ON HARD-BALL SELLING AND COMPULSIVE TECHNOLOGY

Peter Jackson, acclaimed director of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, was in a bit of a pickle last year when he announced that he was going to shoot its prequel ‘the Hobbit’ at 48 frames per second – the usual and requisite amount is 24 fps. Digital projection systems are programmed to operate at 24 fps, which means that for ‘the Hobbit’ (to be released in two parts, in December 2012 and 2013) to hit screens later this year, they’d need an upgrade to facilitate the doubling of rate of projection. 

In addition, in what he dubs ‘the mega-epic pissing contest’, Film-Critic Roger Ebert (writing for the ‘Chicago Sun times’) takes the case of James Cameron (‘Titanic’, ‘Avatar’) who has come out saying that he’s planning to film ‘Avatar 2’ at 60 fps! He also adds with detail on how almost 17000 screens across North America are ‘already’ potent enough having done what’s necessary and are set to project images at 48 fps with a surcharge to be added to the basic cost of the movie ticket. About 39000 screens, he says, would have to do the same by the end of the year, and they’d all together have to be prepared when Cameron brings his bomb along in 2013. 

If this was a pissing contest, they’re crossing streams; it’s pouring on our faces. 

Now, it’s common knowledge that 3D projection had, by itself, caused a hike in ticket price in the past, for a decrease in brightness and picture-quality – for which you don’t need statistics to substantiate. All you have to do is lift your glasses the next time you’re at the theatre. That should help distinguish to yourself the film you wanted to watch from the one you were made to. 

Worse is the fate of enduring a film that has merely been ‘3D-fied’ as opposed to a film that was born so. There are films shot in 3D (like ‘Avatar’) and there are those which incorporate 3D elements through post-processing (like ‘Clash of the Titans’). The comparison is akin to that between a good photograph and one that’s Photoshopped – there’s something lowly about the latter that you can tell but you don’t have enough to file a complaint. The technology is new, it seems exciting; kids love it, parents don’t seem to have a choice – ‘Schindler’s list’ doesn’t play in theatres anymore. Martin Scorsese has endorsed it, with specific reference to Georges Melies’ idea of Film as ‘Spectacle’ in ‘Hugo’, his own authentic contribution to the 3D universe. 

It’s like the surgical procedure that a Good Doctor showed and the quacks of the world were quick to claim license to carry it out on their own. 

We’re days past the premiere of arguably the most awaited movie event of a decade, made by a man who has constantly turned 3D down with a different plan for grandeur in mind. I say ‘decade’ with comfort because I’m sure they didn’t ‘wait’ for movies, back in the day. Today, people play audience to a Trade Fair at home, on TV sets and the internet and it’s like the title-credits are losing out to pre-release marketing as far as ‘first impressions’ go. Speed-Dating seems to have won the People’s Choice award trumping good old-fashioned meet-cute. Trailers are ‘pleasure Bots’ in this lucid dream that plays out like a Philip K. Dick novel of man causing his own disappointment. 

I was as eager to watch ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ as it hit the screen on the 20th of July. But I hate to think my interest in it needn’t have been my own. I don’t know how much of it was ‘felt’ and how much ‘drilled into’ my head against my will – it’s like second-thoughts in the middle of a leap of faith as a voice inside says ‘suicide’. The film has been around for a year almost, debuting online with a teaser that ‘leaked’ and a Prologue last fall as popularized by director Christopher Nolan, having started it with the last instalment, ‘the Dark Knight.’ 

My opinion on the film aside, there’s no doubt that Nolan, with such impressive films as ‘Memento’, ‘Insomnia’ and ‘Batman Begins’ to his credit, would come up with (fairly) engaging fare. Isn’t the hype, in that case, a sort of insistence upon a point that has already been made? 

But then Nolan doesn’t believe in 3D. He’s wary of the ill-effects. In a time where the most obscure of family fare comes slapped with the 3D tag like free candy, it almost appears noble that he denounces it. Or is it? 

An IMAX ticket (in a report by Penn Manor High School) costs about $15.50 (for adults). A regular movie ticket costs about $9.50, while a DVD, let out a few months post-release, costs about $15. I don’t even need to point you to the outrage. Of course, this isn’t a move on my part to question the filmmaker’s intentions. He insists on spectacle, where the spectacle exists by itself; it merely needs to be told. He’s someone doing the telling. I understand. I’m a lover of this spectacle and wouldn’t intend blasphemy. 

Isn’t it a semi-fantastic, wishful thought to say that, though, these days? A more appropriate line would be to say that “the spectacle is manufactured and exists to be sold.” The Weinstein Company would counter-sign it with MPAA approval. 

I’d like to close this write-up with a line from Chomsky’s ‘the Common Good’ (1998), the context being how we fancy ourselves to be in an age of uprising against the totalitarianism of institutions, be it a State, an Education system or even the Entertainment industry; how we think nothing escapes our sensibility, even if not our attention. 

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” 

In other words, Christopher Nolan is smart. Peter Jackson is smart. James Cameron is smart; the Weinsteins are smart and so is the MPAA. 

The big question here is “Are we?”

THE SHEER DELIGHT OF WATCHING HIM RISE

DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN 

STARRING: CHRISTIAN BALE, ANNE HATHAWAY, TOM HARDY, MICHAEL CAINE, GARY OLDMAN, MORGAN FREEMAN, JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT with CILLIAN MURPHY, JOSH PENCE and LIAM NEESON 

I liked ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ in much the same way that I liked ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II’ and I trust that by saying that I mean no one any discredit. I had always wondered if J.K. Rowling had thought things through to completion before she even began with the franchise – it’s a mystery that has so far been unexplained. But I know for a fact in the case of Christopher Nolan that nothing was preordained. The script to the third film was ‘cracked’ as he puts it; the ends were tied. And it all comes down to how well he could do it. 

So how well has he done it? We shall have to look at the source material for that, regardless of the fact that the screenplay is original and penned by Nolan along with brother Jonathan. The film introduces three characters from various phases of the Batman spectrum as published by DC comics, but the focal point as far as I could see was in the introduction of Bane as a physical counterpart to a fairly weakened Batman. Bane seems to have first appeared in a comic called ‘Knightfall’ where he’s famous for having broken Batman’s back – it was a moment’s half-smile to see the scene repeated on screen, rather religiously. 

Bane (Tom Hardy) breaks Batman’s back, Selina Kyle has his. Nolan has always done a wonderful job of giving comic characters enough human features to inspire empathy in all. Even in the most apathetic character of his – the Joker – he could bring about understanding, if not get us fit our feet in his shoes. Selina, played by Anne Hathaway enhancing the shades of haughtiness we saw in ‘Havoc’, is as capable of vulnerability as Batman wears on bat-suit sleeve. Bane, we see, is capable of some of his own as well. All these people are humans behind their masks where not all who are unmasked are as human as we might see them to be. We had Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy, who returns for a rather pointless, but exciting, cameo) in ‘Batman Begins’ as examples. In ‘the Dark Knight’ we had Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). That we have yet another in ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ is all I shall say at this point in time. 

Why I felt the need to consult source material was to show the ropes of responsibility that seem to have tied Nolan to the wall as he wrote this screenplay. For all you know, the ropes could be his own, where he wouldn’t want to do injustice to the film from two angles very dear and extremely competent – the previous two films on the one hand, the comic books on the other. There are two loose ends that he’s tied together with fond recollection and a lot of nostalgia inspired by means of spirituality that goes back to ‘Batman Begins’. There’s also a vague rekindling of the Joker’s famous social experiment from ‘the Dark Knight’ that doesn’t work as well the second time around. 

Nolan, thus, looks over his shoulder with a perpetual eye on the past as he makes his way ahead. The result is a heavily-directional pile of sequences that do little but propel the story forward. One of the most fundamental of reasons as to why I liked ‘Batman Begins’ was the power of its scenes where every single one of them stand out. ‘the Dark Knight’, I thought, was a close match, and it is in this aspect that ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ is a little bit of a letdown. I’ve always seen Nolan to be a man capable of bursts of genius alongside constant action so that the bar-chart doesn’t hit a low anytime. But ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ is a little too active for its own good. It’s like he shot a lot of scenes and found a way to fit them in on the editing table. 

Of course this doesn’t imply a complete lack of glory. Batman contributes to ample heroism in the limited screen space he has (Bruce Wayne dominates, even though not as convincingly as he did in ‘Batman Begins’). Selina Kyle does justice to a cameo stretched to the limit with one-liners that thrive on Hathaway’s grace. Bane has his moments in that, as I mentioned before, he’s almost a sort of body double; someone who could match Batman blow-by-blow. There is suspense that’s kept alive right up to the end and there is ambiguity, some cheeky stuff as well, which Nolan has proven, time and again, to be capable of. And then there are scenes that cry for attention as though they’ve been compelled to exist – like the one snapshot that’s supposed to sum up the spirit of the film on the whole, which looked posed and arranged than natural. That didn’t stop me from screaming myself hoarse at it, though. 

I disapproved of Nolan the last time he tried his hand with a big haul of actors (‘Inception’, to be specific). This isn’t to say he didn’t manage to ‘pull it off’ but to say that he does just that. In ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ we have too many characters with too little time – to an extent that one of them has to sleep with Mr. Wayne in a show of desperation. If it’s not fair on part of the characters, it’s even worse on the actors’ front. Aside from regulars Michael Caine (whose Alfred, this time, lacks the usual spice of sarcasm on a melodramatic high), Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox, who looks too composed for one put in a spot) and Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon spends too much time on a comfy hospital bed as the rookie runs around), we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Det. John Blake who interns with the Batman before recruitment for a permanent job. And we have Miranda Tate, a pioneer of Fusion Energy at Wayne Enterprises, a role that Marion Cotillard, I thought, shouldn’t have been cast in. 

 If there’s one thing I’d give Nolan total credit for, it’s that he knows his action choreography. Ben Affleck ('Gone Baby Gone', 'the Town') is the only other name that comes to mind when I think in those terms. ‘the Dark Knight Rises’ has more than usual – some too dull at times to put on the same pedestal as the man behind them. I could deal with that, though. This is, after all, a two-and-a-half star movie that gets three for the show. Except I’d give it four because I love Batman like that. And for Hans Zimmer and for the love of cheese.