"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."
―Selina Kyle
Mercenary: We've started a fire?
Bane: Yes! The flame grows higher!
Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle is in my opinion the center of The Dark Knight Rises. She recognizes the corruption of the Gotham elite, is not of that elite and does not want to be part of it. She tells Bruce Wayne she doesn't care what they think of her. She has nothing but contempt for them.
(Spoilers...)
The League of Shadows (Ra's al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Bane) sees this corruption (hedge fund manager Daggart, the mob, Wall Street) and wants to wipe Gotham clean and "restore balance." Batman/Bruce Wayne, commissioner Gordon, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Blake want to reform it. Obviously the League of Shadows' program would cost many innocent lives.
It's interesting to consider director/writer Christopher Nolan's take on what is corrupt about contemporary America. He includes Democratic Senator Leahy cameos in the last two films. Leahy is a big fan of Batman, but it's possible Nolan shares his politics. The opening of the film has the CIA engaging in its ruthless War on Terror and threatening terrorists with being dropped out of a plane (reminiscent of the Argentinian military junta's police state methods and Vietnam). (The CIA officer is played by Aidan Gillen of The Wire and Game of Thrones. The black army officer on the bridge who negotiates with Bane's men is another actor from The Wire. He played the police chief who made a drug legalization haven.)
The last film with the Joker was more about 9-11, the war on terror, Binladenism, police-state/surveillance state, wiretapping and torture. This one brings in elements of the housing bust, financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, rising inequality and the Occupy movement. There are images of class warfare as the lower class has a revolution against the upper class thanks to Bane taking out the police force. In the assault on the stock market, Bane and his men disguise themselves as cheap labor: food deliveryman, a courier, a shoe-shine man, a construction worker, a janitor. (Selina Kyle sneaks into Wayne Manor disguised as a servant.) Nolan depicts the trader-banksters - and hedge fund manager Daggart - as stereotypical entitled douchebags. It's hard not to share in Bane's obvious disdain for them. One of the hostages they take looks like a young Mitt Romney.
Though not all of the rich are corrupt in Nolan's Gotham. Bruce Wayne and the Penny Pritzker-philanthropist Miranda Tate invest heavily in research into clean, sustainable energy, something "wise stewards" would do. And Bruce's wealthy parents invested in public transportation and other infrastructure projects that a non-corrupt elite would do, unlike, say, today's Republican Party and its financial backers. At Tate's charity event, reformer Bruce Wayne expresses his contempt for the elite to Miranda Tate. Tate in turn expresses her disdain for bankster Daggart when he comments on how she's losing money investing in clean, sustainable energy.
Where does Bane get his zealous recruits? At the orphanage, officer Blake interviews an orphan who says that boys who "age out" and are put on the streets - like his older brother whose body Blake found - have no job prospects, but there's work available in the sewers. Bane has a jobs program while the nation's central bank fails to fulfill its mandate by targeting a 2 percent inflation-ceiling-cross-of-gold. Another instance of the priorities of Gotham's elite.
Anne Hathaway's Catwoman must decide whether its worth it to risk her life to try to help Batman save Gotham and its corrupt elite, ground-down poor, and "silent majority." Nolan vaguely makes references to the French Revolution, Robespierre, and the storming of the Bastille. Things are so crappy for the lower orders and the corruption of the elite is so obvious, that many of Gotham's citizens do riot and rise up against the one percent. (Think of Selina Kyle's young friend or the "aged out" orphans.) They are able to do so because of Bane. He neutralizes the police force and the possibility of any intervention from the Federal government.
So it looks like the League of Shadows will succeed in wiping the slate clean, but Batman foils their plans with assists from Gordon, Blake, Matthew Modine's police chief and Catwoman. Levitt's Robin quits the police force to become a vigilante maybe because the police wouldn't let him cross the bridge, following orders. But it was Commissioner Gordon whose kindness towards a young Bruce Wayne helped Wayne become the do-gooder he became (also thanks to Alfred and Fox). Bruce Wayne/Batman also helped inspire the young orphan Blake and helped give Catwoman the chance to do the right thing and earn a clean slate.
Police officer Gordon's humanity towards the young Wayne helped create Batman. Thanks to Catwoman decision to involve herself and save Batman from Bane, Batman is able save Gotham from a nuclear holocaust.
On a side note, the film had a number of exciting action sequences: the opening scene with the kidnapping of a Russian nuclear scientist; the assault on the stock exchange and motorcycle chase; Catwoman and Batman versus Daggart's henchmen and the brief appearance of Bane at the end; the pièce de résistance with massive streetfighting on the steps of City Hall with snow falling all around.
Conservatives have argued that the film is a conservative film in that it makes the left look bad. Rather I think it makes some accurate diagnoses of the current political scene. In his speech at the football stadium, Bane mentions the "myth of opportunity." That's an accurate description of contemporary America. Moviegoers are often said to pay to watch dreams and The Dark Knight Rises is a lefty dream with many details displaying a lefty take on things, including another series cameo by Senator Leahy. The outcomes aren't ideal, but this is a comic book movie. The Orwellian talk of the hanging judge at the people's court reminds me very much of the constant "2 + 2 = 5" up-is-down rhetoric of Republicans and their paid-for pundits. The class conflict portrayed on screen is a reversal of what's really happening currently with the upper classes mauling the lower class. It's a fantasy where entitled, douchebag banksters get roughed-up by avenging everyday people and where a classy jewel thief articulates our revulsion at an elite as corrupt as Marie Antoinette's 18th Century French aristocracy.
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* revision from July 26th version
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