The Dark Descending
Not being much of a movie-goer, I rely on others to steer me towards or away.
My former colleague at Boston College, Tom Hibbs, now Dean of the Honors College at Baylor, has a reflection on “The Dark Knight” that certainly impels me to see the film (if it’s ever released in Boston).
Dark quests for redemption, whether religious or secular, abound in contemporary culture. As Nolan’s films indicate, these quest films owe a great debt to classic film noir. Classic noir takes aim at some of the treasured assumptions and promises of modernity. In noir, the modern world, embodied in an urban setting, is hardly the world of light, happiness, and peace that utopian thinkers of the Enlightenment foretold. Modernity is about human beings exercising control over nature and thus taking control of their destinies; in our modern technological project, knowledge and power are one. The postmodern turn in noir is about the loss of control, the absence of intelligibility, and the threat of powerlessness. But the quest has something pre-modern about it—a sense of human limitations, of the dependence of human beings on one another and on events not in their control. In this world, the outcome of the quest is tenuous and uncertain.
The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. The dark knight embraces extraordinary tasks and fights against enormous odds; his quest is to restore what has been corrupted and to recover what has been lost. In so doing, he takes upon himself a suffering and loneliness that isolate him from his fellow citizens and inevitably court their misunderstanding and scorn. He is a dark knight, in part, because the world he inhabits is nearly void of hope and virtue, and, in part, because some of the darkness resides within him, in his internal conflicts between the good he aspires to restore and the means he deploys to fend off evil. Of the many filmmakers designing dark tales of quests for redemption, Christopher Nolan is currently making a serious claim to being the master craftsman.
The rest of Hibbs’ review is here.
Have any lucky New Yorkers seen the film?
on July 23rd, 2008 at 7:23 am
Wow–I was beat to the punch twice! I was in the middle of writing a post on the film when I saw Dave Gibson’s at Pontifications:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/pontifications/2008/07/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html
Now here! Just as I was going to recommend Hibbs’s post, so does Dave (among others). In brief: saw it, liked it (I think), still cooking on it. But, perhaps unlike Hibbs, I think the film skates close to nihilism. There is no real redemption for anyone in this movie, and I’m not holding my breath for redemption in the next one. If the Cohen brothers had made a Batman film, it would look like Nolan’s.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a segment on the movie with some Comic Book Guy type yesterday (July 22, you can find it archived at npr.org).
I admit that the popularity of comic book superheroes, their fabulously impossible pecs and black-and-white notions of good and evil leave me cold. But the discussion about “Dark Knight” drew me in and made me want to take a chance on the film.
But before I get suckered into seeing another one of these types of things, riddle me this, Grant, and anybody who’s seen it: Is it better, deeper, more thought-provoking than “Spiderman”?
That series got a big build-up from my husband and son, and I am requiring them to do six hours of work in my garden to make up for dragging me off to those things.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
Yes, I have to admit that I haven’t been drawn to Superman or Spiderman or Batman or Bugboy or any of these things either.
I like the idea of Hancock–a crabby superhero –but I haven’t seen it yet.
I like the idea of showing Batman to the Mama Mia audience and Mama Mia to the Batman audience.
Now that would be nihilistic.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 8:46 am
Retractatio!
An enterprising dotCommer did some research and discovered that the film hasn’t been banned in Boston.
It’s just not playing in Newton yet. The perils of presuming that one’s own little corner is the whole. Isn’t that what Augustine kept telling the Donatists?
on July 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Jean, I liked the first Spider-Man movie, as it was fun. The Dark Knight is much, well, darker. But the bottom line is that it is still a summer action movie, and much of the action will be incomprehensible (well, to me–I kept looking for the rewind button…) This is a blockbuster, and ain’t no “Howard’s End.”
By the way, there is about as much sex in the movie as there is in Forster. Less, actually. That’s a point in its favor. Romantic plot complication, but no silly attempts at Bat hanky-panky.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
Bob:
http://movies.com/
You stick your zipcode in.
Cathy
on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
It’s all over the Left Coast out here in the land west of the Hudson: http://www.sfgate.com/eguide/movies/playing/
on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 am
. . . land west of the Hudson
When I first moved to New York, I was talking to someone who had grown up here, and referred to somebody we had just met as being from “between.” I said, “Between?” And he said, “Yes, there’s the East Coast, the West Coast, and between.”
on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Those of you who saw Nolan’s Memento will remember that the protagonist was seeking vengeance rather than redemption, and very darkly. I plan on seeing Batman today with my son to see how Nolan handles it (redemption).
on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
Jean,
I wasn’t too keen on the first Spider-Man. Second was good. Third was lousy. Batman is a different kettle, especially with Nolan at the helm. Not much black-and-white in “The Dark Knight”–mostly black. He pushes the Joker–who is not a comedian in the comic books–into mephistophelean territory. Ledger is brilliant. I’m not totally sold on Bale–his gravelly Batman voice grates at points. But in this film, Batman isn’t really the main character. And be warned: the thing is 2.5 hours. I think it’s either thirty minutes too long or thirty too short.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:56 am
The more I read about this movie, the more applicable it sounds like our quest to preserve and re-open Our Lady of Vilnius on Broome St. in Manhattan. “Restore what has been corrupted and recover what has been lost”
on July 23rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Jean, remember you can’t take these things too seriously. One has to approach it, in my view, with an attitude of fun–it’s a movie, and a summer movie at that–and take what profundities may come as an engaging and perhaps instructive bonus. For those of us with a didactic bent, or a fear of losing total touch with anyone ten years younger (maybe fibe), films like this are bridges, and communication tools. Oh, and its hot as hell and muggy as a swamp, and theaters are air-conditioned.
on July 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I’ve endured two Fantastic Four movies, “Ironman,” three Spidermans, “Transformers,” but emphatically declined to see the “Incredible Hulk.” (I stayed home to watch “Romance and Cigarettes,” in which the Coen Brothers give north Jersey the Baz Luhrman “Moulin Rouge” treatment. It was utterly dreadful despite some laugh-out-loud parts, but I think I still got the better end of the stick there.)
My guess is that the I’ll find the conversations and reviews about “Dark Knight” more interesting than the movie itself.
David, our muggy swamp weather must have drifted east; it’s gorgeous here today–about 78 and low humidity, so hope that blows your way soon.
on July 24th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Allen Barra in the WSJ takes a darker view of the film. Here an excerpt:
“The Dark Knight” isn’t simply another superhero movie. In fact taken on its own terms it isn’t a superhero movie at all. It’s a supervillain movie, and the many critics and fans who are calling for Mr. Ledger to be nominated for an Academy Award are reading the film correctly–they want him nominated for the best actor, not best supporting actor.
Barra goes on to suggest that playing the role of Joker with the conviction that he displays may not have been good for Heath Ledger.
on July 25th, 2008 at 11:31 am
“Barra goes on to suggest that playing the role of Joker with the conviction that he displays may not have been good for Heath Ledger.”
It’s overreaching psychological speculation like that that that give journalism a bad name. And in the WSJ, too!
I think probably having a lot of medications that, when mixed can affect judgment and kill you, is what wasn’t good for poor Mr. Ledger.