The Dark Knight: So Serious
Dark Knight has already had near universal praise (Denby of the New Yorker one of the few who missed the point) and is approaching the $400m mark, so it hardly needs me to add to it, but there’s been a strange note emerging consistently in the British broadsheet reviews which goes something like ‘good though it is, we wish Nolan would do something more important with his talent’.
That tragically misguided sentiment needs speaking to.
In TDK, Chris Nolan and his brother and co-writer Jonathan take one of modern culture’s greatest myths, and with the help of seven of our finest actors (now sadly, six) and an army of collaborators, re-invent it as a parable for our sad and troubled times.
Telling unvarnished and difficult truths about what America has become in its war against terror, and the corrosive consequences for all of us to have the dream of our superpower so tarnished, The Dark Knight has succeeded where a dozen more ‘worthy’ attempts have failed. In what Randy Pausch would call a ‘head fake’ it wraps a hard moral and political message about Iraq, Terror and our wars in a mythical wrapper and takes that message to a mass audience who are, in astonishing numbers, embracing it: because – not despite – of this layering, this mixing of the mythical and the specifically urgent, TDK is on the way to becoming the biggest movie of all time.
If there is more important work than this for a story teller to do, I don’t know what it is. The Nolans make me proud to be a filmmaker.
July 28th, 2008 at 08:24
Just found this:
http://washingtonindependent.com/view/batmans-dark-knight
July 30th, 2008 at 15:56
Very well put- and a pox on genre snobs.
All too often the very same people who’ll applaud say, a production of Henry V with ‘war on terror’ references scoff at the idea that a medium as ‘low culture’ as a comic book should have the same artistic aspirations.
I thought TDK as nigh-on perfect. My only quibble was with Christian Bale’s ‘Bat Voice’ but even that made sense as part of his persona.
Anyone who doesn’t want to make a film with meaning that lots of people end up seeing is either a liar or a fool. Popular, commercial cinema can and should have something to say. After all, would Wall-E have been such a smash if it was really just about a cute robot?
September 24th, 2008 at 08:55
[...] Discovering that Chuck Roven, one of the biggest and most successful producers in Hollywood, and the man behind my favourite film of the year, and the second biggest movie of all time, The Dark Knight, is a genuinely decent, profound and eclectic human being. A living, breathing exemplar of the fact that you can triumph within the system without dumbing down one jot. This is a man who in his time has written and acted in films, breeds horses, managed race-car drivers, and a roster of musicans including Alanis Morisette, The Goo Goo Dools, Wheeza and many others, was married to the redoubtable Dawn Steel, first female head of a studio, and some how along the way produced some of the best and biggest movies of all time, including Twelve Monkeys, City of Angels as well as both the Nolan Batman movies. Chuck was our first meeting and an inspirational one. [...]