Ambition is a wonderful thing to possess, but sometimes a
surfeit of ambition can be a film's fatal flaw. The Dark Knight Rises is the
third and final instalment in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and it
provides him with the biggest canvas he has ever worked on. There is so much
going on in the film, with so many characters following their own agendas in
different locations, as Nolan and his brother Jonathan (his regular
co-screenwriter) tell a story that spans months; and the result is a picture that's
easily the director's most bloated and unfocused work. He tries to pull the disparate
strands together for his explosive finale, and he just about gets there, but
the strain this puts on the Nolans' storytelling skills is all too evident.
This strain is epitomised by one moment in particular. Bruce
Wayne (Christian Bale), beaten but resurgent, finds himself stranded in the
middle of God-knows-where with no money, no allies and no visible means of
transport. We wonder how he is ever going to find his way back into Gotham, a
city held hostage and rendered inaccessible by Bane (Tom Hardy) and his
army, but the Nolans choose to answer that question by not answering it. By a
stroke of the editor's hand, Wayne is back in Gotham, and ready to fight back
against his new nemesis. The Dark Knight Rises is rife with such moments, in
which characters appear from nowhere and make decisions to serve the twists of
the convoluted plot (Jim Gordon carrying the true story of Harvey Dent around in his pocket is another groaner). The film should be sleek and gripping, but the first two
hours of this overlong picture feel cumbersome, uneven and inelegant, with the
overall tone one of stifling portentousness.
The Dark Knight came out just four years ago but The Dark
Knight Rises picks up its story eight years after Batman vanished into the
night at the end of that film, taking the blame for Harvey Dent's death so the
DA's gleaming reputation would not be tarnished. He has spent the intervening
years living in a Howard Hughes-like seclusion, while everyone outside Wayne
Manor wants a piece of him. Wealthy philanthropist Miranda Tate (Marion
Cotillard) wants to get her hands on Wayne's fusion energy gizmo, devious board
member Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn) wants to get his hands on Wayne's shares, while
cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) wants to get her hands on his family
jewels (not like that – this is a Christopher Nolan film, remember). As well as
introducing us to these new faces, The Dark Knight Rises has to establish
Hardy's villainous pedigree and find room for resourceful street cop Blake
(Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and as the film clumsily hopped between these plot
strands, I wondered if there really was any need for more than an hour of
exposition at the start of the third film in a trilogy?
Nolan is clearly building towards something in these opening
stages, but to what? The Dark knight Rises is not content to simply bring the
story of Batman to a satisfactory close; Nolan intends to make something
mythic, novelistic, topical and spectacular. With that in mind, some of his
storytelling choices are simply baffling. Bane's grand plan – to instigate an uprising of the lower classes in Gotham before destroying it months later –
makes little sense, and the long stretch in the middle of the picture, in which
Bruce Wayne lies immobile while Gotham falls apart, almost kills the film stone
dead. The Dark Knight Rises is 164 minutes long but that's not a problem (anyone
who knows me will tell you how much I like long films) but the problem is how
long it feels, and the wildly inconsistent pacing and storytelling makes much
of the opening two hours almost interminable.
And yet, Nolan's qualities shine through on numerous
occasions. His handling of action sequences is still lacking but it has
improved considerably on the often incoherent scenes in his previous Batman
films, and Wally Pfister's cinematography is predictably striking. He also has
an undeniable knack for casting, and some of the supporting performances here
do more than their share to keep the picture alive. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is
terrific as the young, idealistic cop who essentially becomes Batman's stand-in
while he's out of commission, and Tom Hardy brings a presence and direct brutality
to Bane, even if there's only so much that any actor can do with that character
(Having to emote from behind a mask does nothing for Hardy). The star turn
here, however, is Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, who gives the whole production a
lift whenever she appears on screen. Hathaway brings two crucial elements to
the picture – a sly wit and a whiff of sensuality – that Nolan seems
chronically averse to, and her role is vital for puncturing the self-importance that hangs over The Dark Knight Rises, although it is never completely dispelled.
As such, we know that the ending is going to be something
big, and to be fair to Nolan, the last 45 minutes of the picture is where it
all comes together to an effective degree. Is it worth waiting for? Yes, on
balance I think it is, but it's hard to avoid feeling a sense of disappointment
after The Dark Knight Rises, a film that fails because it has lost a sense of
perspective on what it needs to be. Nolan appears to have positioned himself as
a creator of fantastical sights with his Batman trilogy and Inception, but I
think it would be good for him to remember Memento, which remains his best
work. Working on a small, streamlined picture again may do Christopher Nolan
the power of good, allowing his technical proficiency and storytelling
ingenuity to really take flight. With a weighty behemoth like The Dark Knight
Rises, he never looks likely to get off the ground.