SPOLIER ALERT: This post contains a MASSIVE spoiler for The Dark Knight Rises. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go see it and come back. I’ll wait.
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” This is the quote from A Tale of Two Cities that Jim Gordon reads as a eulogy to the (seemingly) dead Bruce Wayne, who appeared to have died in the nuclear fireball he had just saved Gotham from. The inclusion of this quote had more meaning than just its appropriateness. From early on in the planning stages for the follow-up to The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan stated that Charles Dickens’ classic tale was a major inspiration for the plot of the movie. If you haven’t read the book, here are some of the highlights: A virtuous member of the aristocracy, a character who finds redemption after an ill-spent life, a violent revolution against the upper class, a prison storming, etc. Even the major themes of the book (social justice, the symbolism of water as a metaphor for the destructive and uncontrolled anger of the revolutionaries), were obvious influences on the movie.
Much has been made of Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and I could probably add little to it. I can only give my personal observations. When I first saw the trailer for Batman Begins, I thought “They’re making another Batman movie? And now he’s a ninja? This looks dumb.” This, of course, was on the heels of Batman and Robin, a movie MST3K’s Mike Nelson described as “not the worst movie ever, but in fact the worst thing ever. The single worst item we as a civilization have ever labored to produce”. Needless to say, my first impressions were very wrong. Nolan’s trilogy is a masterpiece, and he will be remembered in the same breath as Spielberg, Scorsese, and Hitchcock.
So what’s my point in all this? (You’re dangerously assuming I have one). Just this: The Dark Knight Rises is proof alone why the classics still matter, why they should not only be taught by teachers but paid attention to by students.
And I know that’s hard.
In 9th grade we read Dickens’s Great Expectations. My impressions at the time were that there was a really good 150 page story buried somewhere in that 400 pages of impenetrably dense prose, but too many of us were turned off to the book by the fact it was so damn hard to read. And I while I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I’m not sure any other book had a greater impact on my writing style, not so much in what to emulate but in the pitfalls of making your writing inaccessible to your readers. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve made a long and lucrative career out of making myself sound smarter than I really am thanks to a wide and advanced vocabulary, but my wife took a hatchet to all those “big words” when she was editing the updated draft of my book. As much as I chaffed at it, feeling like an artist having various shades of paint taken away, I’m glad she did. It is not so much the idea being presented as how it is presented. And if those ideas aren’t accessible, it doesn’t matter how good they are.
Any idea, any piece of art or entertainment can be great. The Dark Knight is possibly one of the best crime dramas ever, certainly the best one since The Godfather, yet boiled down to its bare essentials, it’s about a man who dresses up as a flying rodent beating up a clown. Let that thought rattle around in your brain for a minute.
Reading the liner notes for The Dark Knight Rises musical score, I was struck by a story Nolan related. When he was first starting work on Batman Begins, he fretted about the music. Danny Elfman’s Batman theme was classic, but it didn’t fit the direction he wanted to take. He wanted something heroic yet original…but composer Hans Zimmer (a musical genius who I believe is our generation’s answer to Bach or Mozart) saw a different approach. He saw not a comic book hero but a damaged man whose life was shaped by pain and loss. “Why make it heroic? Why not play the tragedy and nobility of the tale, like an Elgar concerto?” Yep, there’s that classical stuff again, working its way into our modern day movies.
So there you have it. What’s old is new again. Parents and teachers, when your kids or students ask why they have to read this or listen to that, tell them, “Because maybe, just maybe, someday you’ll be the next Dickens or Elgar. Or the next Christopher Nolan.”
-Mike, out.
