The hope of Gotham

As a lifelong die-hard fan of fantasy, SF and superhero films, I’m delighted that Dark Knight was made because it should silence, at least for a while, both the “I don’t watch such movies” self-mutilators and the “Leave your brain outside and just be entertained” patronising scum. This is a film that will move you, provoke you, and make you think — a dark mirror of the real world where the political allegory is always sharp and relevant but thankfully never heavy-handed. Christopher Nolan’s contribution to speculative fiction cinema, hyper-realism, an exaggerated representation of reality where even the most outlandish events could actually conceivably happen, is a concept that should both inspire and scare future filmmakers, who will now be judged far more harshly. Suspension of disbelief is fine — after all, it’s no more than what nearly every Indian movie requires from its audience — but a close eye on internal logic, structure and pace, an obsessive nose for detail and consistency and a taste for combining the comic-book outlandish with the eerily normal will now be demanded by audiences for every subsequent special-effects-intensive summer blockbuster. In other words, sure, give us the special effects and the explosions, stun us with scale, but that won’t be enough — you’ll have to tell a good story, a tight, real, human story, a well-constructed, gripping, heart-felt story, and only then will we buy your tiffin-boxes, your toys and mouse-pads. Messrs Bale, Ledger and Nolan have just raised the bar, and I suspect it will be a while before anyone else manages to leap over it.

Producers and creators of entertainment media all over the world are trying to build mammoth franchises out of existing archetypes new and old, from James Bond and Narnia to the never-stale Mahabharat, aware that nothing works like a classic story told in a relevant, visually spectacular context. Where the whole magical process usually goes wrong is simply in not paying enough attention to detail, getting the best ingredients together but becoming so obsessed with the grand scheme or the profit percentages that the essential element, the story that drives it all, becomes secondary. Films like Dark Knight, which manage to balance the giant-worldwide-big-budget-blockbuster nonsense with genuine heart, should give us all hope. Sometimes the hype is justified, sometimes our money goes to talented people who actually work hard and love doing what they do, who come together to produce a real work of art. Go watch the film if you haven’t yet.

Samit Basu writes fantasy fiction

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