Busting Perceptions - The Dark Knight

As far as perception busting goes, there is no Hollywood filmmaker that needs it more than our beloved Christopher Nolan, and no film that needs it more than his so-called magnum opus, The Dark Knight.

This film is widely regarded by critics to be the best superhero film ever made, and one of the best films of the 2000s, but most importantly, its fandom could give religious fanatics a run for their money. While it is impossible to pinpoint genesis of this fervour, what I will do, in my humble way, is expose this cult classic for what it really is.
 
Nolan's greatest strength is not his directorial prowess, nor is it his skill as a writer. It is his ability to make the audience believe that he is a lot smarter than he actually is, so that when something doesn't make sense, the viewers, instead of seeing what is right in front of them and saying that it doesn't work, rack their brains trying to look for answers that even Nolan's genius mind cannot provide. Now this is much, much tougher than it sounds, and he deserves a lot more credit than Keyser Soze.

How Nolan accomplishes this is very simple - he packs every single moment in his films with action that moves slightly faster than sound, until it is bursting at the seams. The effect is that the audience knows what is happening, but does not have even a second to really think about why it is happening.

This particular feature of his films, while present even in his best work, Memento, is more and more pronounced in his later films, until the point where this shock, awe, and quickly-shift-focus-to-the-next-scene-before-you-can-think-about-the-last-one approach fails miserably in the abomination that is The Dark Knight Rises.

Since it would really suck if I bored the pants off of everyone with only my second post, I'm not going to delve into every single thing that is wrong with the film like a bitter spouse going through his/her partner's flaws with a fine-toothed comb. What I will do is talk about several scenes and/or points in the story which are either so badly done that they stick out like sore thumbs, or simply do not work at all.

To begin with, there is the poorly written courtroom scene where Harvey Dent is introduced for the first time, which serves no purpose except to let the audience know that Harvey Dent is just as witty and clever as every other major character in every Nolan film. Before you assume that I'm being petty and anal, there is a reason I started with this seemingly minor scene.

This scene, along with every other bad scene in the film, is symptomatic of a writer's biggest struggle, which is to make the story flow organically from the characters and situations without the writer's hand being visible behind the steering wheel. The mobster's gun, for some bizarre reason, doesn't fire, giving Harvey Dent a chance to say something cool and clever, thereby establishing a character trait that could've been done in a hundred other ways.

While the scene mentioned above is just character exposition and does not have a bearing on the plot of the film, making the same mistake in key scenes that move the story forward is fatal, which Nolan has done around seven times too many in this film.

From Lau's interrogation scene (where he claims that the money is the only reason he's still alive, but promises to testify against the entire mob simply because if he hands them the money, the mob would not have any to hire the Joker, and Nolan would be in a pickle), to the preposterously outlandish fingerprinting technique (a plot device that has absolutely no significance or requirement in the plot), Nolan is screaming from the rooftops to all intelligent viewers that this film is not for them!

But alas, intelligent viewers are a rare species in today's world, so Nolan decides to crank the stupidity up a notch by actually asking his audience to believe that Gordon managed to fake his death at a public event that was crawling with cops, seemingly without any help whatsoever from anyone, for a reason as lame as "I couldn't risk by family's safety", which he is still doing by the way, as the entire mob, not to mention the Joker's henchmen, are still free!

The real reason? You guessed it! Nolan needs to move the story forward, and what better way to do it than his shock, awe, and screw all logic approach? After all, why bother to come up with smarter scenes when you can have the "twenty-year cop" be stupid enough (which he's allowed to be, since he's not a main character) to get sucked into a fistfight with a psychotic genius of a villain who is clearly unaffected by physical injury, and sweep it under the rug with the amazing technique called intercutting.

Anyway, moving on to the coup de grâce, the Joker's supposedly brilliant 'social experiment', which is set up by Gordon's (read: Nolan's) inexplicable decision to transfer the prisoners in the ferry. While logical errors are often commonplace, even acceptable in big budget Hollywood films as long as there's a trade-off, this entire sequence fails on a much deeper level.

Despite all the thematic nuances of The Dark Knight trilogy that show us how dark its world, which is supposed to be a reflection of our world (the USP of the series), really is, I don't think Nolan truly understands how dark today's world actually is. A boat full of innocent civilians, or a boat full of violent criminals of what is supposed to be the most crime infested city in the world?

Are you kidding me? Is that actually supposed to be a choice, worthy of the climax of one of the most acclaimed and zealously loved films of the century? For those of you who live in denial, like Nolan expects you to, let me break this down for you. You're on your way home from work when you get kidnapped by a psycho who tells you that the only way you will live is if you shoot a known rapist in the head.

If this is like Sophie's Choice for you, then I really, really want to meet you, so that I can sell you to a museum for a boatload (pun intended) of money. Ten contrivances can be forgiven, but when a film's climax lacks emotional logic, it is simply unacceptable that the film goes on to garner as much praise as this one.

One hardly needs Freud to understand why everyone is blind to the countless grave flaws in this film. The reason is simple - as I mentioned above, the fast-paced nature of the film doesn't allow time to really absorb why something has happened on the first, second, or even third viewing, and let's face it, no one wants to admit that amidst a group of people because no one wants to look stupid. Instead, one convinces oneself that even the dumbest things in the film, such as its ending, make perfect sense.

Yes, blunders are a dime a dozen in this film. From the hitherto unseen big, scary prisoner that randomly comes in from nowhere during the crucial boat scene, to the Joker's ridiculous assumption that mobsters are criminals not for money or power, but because they like to do bad things, Nolan has taken too many liberties.

But hidden amidst all this chaos, there is one thing in the film that works. This is its central situation - will Batman be able to prevent the Joker from winning the 'battle for Gotham's soul'? Or will the Joker succeed in proving his point, which is that no one is incorruptible?

These questions have the potential to strike dramatic gold, but unfortunately come in only in the final act of the film, masked by the various errors in screenplay. If it wasn't for that, The Dark Knight had the potential to be one of the most unique superhero films, for it is a film in which the primary antagonist effectively wins, something which is never seen in mainstream Hollywood films.

But ifs and buts are not candy and nuts, and therefore, The Dark Knight, despite all its underlying potential, is far from being even remotely worthy of the acclaim and following it has. It is a heavily contrived and amateurishly written film that deserves, at best, to be remembered as a slightly above average Hollywood popcorn thriller, only by virtue of some crisp dialogue, a few stellar performances, and Hans Zimmer's hair-raising score. The fact that it is thought to be much more speaks volumes about cinema viewers today and Nolan's incredible ability to pull the wool over their eyes.