This is the third installment of my commentary on Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” Here are the links to the first and second posts, respectively:
https://intothedance.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/dvd-review-the-dark-knight-rises/
https://intothedance.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/hope-in-the-dark-knight-rises/
I left off with a discussion of hope among the prisoners who watch Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) climb the dungeon wall and escape through the round window far above.
But imagine for a moment that someone was able to take the prisoners’ attention off of the light that shines from above. Imagine someone getting them to focus instead on the reflections of that light on the prison walls.
Pushing the envelope even further, imagine this nameless intruder taking advantage of their love of these reflections and persuading them that they can actually turn the prison cell into the equivalent of what is outside — that is to say, a place that can generate its own natural sunlight, its own oxygen, its own sources of natural sustenance, etc.
Fix this scenario firmly in your mind, and you will get a sense of the great evil of Bane’s (Tom Hardy) project.
This world is not a bad place, nor is the Christian vocation to escape from it. God created the world and everything in it, and all things remain fundamentally good. But at the same time, as St. Paul says,
…creation was made subject to futility (Romans 8:20).
Happily, that’s not the end of the story. St. Paul continues…
…not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved” (Romans 8:20-24) (italics mine).
That last sentence is particularly important. As mentioned in the previous post, man’s ultimate hope lies not in this world, but in the “new heavens and new earth” to come.
Far from bringing out the best in humanity and what this world has to offer, the movement toward an earthly paradise actually arrests the journey toward fulfillment in Christ and perverts the here-and-now by forcing the present world to take on a role it cannot possibly fulfill.
Hence, you have the dystopic vision of society — a vision to a certain extent realized in Communist and other totalitarian societies in the past half century.
Only those who know they are in prison can truly have hope. Only those who know the realities of sin and death, and of being part of a world “subject to futility,” are ready to receive the peace that can only come from a Divine Savior.
But if you can take the prisoners’ focus off of the light that shines from above, you can warp even that most fundamental human hope for deliverance. And that’s exactly what the devil, the supreme enemy of mankind, would like to do.
Thankfully, our world has a savior infinitely greater than Batman. Let us therefore be vigilant in…well, hope!
But how do we do that? What does this mean concretely? I think I’ll need to do a fourth post to address that one (and I should warn people that there is a major spoiler ahead).