ‘t bad.
For me, the limitation of the movie is not ideological. Ledger is so good, and so genuinely unnerving (Eckhart isn’t too far behind), and a lot of the imagery so powerful, that it kind of reaches an uncomfortable limit point, where gravity and superheroics butt up against each other. For instance, a lot of the violence is pretty painful. But Batman slaps, kicks and stomps the Joker within an inch of his life, without doing any discernible damage.
I think I’d see it again. And I must say, I have abslutely no idea what David Denby was talking about when he wrote that the action sequences go by so quickly you can’t see what’s happening. He must have been flashing back to HANCOCK. The sequence in DARK KNIGHT where they almost take out the mayor is very good, and the battle between the truck and the police wagon outclasses that weird jungle chase in INDIANA JONES by a country mile.
Craig, thanks for mentioning STRANGER’S RETURN and ME AND MY GAL.
Nicely put, but I think Nolan “scavenged” 9/11 imagery and themes (the main point of reference) more effectively in BEGINS. Such imagery has become cliche in blockbuster filmmaking, neither “tense nor upsetting,” just kind of–rote, par for the course, expected. (It affected me in WAR OF THE WORLDS and feels like an affectation since.)
One thing that bugged me was that Gotham City is as clean as a whistle in the new picture, basically just Chicago. It doesn’t seem degraded at all. The funk and grit of BEGINS (and the other pictures) is gone. The “naturalistic” background ill-supports the superheroics.
I find Eckhart a one-face of an actor (given his signature smarmy roles it’s hard for me to think of him as a “white knight,” and the courtroom heroism scene felt botched and unconvincing) and the ships sequence went on at indulgent length, dissipating rather than heightening the fear factor. THE DARK KNIGHT is very earnestly intended, but too studiedly “graphic novel” and maybe not enough “comic book” for me.
*SPOILER WARNING*
Wanted to second Jack’s view. I enjoyed the film, but it doesn’t do anything more than flirt with the serious issues raised by our dark president as DK aptly dubs him. Remember that existing laws don’t stand in the way any conceivably legitimate use for wiretapping. Bush wants more. The fictional situation in the film is very different. There are some gestures in the direction of making Batman a morally complex figure, but he emerges at the end of the story impossibly noble and pure as the driven snow. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is not a genre film that breaks the mould. It’s strength is the very effective use it makes of genre hooks, the monstrously evil villain who implicates his victims by forcing the choice of who will suffer on them and the fallen hero who’s image must be preserved for the public, the true hero who must take the part of the villain.
You seem to be missing or ignoring the fact that every situation that exists in the movie, every incident, every death, every negative consequence is a result of Batman’s presence and actions.
The movie is a tragedy. Batman is in a worse situation at the end than Harry Calaghan is at the end of DIRTY HARRY. Sure, he may have saved a lot of lives, but he’s alone now. His confidante and chief weapons designer has resigned in disgust, the woman he loves is dead, the man he hoped would succeed him is broken and dead, and he is left with nothing. He’s damned to carry on his increasingly futile and destructive crusade, and also on the run as an outlaw and accused murderer. He won’t stop paying for his actions, all of which are ethically off the charts.
That’s hardly the triumphalism your critique seems to imply. It is, to me the most incisive movie about moral ambivalence and the impossibility of justice in America at this moment.
That a summer blockbuster should be so bleak and tragic is pretty impressive.
Wow! You liberals allow your political views to ruin a good time at the movies. I picked up on the correlation between events in the film and in what is happening today, but they are no worse than the obvious anti-Bush messages strewn throughout a dozen or more movies every year. That is not even counting the handful of directly critical releases. Anyone remember the Wachowski brother’s realized liberal fantasy of killing the Bush and “real power” Cheney figures in “V For Vendetta?” Any honest moviegoer realizes that “The Dark Knight” is an overwhelming success. It is kind of like the 04′ election where you just can’t believe that the majority is right. The fact that you see Batman as President Bush is just stupid and funny. Allow me to ruin every other movie for you. Good guys are rarely liberal, because being liberal means you stand for nothing. Moral absolutes are soundly conservative and therefore someone such as yourself will never win. Now go out and watch another movie that depicts real heroes, such as our military, as evil murderers and feel good that you and only a few others see the “real” truth in things like the fact that TDK isn’t a masterpiece, because Batman and Joker don’t hug it out in the end. Peace out you hippie bastards!
Michael, the cellphone surveillance system was something they used for three reasons, none of which have anything to do with a political message or conscience. The first is that it was a neat idea, the second is that it gave Morgan Freeman an elegant and even flattering way to leave the franchise, and the third is it allowed them to draw an extra parallel with current events and therefore gain an extra brownie point with critics. (Even Ebert, who loved the movie, made this droll comment regarding that last point: “(Fox) makes an ethical objection to a method of eavesdropping on all of the citizens of Gotham City. His stand has current political implications.”)
Actually, there are more similarities. The scenes where joker’s hostage tapes are wired shows more parallels with the real world. I happened to notice the similarities from one of those scenes where Joker’s videotaping himself after torturing a copycat of Batman. Batman’s being a symbol of the American president is not the only parallel here. There’s actually many more………
The fact that Nolan’s Batman wiretaps an entire city for reasons “none of which have anything to do with a political message or conscience,” in the words of Mr. Fries, doesn’t strike me as a good reason to set aside politically-motivated reservations about the film. Quite the opposite, given that the current administration has favored rhetoric that depoliticizes terrorism, attributing national woes to the kind of inexplicable atavistic evil one finds personified in this version of the Joker. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that the film contains anything like endorsement of what Bushman has done, but certainly it has absorbed unprocessed bits of executive rhetoric along with its other borrowings from the zeitgeist.
even if your right and the director is making some political comment on how to deal with world around us, so what? This just illustrates the bogus and hypocritical nature of the left. When a left wing director makes a political statement everybody stops and applauds how they are talking truth to power and trying to change the world. However when one right wing director makes money movie talking about his political viewpoints he is attacked as being nothing more than a mouthpiece for George Bush and the extreme right.
Kent, if I understand you correctly, you’re identifying a sense of inconsistency (?) or irresolution (?), perhaps even ambivalence on the part of the filmmakers, as the film juggles two assumed roles 1.) as posturing superhero crowd-pleaser and 2.) as a more committed political allegory or moral parable (please correct or tighten the terminology if need be!). I’m curious, do you think the movie at any point succeeds in reconciling these two positions?
You missed the really important anti-Bush’s methods bit mate; y’know… spoilers
…how Joker tells him where Rachel and Dent are kept, but lies about how which ones which, so when Bats races to rescue Rachel he finds himself rescuing Dent instead. A pretty strong `tourture doesn’t work because captees lie’ message I thought. Or weren’t you paying attention at that point?
Sometimes I tend to repeat myself, sometimes I tend to repeat myself, sometimes I tend to repeat myself. And with a completely inaccurate them of madness. Having worked with “paranoid schizophrenics” for oer 30 years, yes…at times they do bizarre violent acts, but only rarely. Never do they follow a sociopath like Ledger’s character. Yet, two overt references are made, once again perpetuating inaccurate stereotypes and blowing the whistle on the true understanding of the writers of this chaos.
Both the ferry boat and the wrong-rescue scenes are typical of “The Dark Knight”‘s strategy of setting up impossible, “Sophie’s Choice”-like moral dilemmas for its hero, and then resolving them through sleight-of-hand: in a bit of reverse racism, a scary-looking black man steps up to make the tough moral choice that a wimpy-looking white guy is unable to handle; Batman arrives to rescue his girl friend, only to find that the Joker has betrayed him (!) and switched locations. In both cases the hero gets to look fine and noble while he wrestles with issues that are then resolved with no moral cost to him. I agree that the movie is not triumphalist, but triumphalism is hardly in style at this point in time. Instead, it substitutes the dark romanticism of the misunderstood outsider, who takes on the sins of the community the better to redeem the poor saps who will remain forever ungrateful to him — a slight improvement over a ticker tape parade finale, but still a self-flattering, adolescent notion.
I don’t read the last scene with Freeman the way Jeff Fries does. Fox has told his boss that he’ll do perform this one last, ethically repugnant task for him and then resign (already enough of a compromise to make his moral stance meaningless); but instead of accepting Fox’s resignation (the act of typing in his name), Batman blows up the offending device, thus reassuring Fox (and us) that’s he’s an unambiguous good guy after all, and that Fox doesn’t need to leave his nice job. Freeman will be back if the producers meet his price.
And for that matter (sigh — again with the spoiler alert), is Nolan planning on bringing back the Joker is some post-Ledger form? The last we see of him he’s dangling upside down from the top of a skyscraper, Nolan just cuts away, leaving his fate entirely unresolved, and the movie without a satisfying finale (at the screening I saw, the revelation of Aaron Eckhart’s amazing Two-Face make-up got a much bigger hand than the ending). And having seen plenty of Republic serials in my day, I’m also suspicious of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s abrupt disappearance from the film — again, she’s just edited out of existence by Nolan — which leaves the way clear for a “surprise” resurrection in the next installment.
Overall, the film that “The Dark Knight” reminded me off most strongly was the first installment in the “Saw” franchise (I’m afraid I haven’t seen the others). Nolan seems to be tapping both that film’s 70s leather bar production design and phony moral paradoxes, positioning Batman, like Jigsaw, as a beyond good-and-evil moral force (as if that made any sense) who gives himself the right to judge and frequently condemn others to death on the basis of his superior position as an above-it-all outsider.
Wait, but N.P. Thompson says that Christopher Nolan supports the Bush administration by cutting away from the violence, and you say he supports it by embracing violence. I do so want to condemn Nolan’s fascism properly. Who should I believe?
Sarcasm aside, I think it’s a mistake to believe that THE DARK KNIGHT is registering a one-sided judgment (even inadvertently) on the events of the day, rather than merely reflecting them. After all, this is a movie in which a large part of the hero’s justifications for his actions are based on his never receiving a key piece of information from his butler (who purposefully withheld it from him). It’s a movie that repeatedly asks whether giving a gun to a madman is the same as pulling the trigger yourself.
None of the Nolan brothers’ movies to date have been especially interested in offering a cut-and-dried take on moral dilemmas. They’re more interested in examining how moral choices affect the self … and they’ve got a fairly despairing point of view in that regard. A man makes a plan, and with each step he takes towards his goal, he changes, to the extent that in the end, he finds himself working for a stranger: the man he used to be.
If we’re comparing Batman to George Bush, who exactly did the citizens of Gotham City go land-grabbing?
I dunno, I think if the film really constituted some kind of endorsement of the Bush administration, Armond White would’ve liked it a whole lot better.
Sorry guys, couldn’t resist.
I’m more in Kent’s camp on this than yours, Dave, but as for your questions above, I strongly suspect that Nolan’s going to walk away from the franchise in a going-out-on-top gesture, leaving the suits at Warner to find a patsy to deal with the distasteful prospect of reviving the Joker. There is some bit of dialogue in Batman’s last speech to the Joker (hard to decipher, given the growl and the volume) about leaving him to the SWAT team; a truly sequel-fixated “Dark Knight” would have included at least one shot of the Joker plotting revenge from Arkham Asylum or some such thing.
“a beyond good-and-evil moral force (as if that made any sense) who gives himself the right to judge and frequently condemn others to death on the basis of his superior position as an above-it-all outsider.”
Tellingly, The Feuillade serials – which outclass and out-action the Batman movies in every conceivable way – often frame these outsiders as an abomination, not because of their “freak” nature but because their access to our lives (by way of kidnapping, larceny, and murder) is unchecked. Correct me if I’m wrong but Judex (the least ignoble of Feuillade’s masked men) was never saddled by half-hearted attempts at expressing reluctance towards antisocial (but “righteous”) acts.
“I have abslutely no idea what David Denby was talking about when he wrote that the action sequences go by so quickly you can’t see what’s happening. He must have been flashing back to HANCOCK. The sequence in DARK KNIGHT where they almost take out the mayor is very good, and the battle between the truck and the police wagon outclasses that weird jungle chase in INDIANA JONES by a country mile.”
I don’t want to be backed into the awkward position of defending HANCOCK, INDY JONES IV, or Denby — none of which or whom I care very much for — but the Denby criticism you refer to is the one comment in his review I agree with.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the DARK KNIGHT’s “deft” and “upsetting” moral ambiguities (or should I say equivocations?), and the attempt on the mayor’s life is effectively edited. But otherwise Nolan can’t handle action scenes. Mostly, we get a flurry of rapid-fire close-ups of Batman’s starkly black suit or car banging into some nondescript object, in the middle of the night or some dimly lit room or parking lot: i.e. black on black on black cut so fast that you can’t actually SEE what’s going on.
I gave up trying to enjoy the action scenes half-way through the film, and focused instead on the artfully constructed narrative (which few if no people seem to have commented on — it’s the film’s chief virtue) and, of course, the performances.
P.S. I’ll have more to say, if time allows, on Kehr’s strangely apologetic account of DIRTY HARRY, which has always struck me as an obscenely unpleasant movie, thoroughly fascist in its politics (Siegel’s backward tracking shot is more glorifying than horrifying).
And as for DARK KNIGHT’s wiretapping episode, I didn’t see Freeman smiling in his last scene — either I missed something or Kehr is imagining things.
Wooooaaah!… Calm down Bleeding Hearts! It is my right as an American to like this movie.
Edo, those are interesting questions. I think that anyone who makes a 100-million+ franchise/blockbuster film is operating under a lot of constraints. The simplest way of putting it is that they are obliged to please as many, and offend as few, people as possible: obviously not conducive to the creation of good drama, not to mention moral parable or political allegory. So I don’t think any form of reconciliation is possible, because the “political” references are an important part of the superhero crowd-pleasing.
I am basically in agreement with Dave – our difference probably lies in the fact that I expect nothing from blockbuster movies, while he probably expects (quite reasonably) a good movie. I think he’s right about the simplicity of the two ferry-bomb dilemma, but that’s about as much moral complexity as a franchise movie can handle.
On the other hand, I found the movie very exciting to look at and I also found it pretty gripping. And Heath Ledger was really and truly terrifying, as was Eckhart (an actor I don’t care for normally), to a slightly lesser extent. So I couldn’t disagree more with Julien, and can only assume that we saw different movies, or that there’s an alternate version recut by Michael Bay or Peter Berg or something.
Finally, I don’t think that DIRTY HARRY needs any apologies and I know that Dave doesn’t either. Julien, you seem quite confident about your interpretation. I hope you have some tolerance for those who differ.
Getting back to Dave’s Dirty Harry comparisons up top: “D.H. is obviously just a genre movie, but this action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced. If crime were caused by super-evil dragons, there would be no Miranda, no Escobedo; we could all be licensed to kill, like Dirty Harry….it is an almost perfect piece of propaganda for para-legal police power.” Dave’s love of all things Eastwood sometimes makes him see “ambivalence and ambiguity” where it ain’t; which is not to say “Dark Knight” doesn’t pull exactly the same tricks – I love Nolan’s “Memento” & “Prestige”, 2 genuinely morally ambiguous films, but the massive budgets & studio expectations of the Batmans tend to muddle any political points under a ton o’ TNT. The fact that the new one’s preordained success will give Nolan (I hope) clout to make another personal project — well, let’s just say Lucius Fox’s compromises may be Nolan’s point-of-identification.
I’d like to know Dave’s opinion of “Prestige” (among others) but I must be out of it — what happened to your archives pre-April ’08?
….oh, and by the by, the above quote, if you haven’t guessed, is from Pauline Kael, late scourge of auteurists & Eastwood-apologists everywhere (don’t worry, Dave, she was wrong about “Unforgiven”……..)
Bob Dewitt,
“V for Vendetta” is not a liberal fantasy. It`s an anarchist fanstasy that approximates the fascism it attacks in its penchant for simplistic vision and violent solution. It`s an expression of the Sorelian pre-Coup side of fascism versus the Statist. (Actually, fascist characterization of Bush — if not some Bush administration tendencies– is a tad ….extreme; but, then again, the construction of a hippie bastard liberal idological killjoy who denies the people`s 2004 electoral wisdom is a pretty GONZO construction, to say the least).
On Siegel, does anyone really know about Siegel`s actual politics? Do we actually KNOW what the Body Snatchers were in Siegels mind MacCarthy era G-Men types rather than Commie … bastards.
Please don’t take my comments down. I said nothing vulgar or obscene.
Thanks for the response, Kent! I was hoping that the film was less divided against itself, but then again I still have to see for myself.
Dave, in answer to your question, though I don’t know for sure, I believe David Goyer’s original conception was that these two films would form part of a trilogy, and that The Joker and Two-Face both would appear in the third film as well. Of course, the filmmakers could not have accounted for Ledger’s death. What they will do now is a mystery, but I assume they’ll leave The Joker to the ages, and exploit some other villain. Heck, maybe even Robin will enter the picture. They certainly sound like they’re following a “Long Halloween/Dark Victory” thematic progression with Batman’s gradual ossification into the legend he’s created.
The next Batman villain should be The Smirker: a sociopath who uncontrollably smirks whenever he’s forced to empathize with those suffering from his evil depradations. He could also be a seethingly resentful “dry drunk,” who structures an entire life of failure on the Denial of Reality, creating a network of foul henchmen who assert that they create their own reality. Batman will struggle to reassert control over their world of war, economic failure, poverty, mass surveillance and incarceration, and torture.
“Finally, I don’t think that DIRTY HARRY needs any apologies and I know that Dave doesn’t either. Julien, you seem quite confident about your interpretation. I hope you have some tolerance for those who differ.”
As befits a post-scriptum, I wrote my Dirty Harry comments somewhat off the cuff and may have overstated the case. Having said that, as far as I can tell I do have tolerance for people who disagree with me (and vice versa), just as I assume that those who claim that some totalitarian/pro-Bush agenda is at work in The Dark Knight are able to respectfully disagree with anyone who begs to differ. Kehr and others are “quite confident” in dismissing The Dark Knight; I feel more or less the same way about Dirty Harry.
As far as “couldn’t disagree more,” I’m sorry to read that. As I wrote, I largely agreed with your assessment of The Dark Knight (if I read it correctly) and mostly enjoyed the film. I simply thought some of the action scenes (specifically the hand-to-hand combat) were poorly filmed/edited. In all other regards, I found the film successful and, as you suggested in an earlier post, wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
“On Siegel, does anyone really know about Siegel`s actual politics? Do we actually KNOW what the Body Snatchers were in Siegels mind MacCarthy era G-Men types rather than Commie … bastards.”
Siegel always said it was neither of these things (both of which have been read into it many times of course). He said it was about the fact that in his view we were turning into a race of pods. And I believe, even if not meant to be taken literally (hence the parable of the movie), he was sincere in this view.
I don’t know his politics but have heard of his leaning to the liberal side–he seemed not to want to make anything of it in relation to his films, whatever it was (and this applies to the DIRTY HARRY argument going on). I personally like it when a filmmaker can give “the other side” some eloquence and even charm, the locus classicus being Uncle Charlie in SHADOW OF A DOUBT with his “foolish women” speech and even more, his heady diatribe to young Charlie in the ’till two bar (“The world’s a hell…what does it matter what happens in it.”)
In Siegel’s case, in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, it’s the wonderful cheerfulness of Larry Gates’ psychiatrist who (in wonderfully expressive three shot with McCarthy and Wynter)
responds to McCarthy’s concerns that there won’t be love in a pod world with a dismissive “Love…you’ve been in love before. It didn’t last. It never does.”
On some level, we–and Siegel too–can’t really disagree with the truth in this.
I haven’t seen THE DARK KNIGHT, so will return to a less sexy thread until I do.
Alex, I wonder how much is to be gained from divining an artist’s politics. As Dave puts it in the still-lively thread from last week, John Ford can not be pegged as a “fascist,” because his politcal viewpoint appears to be all over the map. But in general, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the use of that word to describe anything other than specific historical phenomena and ideologies. It’s one of those vague, spongy but provocative terms – like “Brechtian,” “transcendent” or “transgressive” – that I feel crops up a little too often for comfort in film criticism. I don’t want to imply that art stands outside of politics, but I do think that the relationship between the two is much, much more complicated and endlessly shifting than one might imagine from reading a lot of criticism. Movies by lesser filmmakers are the ones that send the clearest messages. But the greater the filmmaker, the higher the tolerance for contradiction and the tendency for sudden reversal in human behavior; and the more difficult it becomes to “read” the film. Blockbuster movies too can’t be politcally pigeon-holed, but for completely different reasons.
Julien, I meant that I disagree with you about the action scenes, that’s all. Dave is making a detailed commentary on THE DARK KNIGHT rather than simply dismissing it, as you have DIRTY HARRY with the word “fascist.” But as you said, it’s off the cuff.
On the subject of the shot in the football stadium, I don’t think I agree with either you or Dave. I never experience that shot as a horrified recoil, nor do I experience it as a moment of glorification. It always hits me as a dramatically violent shift in perspective to one of edgy, near-contemplative remove, threatening to pull all the way back and end like the God’s eye-view of the mayhem in Bodega Bay in THE BIRDS. I do think there’s some dramatic crudity in DIRTY HARRY – John Vernon’s mayor, for instance, is a straw man – and Eastwood doesn’t go far enough with his character’s craziness. But there is the sense of a truly troubled consciousness at the heart of that movie, mostly shaded in by Siegel, I think, and Pauline Kael’s alarmist review was not her finest hour. And Scott S., you can count me in among those who love Clint Eastwood. In whose own films I see plenty of ambivalence AND ambiguity.
I would add “subversive”, “bourgeois”, “humanist”, and “Freudian” to that list, as some of the most abused terms. For the most part I agree with Kent on this, and without demurring I’d extend the Ford example. Joseph McBride’s excellent biography, which I’ve waded through to nearly the halfway mark, delineates with perfect clarity how the politics of any Ford film was determined variously by his interest in the material, the writer he chose to work with, the producer with whom he had to contend, his age, his maturity as an artist and historian, and finally by his emotional disposition at the time, especially in relation to his family, his stock company, his industry, the establishment culture etc.
I avoid using the word “fascist” for the good reason that it has lost its meaning here in the internet age, where it is thrown around with wild abandon. It is not a synonym for “reactionary,” which I think is an accurate description of the film’s attitudes; I included the Edmond Wilson quote because it speaks exactly to what the film is doing.
Noel, can you explain why Caine’s decision to withhold Gyllenhaal’s letter makes Bale’s actions seem any more morally complex? I’d say it just contributes to the sense of pathos that Nolan is constructing around his “misunderstood” hero. Are you suggesting that if Bale knew that Gyllenhaal had throw him over, he shouldn’t have bothered trying to rescue her? How does this contribute to an examination of “how moral choices affect the self”?
Blake, thanks.
Kent, An artist`s politics are a part of the picture, the information rekvant to aesthetic assessment. They may shift our judgments at the margins as when we learn we don`t learn much from the so exhileratingly done “Potempkin.” Or when our view of “Taxi Driver” is deflated by the revelation that it evokes a kind of Horst Wesselish hero worship from many young viewers.
They are also related to the political substance of a film and as such something that may be enlightened to the merit of a work, as when we gain empathetic understanding of the exploited and exploitation with “La Terra Trema” or a profoundly conservative sensibility as in “Il Gatopardo.” Or they may something rebound to the diminishment of a work as when the vapidity of Godard on Maoism as well as of Maoism in the West is revealed viewing “La Chinoise.”
Three cheers for Ezra Pound … some of the time.
Three cheers for Eisenstein and maybe “Novecento”–but with a little restraint.
Three cheers, but at least one of them Bronx, for “Dirty Harry” and “There is No Country for Old Men.”
A good commenrary, Blake.
Alex, I don’t dispute the relevance of everything you’ve mentioned, but it seems, at least to me, ultimately beside the point. I mean, I don’t experience THE LEOPARD as a portrait of a conservative sensibility, unless you’re stripping the term of its political glaze. For me, it’s a movie about the longing to hold on to what you know you’re going to have to relinquish: that it is made with so much specific detail about the Sicilian aristocracy at the moment of unification only makes that longing more poignant and achingly present, because the greater the level of specificity the more impact the longings and disappointments and dreams common to us all will have.
Nor do I think that Hinckley “diminishes” TAXI DRIVER, any more than the reformation of the Turkish prison system and the accident on Three Mile island make MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and THE CHINA SYNDROME anything but the ridiculous (the former) and ordinary (the latter) flms they are. Inasmuch as art is part of a larger conversation about culture and engages with whatever happens to be going on in that culture, yes, I think films can be “political.” But the political context always dissolves in time. We may see correspondences between that time and our own, but I think that the work stands or falls according to other criteriae. The fact that TRIUMPH OF THE WILL is about Hitler certainly helps to contextualize the film, but in a larger sense, the movie is worthless because it is nothing more than an advertisement. An advertisement with a great deal of strikingly beautiful imagery, but an advertisement.
Regarding Pound, have you ever read Lewis Hyde’s beautiful essay on him in THE GIFT?
Finally, you’ll get only half a cheer out of me for NOVOCENTO: a couple of great moments and hours and hours of prettily arranged sloganeering. Talk about advertisements…