As regular readers of this blog will know I tend not to
write about ‘personal’ things, mostly because I prefer discussing Afrika Reich than myself. Today is an
exception as earlier in the week I saw The
Dark Knight Rises… and want to tell you about it.
The first thing you need to know is that I very rarely go to
the cinema. I find the communality of it off putting: all that chomping popcorn
and chatting when I’ve come to see a film. In fact I’m a total fascist on the
subject of talking in the cinema; when I saw Batman Begins I almost got involved in a punch-up because the
person in front of me wouldn’t shut up. Second, and only a small cabal of
people know this so I’m revealing more than usual today, I’ve been a closet
Batman fan all my life… so my trip to the BFI’s IMAX was quite an occasion.
And well worth it. The
Dark Knight Rises is a spectacle on a scale rarely seen these days: epic in
its sweep with electrifying set-pieces and a real sense of danger, characters I
genuinely cared about and a score so bombastic it threatened to give me a heart
attack. Writer / producer / director Christopher Nolan’s insistence on getting
as much of the action ‘in camera’ (as opposed to using CGI) pays off handsomely
– as absurd as the notion of man dressed as a bat is, the whole thing feels
real, credible. It’s not a perfect film (one plot twist is decidedly naff) but
I found the overall emotional effect of the film deeply satisfying.
The whole experience was further enhanced by the gargantuan
IMAX screen and sound so impressively loud that my ears were still ringing next
morning! If you enjoyed the first two parts of Nolan’s trilogy I wholeheartedly
recommend you seek this out, especially at an IMAX.
For me, the greatest triumph of The Dark Knight Rises was how effortlessly it fused character, action,
morality and politics within a realistic, fairy-tale setting… and here I hope
you can see the connection with Afrika
Reich and why I’m enthusing so much. Indeed the mythology of Batman, its theme
of revenge and aesthetic (more of the latter in ‘F is for…’), was an influence
on my book. It’s always surprised me, for instance, that no one has made the
connection between Hochburg and Ra’s al Ghul.
I read that Christopher Nolan is going to take some time off
now before finding his next project; he’s looking for a thriller more grounded
in the real world, ‘something like James Bond’. If anybody has a contact at
Syncopy, let me know!
