Can one put Samsara into words? That sounds like a dare.

There are few things in the world of film that gets me quite as excited as the cinematic term, "70mm". Indeed, I have often judged, quite unfairly, a city's level of development and civility solely on the basis of whether or not it has an IMAX cinema. Harsh, I know, but then I am not a diplomat. Sadly, however, life (and I hasten to add the adjective, my, to the noun, life) is changing. All around the world, IMAX screens are closing, which is hardly surprising considering that we have become so complacent with ingesting low resolution imagery of an even poorer sound quality - we now listen to symphonies compressed into neat little binary codes, whereas IMAX still boasts 8-channels of individual, uncompressed sound. The Youtube Generation they call us, or perhaps that is what we call ourselves. Who, after all, boycotts Youtube?

To have found a documentary, then, shot entirely on 70mm in 25 countries has piqued my interest to say the least. And to have watched a clip from that film, albeit streamed through Vimeo on a tiny screen, was an experience not unlike watching Planet Earth for the first time. Samsara, it seems, follows a similar format to documentaries such as Bodysong (2003) and the Qatsi Trilogy; Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). Though I find this format to be a welcome change from the sensationalist, and therefore popular, Michael-Moore-ish style of documentary filmmaking, it does require one to engage with the imagery more than perhaps any other style of filmmaking. To me, it reflects something of the silent era, particularly the Soviet approach of the 1920s - every image heavy-laden with commentary, allusion and symbolism.

"Can you put this video into words?" is the challenge posed by True Activist, a website dedicated to film news. It is a question few writers manage to shy away from, especially writers drawn to the subject of film. So, let's give it a bash.

The clip presents us with a process, one that defines us as a consumerist species. It starts with chickens being plucked up in a factory by a vehicle not unlike a small harvester. Cut to the chickens pouring into boxes, which are neatly stacked away into shelves from whence the chickens are killed, their intestines scraped out and their parts separated and packaged, all in some sweat shop populated by scores of purple-and-blue-clad factory workers. At a higher frame rate (slo-mo), we catch a glimpse of a pair of Mongolian-descended eyes peering over a mask, contemplating, we believe, everything. A few moments later, she senses the camera on her and her brief brush with her own humanity vanishes.

The clip transports us to a colossal turntable, where the udders of a great circle of cows are being sucked dry. Next, we see gargantuan gilts laying pinned down on their sides, each assigned ten or so piglets who suckle them. Inevitably, the film cuts to giant porcine carcasses hanging from a rail, moving from worker to worker as they are gutted and their innards removed and discarded..

In true Eisenstinian fashion, a remnant of Soviet-era technique, the film then offers a juxtaposition. We witness the life of the predator in time lapse, scavenging the spoils of the aforementioned processes, inside a Costco, which eerily resembles the factories from whence everything came. Pile upon pile of meat and dairy are placed on the conveyor belts that carry them to the cashiers, obese mall rats cram mouthful upon mouthful of junk down their throats, until the sequence ends with a shot of a man's belly being prepped for liposuction.

The film's message is in no way ambiguous. In fact, like the Soviet-era films, one might criticise its style for being too obvious and for underestimating its audience's intelligence. But the fact remains, though we suspected the circle of life in the 21st century to resemble something like this, my guess is that we never considered that it might be quite so inhumane. Never before have I seen human greed portrayed in such a frank, objective and brutally honest manner. One hopes that films such as these might change the world, but in reality we know that they appeal only to a niche market - intelligent films made for intelligent people - but the saddest fact of all is that no matter how intelligent its audience, every member of that audience is in some way guilty of the film's accusation. One might even go as far as to to say that the filmmakers themselves were driven to a great deal of introspection in the making of it.

Films such as Samsara play a very important role in archiving human history. They should shape it, but if we're honest, they only observe it. What we do with their observations is what really matters. One only wonders when our observations will lead to action.

Hanfred Rauch

www.hanfredrauch.com

Feedback for "The Shadow Guardians"

Well, there have been quite a few developments concerning "The Shadow Guardians" of late. I had been meaning to list it on The Black List for quite some time and so, about a month ago, I took the plunge. For the site to host the script, it's $20 a month and $50 to get a professional script reader to evaluate it, which is quite good considering that some script readers will charge you from $600 for their wisdom.

I was very happy with the feedback I got from the anonymous reader. The script scored 6/10, which would seem disappointing (and it was), but after some reflection and marinating in the reader's comments, it made complete sense. I am not a professional scriptwriter (yet), especially not one experienced in writing action sequences, with which "The Shadow Guardians" is peppered. A helpful comment from the reader was that my descriptions read more like prose. One does attempt to put a personal stamp on one's work, but in this case, I realised that I would have to adapt my screenwriting style to fit into the Hollywood mold more, that is, to write in a staccato style and above all, to write sparsely. The trouble with "The Shadow Guardians" is that the story is too rich for a breakthrough screenplay. In reality, this would amount to a 3-hour film, which is entirely what I set out to do, but as the reader pointed out, it is very unlikely that any studio would drop $200 million on a tent pole concept by a newbie.

My conclusion is that I must resort to that ever-haunting virtue that emphatically describes my screenwriting career right now - patience. The reader was very complimentary of the story, which was my primary focus, but when all is said and done, this is not the type of story that finds its way onto the silver screen without an existing fan base in another medium. "The Shadow Guardians" was always meant to be a book trilogy - perhaps it only took this detour to make that clear.

On that note, I also Googled the name (which has been registered with both WGA and The United States Copyright Office, by the way) and it turns out that "The Shadow Guardians" is already a book series, albeit a supernatural romance series featuring werewolves and damsels. Oh well, back to the drawing board, as they say. It will be back, even if it does become a book and takes another name.

Hanfred Rauch

Discovering Korean Cinema's Revolutionary Spirit

I was recently asked to write an article on Korean film, which filled me with some degree of dread. Though I had been living here for two-and-a-half years, I am ashamed to say that I have not made enough of an effort to acquaint myself with it better. But a project always provides great incentive. Though the specifications of the article limited how deeply I could delve into Korean cinema, I came to some very interesting insights about Korean culture through its films.

The Japanese occupation of Korea in the 35 years leading up to the end of World War II is common knowledge to anyone who has Wikied Korea, but what I found heartwarming to discover was when I learned how cinema was used as a communication tool between the masses. During the silent era, Japanese authorities would monitor the live, on-stage narrators of the films that were screened to the masses, but as soon as they left the cinema, the narrators would, through skillful use of language, inject anti-authoritarian commentary into their narration. In this way, it echoes Nazi occupation of France during the same period. There is always something delicious about the use of film as a tool for subversion.

Something else I never knew was that during the anti-government revolts in South Korea during the 1980s, South Korea came dangerously close to falling under military dictatorship. At the time, the country still functioned under a feudal system. The implications, had things gone the other way, are difficult to imagine. The Korean Peninsula very nearly had two separate fascist governments.

It comes as no surprise, then, that a number of Korea's most famous directors, like Park Chan-Wook (Joint Security Area, Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Stoker), can be seen as mavericks. It explains why their films are built on a sense of rebellion. This revolutionary spirit, in a sense, likens the 80s generation of Korean filmmakers to auteurs such as Pedro Almodovar of Spain, who hails from a similar protest era against Franco. One might even consider the similarities between modern Korean cinema and the films of the German Expressionists of the 1920 (The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis), who used their fantastical stories and cinematic landscapes as allegories for political ideologies.

Looking at film history, it was always in the waves that we found some of cinema's most exciting and memorable work. The most famous of these was the French New Wave of the 1960s that saw a young band of filmmakers emerge out of Parisian working class society and capture the essence of the time. Not only did they make films, but they also wrote and theorised about them, breaking new boundaries from an educated standpoint. So infectious was their enthusiasm for cinema as a means of telling personal stories that it brought an end to a deeply conservative era of Catholic-infused censorship in the U.S. It sparked a new generation of filmmakers in America that went on to influence modern Hollywood in a very important way. Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Woody Allen all hail from this period.

But for awhile, it seemed that the film world had become devoid of waves. This is perhaps what excites the world so much about the comeuppance of Korean film. Korea's filmmakers are similarly informed. They debate and theorise and, because of their home audience's demand for constant change, they avoid complacency. Trends never last long, which means we can always expect something new from Korean films. It would certainly seem that the Korean Wave is at its peak.

Hanfred Rauch

The Rock Garden Enters Pre-production

If I have been rather less active on this blog of late, it is because I have been occupied with two writing projects that have provided me with great joy and kept me quite busy.

A Fearless Man (the book I'm working on) has been gaining momentum. After adding 40 pages to it since the beginning of the year, I realised that the time had come to redesign the world of its setting. More research on the medieval period provided me with new insights that changed my initial approach to the story. I have since gone about re-researching the world region I have set it in, despite the fact that it is imagined. The result has been a rather surprising study of Latin and German to forge the place names of the towns, cities, regions, rivers and mountains of the world of the story. Character illustrations also ensued, which I will share on this blog in due course, as well as map design, which I derive infinite pleasure out of.

Also, and perhaps more excitingly, The Rock Garden is entering pre-production. I'd abandoned the notion of short film writing since leaving film school, but my great friend, Verster du Plessis, coaxed me into developing his latest film project with him. So far, the story has undergone five rewrites and the script is currently on its fourth draft. What has fascinated me about the project is that every draft has differed vastly from the previous one. Each draft was also film-able as a story on its own. In other words, the tone and story shape of each was whole, but quite different from each of the others. The current draft, however, ended up being the most exciting one of the lot, as it juxtaposes a fairytale reality with a predominantly realistic one.

I also wormed my way into illustrating the film, which is a feature within the story. This will prove a great challenge, as it must compliment the overall tone of the film and not undermine it. In time, nearer the completion of the film, I shall map out the writing process of The Rock Garden, as it has certainly been an interesting one.

Hanfred Rauch

An Atheist Church. Question Mark.

It certainly seems like one of the 21st century's biggest coming out parties so far. In Britain in particular, its importance as a cultural phenomenon has been cemented over the last decade by high profile public figures, including authors, entertainers and broadcasters such as Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry, to name but a few. Similarly, in the US, publications like Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation have opened a very discernible door that seems to shake much of what the United States was founded on. Christian values, to a large extent, still inform American morality, but what has definitely started to happen, is that people worldwide are at the very least considering a world without the church.

My crisis of faith occurred when I was 14. To put things in perspective, I went to a very traditional, English South African high school for boys where many of my friends were devout Catholics and the rest belonged to some version of Protestantism. During my years there, the school also had two Jews in attendance as well as two Taiwanese Buddhists, all four of whom were exempt from going to chapel on a Sunday night - an arrangement that I interpreted as more of a privilege than a religious disposition. It was on these nights, while inspecting the grain on the chapel's ceiling beams while hearing "God is holy" being chanted in the background that I began to ask questions. One such night, I asked the school reverend whether I could have a word. I revealed to him my doubts about God's existence, which were met with wide eyes.

After a few seemingly routine questions, he proposed his solution, which was that the void I'd been feeling (quite possibly my words) may have stemmed from the fact that I was receiving God's word in English and not my mother tongue, which is Afrikaans. He sent me on my merry way with a sample of the Gideon's Bible (in Afrikaans), possibly feeling that he'd solved the problem and that he knew his overstock would one day come in handy. It goes without saying that I am unsure of what exactly happened to that bible and the pamphlets aimed at those who ask questions after I left that chapel. What I had learned that night was that I was to face the question of my own spirituality alone. I have always been very impatient with treading down paths that I know will lead me back to where I started. Nevertheless, the next decade was a highly self-exploratory journey for me in which I sought answers in everything scientific, historic, Buddhist, Zen and philosophical. In the end, I find myself without any one school of thought, but the virtues contained in almost every life's philosophy is worth considering.

I agree that those who are not religious, or rather, specifically not Christian, should not be forced to explain themselves. On matters of spirituality, I believe that it is one of the most personal journeys any of us can face. In the same vein, I also believe that anyone who has chosen not to follow a religion should not ridicule those who do. I cannot deny that the non-religious have faced endless judgment and continue to, but to return that judgment bears little fruit other than some self-fulfilling temporary fix. What we are all in search of is truth. For some of us, truth may present itself in stories like those of Moses, David, Jonah and the Whale, Noah's Ark, the birth of Christ and so forth. For others, truth may only be found in science. It is my opinion that no matter how strongly we feel about our core beliefs, we cannot deny another what they believe primordially, for such a person would have to deny himself.

Upon reading about an "atheist church" in North London, I was utterly intrigued. It is indeed a bold step for those of little faith. My first thoughts were positive, because I felt that there was at last a place for those who needed to feel a little less ostracised for what hey believed in. But then my thoughts turned inwards and I asked myself whether I would attend such a place. I think part of the reason why The Church did not appeal to me was because I am uneasy with sharing very personal processes as part of a group. I once had an experience while living in London in the late 1990s where I was approached my a Christian cult. When I made myself scarce, they kept calling my work number, accusing my colleagues of lying about my whereabouts. If ever I thought a group scenario could work for me, and I shan't deny my naivety at that age, my first and only encounter of a cult beat it out of me.

I am not accusing the atheist "church" of being a cult, but to me, turning away from religion essentially meant turning away from the group. I do not see myself as a recluse, but I do like to find my own way. I can, however, see the appeal of a "church" for atheists. My wife used to play in a church band despite not belonging to the church itself. She pointed out to me during this time that the church was, above all else, a community. It was a place designed to bring people of similar minds together. When one walks away from that, one simultaneously walks away from a sense of solidarity. To some it might feel like a blessing, but many people lose their sense of belonging in the process. Some need the guidelines provided by their community. For this reason, I feel that the atheist church may very well fill a void, but my fear is that it stands to reintroduce ritual to a group that abandoned it for a reason.

I am not sure how it happened, but Heraclitus's philosophy that no one steps into the same river twice, resonated with my core belief. I am seldom more convinced of anything than I am of the fact that we are in a perpetual state of flux. Perhaps we do not change in broad strokes, at least not as quickly as we do when it comes to the details. In other words, we might change our style, but we do not necessarily change our nature. In time, however, the details may nudge us away from our personal truth. I might submit the brainwashing process, or the effects of prolonged exposure to criminal minds as evidence of this theory. It is for this reason that I find ritual to be detrimental to our individual truths. We should question our lives frequently. We should "spring clean" our beliefs and routines to air them out from time to time. If we fail to do that, we become complacent about the things that matter most to us, whether we know it or not.

Alain de Botton cautioned against calling atheist congregations churches, believing that congregations of atheists were necessary. I quite agree, but when there is a call for something church-like and one is specifically told not to call it that, that is unfortunately what is will become. Furthermore, why does the atheist congregation of North London meet in an old church whose aesthetic has not changed? The comment it makes is not hard to miss. Perhaps it is a quirky enough setting for a group of people who define themselves as not Christian. Perhaps everyone who has ever turned away from Christianity is defined as such, but do we really need to be, or could we be about something else?

However the idea of an atheist church might sit with us, I suspect that as the notion of atheist congregations takes off, atheism might become known as something else in future. Those spiritual nomads amongst us who choose to keep it personal might one day find the actions of the atheist group disagreeable. And that is not so strange. Almost every religion in existence has formed as a result of another.

Hanfred Rauch

A Very Brief Guide to the World of The Hobbit

Peter Jackson finds himself in a strange place. Since quite some time before the release of The Hobbit (2012), he has had to defend his decision to turn a book of considerably modest length compared to Tolkien's follow-up, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, into a trilogy too. Warner Brothers wanted answers, as did test audiences and perhaps most important of all, so did the fans.

I make a terrible critic. Perhaps when one knows what goes into making a film, one is more forgiving. Furthermore, I believe that everyone is entitled to a voice and film is one of the greatest modern mediums for that. On the other hand, it is a terrible shame when someone has been given the opportunity to use her or his voice and the opportunity ended up being abused. For that, there should be no excuse. Skipping to the point, my critically challenged disposition has made me quite unlikely to criticise Jackson for his indulgence.

I do bear some critique for his style of filmmaking, however. I believe he sometimes tends to underestimate his viewer's ability to emote on his or her own. The Lovely Bones (2010) was a prime example of this, in my book. Jackson took on highly personal subject matter and made it literal. The film was lovely to look at and the performances were superb, but I found it ever so slightly condescending, as though I were incapable of grasping the emotions contained in the story on my own, like I needed to be told what to feel. Of course, the Hollywood style of filmmaking has a tendency to do this, but not always to quite the same degree.

The Hobbit, however, is a perfect fit in my opinion, as its spirit is by far more youthful than that of The Lord of the Rings. The book is playful, childlike and deliciously naive. From this point of view, I feel as though Jackson's style of filmmaking not only compliments the subject matter, but the subject matter depends on him.

While watching The Hobbit, I was whisked away on a journey into my past, particularly a certain obsessive Tolkien phase. I fell in love with the mythology of his Middle Earth. Tolkien is said to have lamented, along with his peers, most notably C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia book series, the fact that Britain essentially lacked the kind of folk tales that he had always loved. Tolkien was a great admirer of Scandinavian folklore and drew extensively from northern European mythology in his work, explaining the prevalence of creatures such as dwarves, trolls and goblins in his stories. In a way, his creation of a Hobbit race may have been born of his sense of wonderment at being exposed to these tales. The Hobbits, in my mind, represent a provincial kind of English tribe exposed, for the first time, to the great wide world, for better or worse. His decision to make them small in stature, further contributed to a sense of being overwhelmed upon stumbling onto a world such as Middle Earth.

Peter Jackson drew extensively from Tolkien's other works, especially from The Lord of the Rings appendices, The Silmarilion and Unfinished Tales to flesh out the screenplay for the Hobbit trilogy. It struck me, while watching the film, that others might enjoy a bite-sized bit of information on Tolkien's world in order to better appreciate Jackson's film version and so, I endeavoured to lay down a few notes. I am quite aware that there are greater fans than me on all matters Tolkien, but what I offer is what enthralled me about Tolkien's work and how that knowledge enriched my viewing experience of The Hobbit. So here follows a brief guide to Middle Earth in five short notes that might enlighten the enthusiast and hopefully not grieve the fan too much.

1. The Gods

Tolkien cannot be fully appreciated without acknowledging his debt to Christian mythology. Like C.S. Lewis, Tolkien set out to create an entire Middle earth religion in parallel to Christianity. The Silmarilion, quite like the Old Testament, functions as a series of stories that depict the world's beginnings as well as the early events that shaped it. At the top of Tolkien's hierarchy sits Eru, a sentient being who had existed before time began (in other words, God). Eru created the Valar, a race of demigods not unlike the archangels. It was their duty to shape the world. As in the Bible, the origins of the universe do not quite feature in Tolkien's Midle Earth works, but rather history accounts only for what happened on earth.

The Valar created countless servants whose duty it was to carry out their wishes and to help them build the world. Amongst these beings, called the Maya, were the sun (female) and moon (male). One of the Valar turned from the others and became Middle Earth's first dark lord (or the devil), known as Morgoth. It was he who created Sauron as his right hand. At about the time Isildur conquered Mordor and slew the dark lord Sauron, the Valar secretly sent the wizards to help the elves govern the forces of darkness and keep an eye on the peace. Well known beings created by the Valar include, then, the five wizards, possibly Tom Bombadil (who was impervious to the ring), the sun and moon and so forth. Morgoth, the fallen Valar, created Sauron, the Balrogs, dragons, trolls, serpents and almost every other fell creature in Middle Earth.

2. The Earth Dwellers

Eru's firstborn were the elves, who were essentially earth-bound angels, immortal and closely tied to Valinor, the grey havens (or heaven) in the west. The world had been created and now Eru's people would inhabit it. They were born before the creation of the sun and therefore share a very close bond with the stars. The Silmarilion (plural for Silmaril), for instance, are jewels forged by Feanor, a high elf, which brought much misery to the world - until they were cast to the heavens by Feanor himself and became stars. The history of the elves is long, epic and morbid and perhaps reflects Tolkien's experiences of World War I best, not in terms of the events that occur in its stories that span a few thousand years, but in their macabre tones.

Men (or humans) were the second race to be born and were, at first, adored by the elves. There is a firstborn-second born dynamic between the two races, one that is made beautifully poignant when the elves were first faced with the mortality of men. They did not know natural death and so, fell into deep despair when their friends grew older and eventually died. The Lord of the Rings trilogy occurs during the time when many of the elves had started to return to Valinor in order for the second born to rule the earth.

Tolkien is vague about the origins of the dwarves and Hobbits, but it can be inferred that they were the byproduct of time passing. The dwarves do possess some skill in magic, or at least possess talents that both elf an man is incapable of.

The orc race used to be elves that strayed from their tribes and subsequently were ensnared by Morgoth, corrupted and assimilated into his minion.

Much of Middle Earth's history is shaped by the races featured here and the wars that transpired between them.

3. The Importance of the Ring

At first, Sauron (Middle Earth's second dark lord), assumed a fair form, looking almost elf-like, so as to better deceive the folk of Middle Earth. In that time, he forged the great rings, each possessed of a unique talent. He gave them to the elves, dwarves and men, the latter of which received the most. In his deception, he also crafted one ring for himself that would rule all others.

Galadriel still carries hers. Gandalf secretly carries the ring of the flame of Anor, one that belonged to one of the high elves, but ultimately, the one ring was the only one that mattered. In Gollum's possession, the ring remained hidden and it was only when it came to Bilbo that it resurfaced.

4. The Wizard Order

When the wizards arrived in Middle Earth, some of them began to forget their purpose. The elves assigned them a hierarchy, placing Saruman at the head of the order because of his knowledge of the dark arts. Galadriel was apprehensive about his appointment, sensing that Gandalf possessed a more benevolent nature, but agreed that Saruman's skills set was more important at the time. There were five wizards in total - Saruman the White was at the head of the order, Gandalf the Grey was second in line, two blue wizards were third and Radagast the Brown was fourth in the order. Tolkien was not clear on what happened to the blue wizards, citing only that they had migrated east. I remember thinking, however, that he suggested their assassination by Saruman in a paragraph in Unfinished Tales, a compendium of his personal notes published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

Gandalf's great "dethroning" of Saruman is what brought Saruman's position as head of the wizard order to an end and is why Gandalf was promoted to white status upon his return from death after killing the Balrog in Lord of the Rings. Radagast, featured in The Hobbit film, essentially withdrew from company and his reclusive and eccentric nature rendered him insane to most.

5. Bilbo's Journey

The story of The Hobbit carries by far less gravity than the collective journeys of the characters in The Lord of the Rings. In the latter, Sauron's ring must be destroyed, or the world would fall into darkness. Nations converge in a single purpose. The Hobbit, on the other hand is a simpler journey, and is the one most centred on the dwarves out of all of Tolkien's books.

Bilbo is coaxed into embarking on a journey with a company of strangers by Gandalf. Not only must he leave his peace-loving country for stranger lands, but he will also have to put himself in mortal danger in order to help the dwarves reclaim their old kingdom, which had been beset by the dragon, Smaug. En route, Bilbo encounters Gollum, a sinewy and pallid little creature that used to be a halfling similar to a Hobbit, but the unnaturally long years spent in the company of the ring have withered his body and eaten away at his mind. Gollum grapples with two very distinct personalities. It is in Gollum's underground lair that Bilbo finds the ring and takes it as his own.

At the time of The Hobbit, the ring does not pose the threat that it does in The Lord of the Rings, but its emergence from obscurity feeds the Necromancer, a dark spirit that haunts Mirkwood. The Necromancer is Sauron's spirit, which grows stronger and stronger until it is able to take tangible form again.


So, despite The Hobbit's modest size as a book, Tolkien's collective work provides Jackson and his team with plenty of material for another trilogy. In my mind, Jackson was not going to let the opportunity to explore the richness of Tolkien's world pass him by. In some ways, however, I understand arguments against Jackson's expansion of the book. The Hobbit was, after all, not written to sustain such a lengthy narrative, whereas The Lord of the Rings was. Perhaps The Hobbit, a far more expensive trilogy than The Lord of the Rings, is made for the fans.

While I have my criticisms for The Hobbit, which include my disenchantment with the overly crisp digital imagery and the haphazard nature of Howard Shore's score, I support Peter Jackson. He is an infectiously impassioned filmmaker with a knack for the nostalgic. There is a tendency to lean towards a chocolate box aesthetic, but what makes me forgive some of his tastes as a filmmaker is that he uncompromisingly favours story. His films are never "designed" in the same way that the majority of Hollywood films tend to be, but at the same time, he is not irresponsible either. He pushes, yes. There is a nonconformism to him and an unwillingness to compromise on his filmic sensibilities that one can admire. When all is said and done, The Hobbit is a cinematic event.

Hanfred Rauch

The Dark Knight and Zeitgeist

I remember it well. Gritty realism underscored by an air of the otherworldly. A carefully constructed plot far more complex than its namesake's predecessors, but so elegant in its simplicity. Batman Begins (2005) signalled an entirely new series that flawlessly repackaged a franchise I had loved dearly growing up. I was a die hard fan of the Tim Burton Batman franchise. I still am. Batman Returns (1992) in particular resonated perfectly with the maelstrom that was my adolescence. What Tim Burton managed to convey so vividly was Batman's inner conflict with his duality.

To my chagrin at times, I have always exuded certain clean-cut, "headboy"-like qualities that I have often feared lent me an air of tedium. What Burton's Batman made me realise, however, was that I'd always lived in two worlds and that I too grappled with my own kind of duality. My insular world, as I suspect everyone's to be, is one of heightened reality and seldom seeps through into my more public reality. Spending one's formative years in a place one is mostly at odds with tends to lead one to embellish somewhat the parameters of the real. Despite my choir boy persona, which was the image I felt most acceptable and the easiest to maintain, I have often been informed, for better or worse, that my ideas were a little strange. My cover, at times, had become blown. Whether such comments hurt me, or fed me, I found solace in the Batman. Batman's not like everyone else. He's a loner. A rebel. Totally in touch with his dark side. Awesome. And even in his Joel Schumacher days, the memory of the Burton Batmans always endured.

Christopher Nolan

Then along came Christopher Nolan. I had followed his work closely at film school. His 1998 film, Following, was a film student's dream. The plot was intriguing, the visuals grimy, yet precise (the film was shot in black and white) and the actors were unknown. It felt within reach, but at the same time, it served as a reminder of the discipline necessary to be able to create on that level. His breakthrough film, Memento (2000), tapped so cleverly into the zeitgeist of the time. A string of films, most notably perhaps the films, Dark City (1998), The Truman Show (1998) and The Matrix (1999), all explored the notion of mistrust of the status quo and that reality is not as it seems. Memento seemed to take it a step further by turning that paranoia inwards. "How much can you trust yourself?" was its food for thought. And it was so clever; a commercial film telling a story in reverse chronological order while at the same time maintaining a three-act structure.

Memento had placed Nolan solidly in the ranks of filmmakers who are afforded a good deal of creative freedom. He followed Memento with Insomnia (2002), a contemplative thriller that seemed more like an opportunity for Al Pacino and Robin Williams to work together. Insomnia's cat-and-mouse plot structure (not Nolan's screenplay) seemed rather meek by comparison, but it was still a very solid effort and one that kept Nolan in the game while he constructed a reinvention of the Batman franchise.

One had grown almost accustomed to the charm of the actors who previously donned the bat suit. Michael Keaton complimented Burton's oddity to the tea, Val Kilmer brought star power to the role and George Clooney, though the experience was probably a low point in his career, brought a certain swagger. So, when news surfaced that Christian Bale was taking the role, I had my reservations. He is a fine actor, one that truly moved me to tears (albeit in my youth) in that scene towards the end of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) where he, after throwing an explosive tantrum, comes to a standstill and says, "I can't remember what my parents looks like". Similarly, I thought his performance in American Psycho (2000) was one of the most gutsy career moves I could remember at the time. But Batman? Batman had been portrayed almost exclusively as an anti-hero with a quirk or two. Christian Bale was far too serious. But then I saw the film and realised that it simply did not matter. Nolan has never allowed a star to eclipse the quality of his films and Bale has never adopted the Hollywood persona. Everything fell into place.

Liam Neeson provided Batman Begins with the magnetism it needed to launch the franchise and Bale, like any sensible actor, had the good sense to let his Batman not steal the show, but provide the framework for whatever came next. What Nolan needed was a Batman that would not be corrupted by ego or hard work. He needed Christian Bale. The subordinate characters, then, became the trilogy's thrills. Apart from the greats, like Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, whose presence would anchor the trilogy, each film also provided a villain one could talk about, the most memorable of which was Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight (2008).

Ledger's enthralling performance aside, I marvelled at Nolan's creation of a villain like the Joker. Here was a person about whom we, as an audience, knew nothing. In fact, every time the Joker reminisces on his past, it is revealed to be a lie concocted for his own amusement. What Nolan had done was something so daring yet so simple. He removed his villain's button. There was simply nothing that could get to him. He was the very embodiment of anarchy, a theme that informed, as it turned out, the entire trilogy. The great threat at any given time, were the agents of anarchy that opposed the system and Batman was merely a vigilante side-effect trying to keep chaos at bay.

As a film scholar, I have grown accustomed to identifying patterns as a means of keeping myself amused in a nerdy sort of way. I often wonder, particularly when I feel most overwhelmed by a situation, where things fit into the greater scheme of things. I enjoy history a great deal, though I never excelled at human history at school (dinosaurs were more my thing). The implications of war, the great informant of history, escaped me. It was only as I grew older, or matured in my thinking that history began to lure me in. And I think my way in was through film history. By establishing a method by which to group events together in film's existence, I had simultaneously established a pattern maker for history at large.

For this reason, I recently looked at Nolan's Batman with a fresh pair of eyes, wondering what place The Dark Knight would hold in the history of film. Much of film history occurs alongside film's technological milestones - the magic lantern, kinetoscope, zoetrope, sound, colour and the invention of video are but some of the factors that have shaped the course of film the most. These details, in all honesty, are the responsible historian's milestones, as they are more scientific and irrefutable. My interests, however, have been piqued by the more human, in my opinion, developments in film, most predominantly perhaps, those of the thematic.

D.W. Griffith might have been a politically controversial figure, but he, along with many technical developments in editing, introduced the power of theme to film. Few took film seriously at the time, but he managed to render film potentially as serious as classical literature, or theatre. In Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith made the personal victory of his characters feel like a political victory for the American south. Intolerance (1916) juxtaposed multiple time periods and in so doing, foregrounded one of the human race's oldest themes, as suggested by the title. The filmmakers of the Soviet era, Pudovkin and Eisenstein, both film theorists as well as filmmakers, intellectualised the theories of Griffith further and went on to influence the French of the nouvelle vague era of the 1960s and, in turn, the New Hollywood of the 1970s. What made all of these filmmakers noteworthy were not their technological achievements so much as their attention to theme, which is a cornerstone of narrative.

Though Nolan's Dark Knight franchise has mostly been showered with technology-centred accolades, I believe that the Dark Knight contributes greatly to popular depictions of contemporary zeitgeist. Since the introduction of the League of Shadows in the first film, it became clear that this dark knight was less concerned with inner duality and/or turmoil and instead reverted back to what was possibly Bob Kane's initial intention when he created Batman as a comic book character in post-depression America. It was a noir sort of time of cloak and dagger and a World War that was spinning out of control across the Atlantic, which was reflected in American film and American popular culture. And Batman, a man capable of adopting the dark side as his own, could use darkness against those who had used it on their own. Unlike Superman, the wholesome, invulnerable, all-American demigod, Batman, a flawed and imperfect hero, the very essence of an anti-hero, was going to fight evil from the inside.

Nolan's Batman treads constantly on a precipice, protecting the capitalist status quo from the anarchists who believe that it should be vanquished. It all echoes a kind of French Revolution - the villains have little regard for what happens when the powers that be fall - they want change and for the rest, let's wait and see. What Batman represents in Nolan's films is a reminder that although we may not be satisfied with the state of the world, change should not be overly swift and should definitely not come as the result of chaos. In essence, Batman guards the world from chaos and extremism, both of which are very real threats to the world today. One need only look to recent revolts in the Arab States for confirmation of this. What is novel about Nolan's presentation of the material is that it occurs in the civilised west.

I believe that history, at least in film, holds a place for Nolan's The Dark Knight. There have been many conspiracy theory-style documentaries regarding the recession, as well as fictional films such as Oliver Stone's quite agreeable Wall Street (1987) resuscitation, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), but none have elevated our zeitgeist surrounding the recession to the level of myth in quite the same way as Nolan has.

There have been many literal interpretations of the current sociopolitical climate, but The Dark Knight, in my opinion, has been the most effective, not only because it so intelligently interweaves a very modern theme into a hero-based narrative, but also because the theme is not packaged in a way that is sensational or conspiratorial. There is no getting past the fact that Batman is a grown man who goes about his business flapping his cape and wearing an animal-themed mask, but it is precisely this theatricality that nonetheless transports us to a world familiar yet different, in which we  are able to gauge our own world with a fresh pair of eyes. This has always been the nature of good mythology and like all good mythology, it has a way of sticking around for a long time to remind us of our nature.

Hanfred Rauch