The Dark Knight Rises – Dark, Knightly and Rises Up to Expectations

Director: Christopher Nolan

Actors: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy

Rating: 4/5

Once in every few years, a films expectation reaches fever pitch. Yet, only a handful ever have lived up to it. The last in the Batman Trilogy, to the delight of fans, does. That it does so while continuing on the same themes it addressed before, is a feather hardly any film franchisee has claimed. 

Seven years since Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) retired Batman, a new villain Bane (Tom Hardy) threatens not only Gotham’s peace but its very existence. When the entire city is taken hostage by Bane’s men and the police are locked up, Batman must return, and fight an impossible resistance with a handful others.

The least one expects from a very popular, self-professed end of a series film is a grand scale. Most commercial cinema merely increases the effects and physical action. While Nolan indeed delivers on these, he goes beyond.

A bank or even a building being held hostage is well known in cinema. Did you ever imagine an entire city held hostage for months? Like in the second part of the series, Nolan then asks the question: would normal citizens rise up to become heroes?

Yet, morally and metaphorically, ‘The Dark Knight’ was stronger. There he asked the same question, but to individual citizens and in the climax on the two boats, to an opposite group of people. There, Batman wins because people in the two boats beat their instinct for self survival by refusing to kill the others for their own sake. In that scene, everyone becomes a superhero. Everyone becomes Batman.

That edginess of script, that triumph of true courage, is missing in this part. It compensates by rising on other counts.

The Nolan brothers (Christopher and Jonathan) know how to intermix a grim story of power, corruption, control and heroism with a spectacular razzle-dazzle. In a very powerful screenplay the brothers bring attention to the corruption, the power structures and the chaos of the affluent class.

And the brothers, in creating villains that are alter-egos of Batman, and in often giving them ideals as high as him but in the end showing these anarchist villains failing, perhaps makes the greatest joke, the greatest metaphor on the state of the world today.

Perhaps the hidden, dark message is that no matter how much one resists – be it Batman or his villains, a corrupt power structure and affluence, will survive. The brothers perhaps want to say that resistance, eventually, proves futile. Perhaps they want to say the opposite, that good and bad, light and darkness and falling and rising take turns and that no matter what, one has to resist.   

Nolan is a man in absolute control of his craft. You’ll be hard pressed to find a man with such an ability to interplay sound and visuals to create a three dimensional vision in your head.

Hans Zimmer assist him with superlative yet gentle and sombre background score while as expected, the special effects division delivers the wares without going overboard.

Nolan carries forward the themes from the previous two films, fear, death, anger, corruption, heroism and chaos and rounds them up into a perfect whole.

In the end though, the true hero that rises from this series is Christopher Nolan. In the wasteland of commercial Hollywood cinema, he is the best thing that has happened in a long long time. May his clan increase everywhere. 

(This review was written for the wire service, IANS)

The Intouchables – Must Touch & Feel

Director: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

Actors: Omar Sy, François Cluzet

Rating: 4/5

What comes to mind when you think disability? Sadness, pity and charity? And what comes to mind when you think disability films? Same? If that’s the case, ‘The Intouchables’ – the story of a man paralysed from the neck down and his helper, will surprise you with its wit, humour, fun and zest for life.

Driss (Omar Sy) goes for an interview as a helper for a paraplegic person only to get unemployment benefits. His acerbic frankness wins the heart of the disabled person Philippe (François Cluzet) who hires him against better advice.

The two form an unlikely pair, one physically disabled, the other socially; one morose the other full of life; one with the money to do everything but not the limbs, the other with the limbs and life but no money or social standing; one white the other black.

As they touch each others life, in a fun, poignant manner they change forever, becoming more the men than they ever though possible.

Can disability be fun?

The two things that will win your heart in the film, is its witty humour and the chemistry of the lead pair. Rarely in cinema have two actors been so different and yet their pairing been so perfect, and their timing so immaculate.

Omar Sy as the black man from a Parisian ghetto is a revelation while veteran actor François Cluzet delivers a punchy performance.

The Intouchables is a very important film in the history of cinema, because it is one of the rare instances where a film about a person with disability does not rely on pathos, melodrama and pity. The writer/director pair of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano handle this true story of an actual odd couple with a dignity, sensitivity and humour rare in cinema. 

It becomes and important film because it explores a hitherto rarely explored dimension of disability i.e. the life and living of people with disability and not their sadness. Yes it is sad they are disabled, but it is in no way pathetic and no way does it mean that life ends where disability begins. Indeed, many disabled people claim today – to the utter surprise and horror of ‘normal’ people – that for many of them life actually began after their disability.  

Thus in showing that the most precious commodity in life is not necessarily the use of limbs, but a positive frame of mind, friends and laughter, it becomes a great, funny, poignant and uplifting film. Don’t miss it for the world. 

(This review has been written for the wire service, IANS)