August 13, 2008
The Dark Knight
Nikil Saval in n+1:
Few movies have been so adept at providing easy metaphors for their own incompetence. But The Dark Knight, while doing this, eagerly does more: it presents itself as not just a comic book movie (though it is decidedly that); it is also an allegory, as thick as the Divine Comedy, for the present condition of America's debilitated relationship to the world. The movie's "deep structure" is a way, then, of absolving its curious lack of levity and joy, the sort of quality that makes a comic book comic. But The Dark Knight, as nearly every film critic in America seems to agree, is not a conventional genre film. It desires the status of art. And so, watching it, you can't avoid noticing how it lays out its purpose in deadly earnest. Its chaos is expensively calculated, and it is not at all benign.
To take it seriously is to come up against the sheer silliness of the conventions it has retained. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), a billionaire who throws the most successful fundraisers in town, dates fantasy supermodel ballerinas with tremendous busts. (This is not how ballerinas look in the real world.) A languorous, overlong portion of the movie is devoted to Batman's attempt—in a move made familiar by every second installment of a superhero franchise—to discard his suit and return to everyday billionaire life, so that lawful Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), a mob-busting DA like Rudy Giuliani, can run things. But of course it turns out legal methods and due process are never enough to combat anarchic evil, and so Batman must return to fight, using criminal methods of his own.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 05:51 PM | Permalink
Comments
Why do people who dislike genres nevertheless review them? If you like comics, and smart action movies, you'll like this one. If you don't, then stay home and engage in whatever omphaloskeptic practices suit you.
Posted by: BReed | Aug 13, 2008 10:54:51 PM
Word of the day alert.
But you have mistakenly taken this to be a review of a movie rather than a rather unsubtle, but very "enlightened" political screed. This probably from a guy who is currently incapable of relaying a recipe for meatloaf without reference to the Bush Crime Family, and including "Niebuhrian" somewhere in there.
This too shall pass.
Posted by: Carlos | Aug 13, 2008 11:34:59 PM
Well-done, Nikil Saval. Any review that highlights the A) laughable juvenilia, B) not-very-funny-at-all fascism 2.0 energizing the genre is fine by me. Next, let's discuss how said genre has coopted, debased and neutralized a generation or two of potential dissent; Sontag rhapsodized over Godard's Vivre Sa vie in '64 and 44 years later we have Leftist post-structuralists creaming in their jeans over the kevlar pecs and abs of the Dark Knight. Ms. Sontag is surely spinning in her grave, just as Ms. Riefenstahl is grinning in hers.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 14, 2008 4:32:28 AM
The major flaw in his argument is that this type of story is as old as story telling itself, and can be found in any culture, not just economic and militairy superpowers. From ancient myths to modern anime.
I get the feeling the writer just wants to demonstrate to me how clever and moral he is by calling someone else stupid and amoral. Which in itself is a stupid and slightly amoral way to go about it. Finding fault in others is certainly not a virtue.
Also, it was pretty obvious what the large black man was going to do. That's why he was so serene. That, and his appearance, demands not fear but respect. A man like this will do the right thing. He was not a (black) prisoner to expose our prejudice, but to make his decision more ethical. If it was a boat full of pregnant ladies, and if he himself was a pregnant lady, the sacrifice would be harder to justify.
For all his academic knowledge of ethics (or at least access to the wikipedia page on ethics), he's not very good at reading social situations.
Posted by: PeterJohn | Aug 14, 2008 5:27:23 AM
Any review of genre films based upon comic books/graphic novels that automatically writes them off as juvenilia automatically fails in my book, regardless of the merits of the rest of the commentary. Mr Saval offers this gem:
"The movie's "deep structure" is a way, then, of absolving its curious lack of levity and joy, the sort of quality that makes a comic book 'comic'."
Here then, laid bare, is Mr Saval's unfamiliarity with the rich history and variety of serious comics. That levity and joy are apparantly criteria for comics belies a great ignorance of the medium.
Mr Saval both dismisses "The Dark Knight" for not being juvenile enough - for the kiddie comic fans! - and chastises it for its 'adultness' (ie: its aspirations to obvious political allegory). With this agenda in mind, the film could not hope to satisfy or win: it will fail for its ambitions, and should it know its rightful place, it can be dismissed for the juvenilia it is.
What is it about 'comic book' criticism that brings out so much condescension and faux-superiority? My favourite is this, which imperiously dismisses any commentator or criticism other than Mr Savals:
"The point, though, is not that you need to think about these things*; no teenager (or film critic) who views the film is likely to pick up on the allegory."
Here, the jaw drops. Teenagers - and by which he means comic book fans - are perfectly attuned to the allegories and methodologies of superhero myths. They may not know big words for it, but they know. To Mr Saval's statement, it is pointless to point out that, in fact, comic book clientelle is mostly adult now, and that, you know, perhaps film critics understand allegories. Geez, some of us amateur film watchers get allegories too. In fact, the internet is full of discussion of The Dark Knight's allegory... they are discussing at length, and perfectly aware of its weaknesses and strengths ... and ... and, well, the condescension and self-defeating nature of this statement means that I feel perfectly able to dismiss whatever else the review offers out of hand.
* 'These things' being the obvious discourse on terrorism, torture, fascism, the insoluable nature of crime, the driving forces of vengeance and the outlaw nature of vigilanteism, etc... all the things the BatMan myth has been engaged with to varying degrees throughout its history, and particulary since the '80s.
Posted by: Buck Theorem | Aug 14, 2008 6:01:59 AM
Thank you, Buck. I think you summed up every problem (beyond the merely technical and unobservant) with this ideologically thick and wrongheaded "review."
Posted by: Damien | Aug 15, 2008 3:04:48 PM
Post a comment