As a lifelong Batman fan, I’m willing to forgive a lot … but the simpering orgy of praise from all quarters for Nolan’s reactionary third film makes me sick. So I will post worthy critical reviews here. Love, redguard
By Eileen Jones
Well, it seems Christopher Nolan had hisself an idea, he and his writer-brother Jonathan, when writing this Batman-movie-to-end-all-Batman-movies. They thought they’d angle it so that the populace of Gotham City, finally rebelling against the vicious plutocrats in control and demanding a more just society, would turn instantly into a French Revolution-type mob and go all Robespierre on the rich and powerful.
First the Nolans pulled a lot of rhetoric straight from the Occupy movement and put it in the mouth of Bane (Tom Hardy), the masked, muscled-out gargoyle with the silly voice who’s the villain of the piece. Bane’s up on the steps of City Hall or wherever, exhorting the people to rise up and take back control of their city from the Wall Street thieves and billionaire bloodsuckers. But during this oration, Nolan never cuts to reaction shots of the crowd—he’s pulling the old camera trick of making us, the audience, the “mob.”
Take that, you 99%-ers, you mob-waiting-to-happen, you incipient villains! Let this be a warning to you not to listen to any charismatic rhetoric about your rights as citizens!
Because sure enough, the dreadful working class hordes dressed in sinister motley casual-wear—hoodies and the sorta thing—are manipulated by Bane to take back their city. So the first thing they do is buckle down to releasing all the violent psychopathological criminals in the prison—that’s the first thing protesters always do, it’s Step One in the Social Justice Playbook. Then they go around looting violently and attacking women in fur coats.
