The latest installment of the Batman saga directed by Christopher Nolan has been hitting the screens since yesterday. A grand spectacle for an intense and emotion-filled conclusion.
Batman down
From the previous two films, we learned that watching a Christopher Nolan Batman film is not just about seeing an action movie, it’s certainly about experiencing the best in terms of action film with a crafted story and actors who know how to perform. The Dark Knight Rises is no exception to this rule.
The story is set 8 years after The Dark Knight where Gotham idolizes Harvey Dent, who died a hero, allegedly murdered by Batman. Bruce Wayne hides away in his manor, with no contacts, no social events, no frivolities, and no energy left in Batman’s body. The attack on the city by Bane and his army of mercenaries will gradually rouse him from his stupor, only to realize he is too weak to defeat Gotham City’s new evil.
Christopher Nolan dismantles superhero conventions here, weakening the myth, revealing a human, fragile, and isolated face. With brilliance, he brings Batman to the ground, folded.
Gotham ravaged
Bruce Wayne, as in the first two installments, is physically inhabited by Christian Bale, who takes him down paths of introspection. He infuses Bruce Wayne’s pain, Batman’s dark side, and his mystery into his gaze. The rest of the cast measures up to the film and its expectations: Gary Oldman, as always, as Jim Gordon, never ceases fighting, never gives up. As for new additions, Anne Hathaway plays an incredible Catwoman, touching, sexy without ever being vulgar, and slightly opportunistic, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a hot-headed cop who will be much needed. Marion Cotillard is the intelligent Miranda Tate, and Tom Hardy IS Bane… undoubtedly, one of the most aggressive and warlike villains Gotham City has ever known. A brute all muscles, a colossus, intelligent, whose on-screen presence takes over, ejecting Batman out of the field both literally and figuratively.
After his passage, Gotham is a sieged and lost city, ready to descend into chaos.
Rebirth
In the chaos that ensues, one cannot help but see a metaphor for our society and the current crisis, the protection of the planet, and the struggle for energy, with Gotham portrayed as a battered character. Nolan’s camera wanders where it usually doesn’t film, the defeated superhero, the wounded gaze, while offering spectacular shots like the stadium attack, filmed in Pittsburgh with thousands of extras. The special effects are impressively realistic. Anxiety mounts crescendo in this finale, as grandiose as it is intimate. A gripping film with a disturbing realism, an apocalypse movie for combative but human superheroes, a movie where every shot is crafted, with lights sparkling amid chaos. This last film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga is undoubtedly the richest and most emotionally dense, the most complete, a dark and heroic conclusion.
