THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
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4.5/5
In The Dark Knight, the second of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the character Harvey Dent prophetically announces that: “The night is darkest just before the dawn - and I promise you, the dawn is coming.”
In The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final installment, the subtle pun of the film’s title is abundantly true.
The darkest was yet to come.
Eight years after the events of Dark Knight, in which Dent is driven mad by grief and disillusionment, Batman has taken the blame for Dent’s killing spree and gone into exile.
Subsequently, Batman’s real identity, billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), has become a recluse, crippled in one leg by the fall he survived at the end of The Dark Knight.
While hiding out in one of the wings of a rebuilt Wayne Manor, Bruce encounters cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anna Hathaway).
When Kyle escapes with a string of pearls that belonged to Bruce’s mother, he tracks her down and learns of her link to a vicious terrorist known only as Bane (Tom Hardy).
Also in the mix are beautiful businesswoman Miranda Tate (Marion Cottilard), dogged cop Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and scheming businessman Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn).
Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman return as Alfred Pennyworth, Lucius Fox and Commissioner Gordon respectively.
As Bane’s mammoth plans for Gotham bubble to the surface, Wayne warms to the idea of dusting off the cape and returning from the shadows.
Christopher Nolan announced himself as a provocative auteur with 2000’s Memento and confirmed it with the mind-bending Inception.
Directed and adapted by Nolan from a short story by his younger brother Jonathan, Memento was visually inventive and conceptually challenging.
Since then the two brothers have formed a formidable writing partnership.
After Christopher made a superb remake of the Norwegian film Insomnia in 2002, the siblings united to adapt the Christopher Priest novel The Prestige -which co-starred their Batman muse Christian Bale.
Christopher and Jonathan have since co-written the screenplays for The Dark Knight and now The Dark Knight Rises.
Rises continues the makers’ quest to ground the Batman story and visuals in reality.
The first film in the trilogy, Batman Begins, which Christopher Nolan co-wrote with David S. Goyer, had gothic elements that echoed of Tim Burton’s interpretations.
But in the next two films the Nolan brothers have kept those echoes out of earshot.
Special effects are used sparingly and are non-invasive, never breaking the absorbing realness of the action sequences.
There is palpable, visceral weight to the car chases and fight sequences.
You feel the impact of every punch and collision.
Importantly, Batman is not super-human – Wayne is flesh and blood and pushed to his limits by the hulking and articulate Bane.
Fans will be happy the film includes one of Bane and Batman’s most memorable encounters from the comic books.
As a nemesis Bane is a different beast to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning embodiment of the Joker.
With 14 extra kilograms of muscle and a little visually trickery, Hardy’s performance as Bane creates an imposing, calm and unwaveringly ruthless foe.
The Joker was an anarchic, mysterious terrorist who was out to prove that social order and common decency were a thinly veiled deceit.
But at no point in The Dark Knight did the Joker condemn the potential for humans to descend into chaos and turn on each other.
He reveled in it.
Bane is less forgiving and Batman, as he did with the Joker, battles to illustrate that humanity is worthy of salvation.
Wayne is fighting for our soul.
The charisma and intellectually relatable motives that Nolan gives the villains of the three films, including Ra’s al Ghul from Batman Begins, give them depth and mesmeric nuances that serve to reflect and contrast Bruce Wayne’s idealistic world view.
Rife with the recurring themes of Christopher Nolan’s other films - like grief, guilt, memory and morality - The Dark Knight Rises does not spoon feed its audience.
The plot unfolds at a rapid pace and Nolan continues to perfect his method of building tension through parallel action.
This creates a dense atmosphere on screen.
To grasp the intricacies of the story, the audience is required to concentrate and hang on every character’s word for 165 minutes.
This will intimidate some viewers, but Nolan’s approach will serve the film’s longevity as a piece of art.
But one point of conjecture, among critics and viewers alike, has been Bane’s muffled dialogue.
The villain wears a mask that hides his facial disfigurement.
As a result, Hardy’s delivery is both over-articulated and at times hard to understand.
But one can just as easily interpret this as a realistic character trait than dismiss it as an error in the director’s judgment.
While the motivations of some of the principal characters are a little under-cooked, the flaws in The Dark Knight Rises are ultimately superficial.
Nolan is served by strong, dignified and emotionally invested performances from each cast member, especially Caine as Wayne’s long-suffering butler.
It’s clear the actors support the Nolan brothers' grand vision.
While it never reaches the academic territory of Zack Snyder’s faithful big-screen adaptation of another DC comic, Watchmen, Rises does share similarly grand moral questions.
It’s no coincidence that the writer of the Watchmen comics, Alan Moore, also worked on Batman storylines for DC.
Nor is it chance that Christopher Nolan has produced a big screen reboot of another DC character, Superman.
Next year’s Man Of Steel is written by Goyer and directed by Snyder.
But before Superman buzz hits fever pitch and the Warner Bros marketing machine turns its attention to that project, movie-lovers are free to bask in Christopher Nolan’s accomplishment.
Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are the work of a visionary director who, at 41 years of age, can only get better.
Intelligent, epic and bold, this trilogy is a celebration of cinema storytelling that will be enjoyed by many future generations.
The trailer for The Dark Knight Rises.