Okay, I’ll go a little deep into the Christopher Nolan movies—some of themes that the film manages to explore in fairly intelligent ways. The films struggle with a declining faith in democratic institutions (which is one of the reasons why they haven’t come close to feeling dated yet—that decline has only gotten worse since Nolan made his films)—the desire to see democracy (in the deepest sense of people being able to govern themselves) preserved or, more accurately, reborn in a city state that’s lost it. What would it take for that to happen? What roles do elites play in that process? Do they do more harm then good? How can you find ways to make their power subordinate to democratic controls? Therefore it’s also a series of films about what is involved in the refounding of a city. How does one create a fresh start for an individual, or a people, in a closed world governed by corrupt institutions? Catwoman, Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne, Gordon,Dent, the League of Shadows—they each struggle with this in different ways throughout the trilogy.
The general appeal of superhero movies is that they make all the worlds problems solvable by just finding good, powerful people and having them beat up the bad, powerful people that make everyone else’s life miserable. There’s something profoundly anti-democratic about this approach, but immensely appealing precisely because it makes complicated and potentially intractable problems comprehensible and resolvable. Nolan actually grapples with the tension between elites and average citizens. Does Batman empower the citizens of Gotham, or does he preserve a kind of learned helplessness in them. Can Gotham be free as long as Batman is in it?
So basically the movies are exploring the question of what citizens need to rule themselves (and in important ways Gotham is the main character of these films). So what do they need?
-Resources, to not be governed by necessity
-Stability, so as not to be governed by insecurity
-Will, to have the ability to make choices
-Institutions, to standardize and automate the process of governance
-Understanding of human imperfections, to create something that can account for our own limitations
-the lawgiver, some sort of founding visionary who is able to set this up and then get out of the way
And throughout his films Nolan plays with these ideas. Lets take the idea of stability. This runs through everything: The Joker’s argument that we can only be as good as our environment allows us to be (and his attempts to demonstrate that by altering the conditions of Gotham. The joker is the embodiment of the loss of control in the face of arbitrary power. The metaphor at the end of Batman Begins where the city literally tears itself apart from fear. If we cannot control our context we cannot master ourselves. And to a certain extent that’s true. Batman usually has to come in and save the citizens of Gotham, except when he doesn’t (they make the decision on the boat to save themselves. The city doesn’t tear itself apart when Bane reverts it to a state of nature). While Joker was gonna blow the boat anyway, and Bane was going to destroy Gotham, those moments are plot points that were needed to make these movies, not just exercises in political theory. Although it’s worth noting that the problem is elites fighting elites, and if we could just reduce their power in general none of this would be a problem to begin with.
And the fact that the citizens do occasionally save themselves, when not artificially induced to destroy each other (via the fear toxin, for instance) means that at least some of this is a question of will. Raz A Gul is pretty explicity that we’re all agents capable of making moral choices. Gotham is to be punished because its citizens chose to be corrupt. Crime is a property of society’s indulgence. There is no context. “the criminal is not complicated.” You don’t need to have Batman’s resources to make a difference. ‘The training is nothing. The will is everything. The will to act.’ Batman agrees. But Rachel Dawes, his moral center, doesn’t. As long as people are afraid they won’t act. Perhaps they need something to make them be less afraid. But Batman can’t be that person because he’s illegitimate—because he isn’t accountable to the city in the way that Harvey Dent could be.
But if our democratic institutions are corrupted, how do we preserve them. Can they be purified from the inside, when the image of authority is much more Fleiss than Gordon? Although it’s not like Gordon is an angel. He reminds Dent that politics is compromise, incremental rewards for incredible work, and that if you want other people to live cleanly you have to get yourself dirty. “I don’t get points for being an idealist. I have to do the best I can with what I have.” Of course for most people that's not enough. We yearn for purity, which is why Batman sacrifices himself to preserve Den's image. The whole Dent act is built on a lie, and while that bothers Gordon to the point that he comes clean, he also very quickly learns that he doesn’t have the luxury of clean hands—he sees what Bane does with the truth, and at the end of the series keeps Batman’s identity a secret even though it’s a lie—because it’s a lie that will produce a greater good. Alfred lectures Bruce about this throughout the movies. But if we NEED these people, and these lies, are we really capable of self-rule? Can we trust the people we empower to lie to us? How do we resolve these tensions?
To stick with Alfred, while Wayne gets the 'burn the forest down' advice in Dark Knight, in Dark Knight Rises Alfred's position evolves--Gotham doesn't need Batman. It needs Wayne's resources (and while he mothballs his generator because he's afraid of other people/people who aren't him using it, they get ahold of it anyway. Could it have been safer if it was in public hands? Could security measures have been built in? At least we would have gotten a lot of clean energy out of it. But his attempt to keep us safe without our consent backfires. And Alfred is right about him confronting Bane. If, instead of going after Bane himself he brought along a few SWAT teams the movie ends a few hours early, but Gotham is saved. At that point we really didn't need Batman. In fact, Batman made things worse. He saves the day in the end, but he's also cleaning up his own mess.
There's a lot of tensions, and I think Nolan reaches some tentative conclusions, but I think his conclusions are far less interesting then the questions he raises, and the way he embeds them in the characters in his story. I could go on for pages, but you get the idea. I could also go back and edit this, but instead I’m just going to hope it’s reasonably clear. It’s been a while since I sat down and thought about these movies.
LoathedVermin72 wrote: I think Nolan's Batman movies suck, and it's largely because he DOES confuse darkness for depth. Again, that's a superficial, tonal quality.
and this is why you're wrong
