The Dark Knight Rises and the Reign of Terror
also “Bronwyn is a huge nerd who goes to see superhero films and gets excited about Robespierre.” Spoilers abound, so go away if you want.
In this, the last installment of the Dark Knight Trilogy, the lovely Cillian Murphy and his pretty eyes played the role of one Maximilien Robespierre, French nutjob and lawyer and one of my favourite characters (along with Catherine diMedici, so you know what you’re dealing with).
Basically, we have this huge moment in which it turns out that someone has a bomb, the city is cut off from the outside world, etc., culminating in some Reign of Terror action. For those of you who missed the mandatory five seconds of the French Revolution in history, the Reign of Terror was pretty much run by Robespierre, “the Incorruptible”/”dictateur sanguinaire,” and his friends. Characterised by chaos and fear and death. MOVING ON.
In Gotham City, we find ourselves in a Reign of Terror situation. The Boy and I talked about this, and it seems like Gotham might have been a bit of a police state pre-Reign. For example, what do you think was in the Harvey Dent act? The ability to search without a warrant? You need less evidence to put someone away? All of that seems a bit ethically and constitutionally unsound to me, but the absence of the police force escalates into this chaos. And then we see the lovely Cillian Murphy, presiding over a sentencing court, looking like this (forgive me I could find no long shots):
Basically, he’s in a long room sitting atop a pile of desks. There are a whole bunch of people standing around in this room cheering/booing, etc. It reminds me of this:
This is the Tennis Court Oath from the beginning of the French Revolution. Also this:
Do you see the similarities? There’s also a fantastic picture that I can’t find of Robespierre presiding in court very similar to Cillian Murphy.
There’s not really a point, guys, just that… I really really like the French Revolution and I think it’s very clever that Christopher Nolan incorporated it into his film, especially with Cillian Murphy (whose character is kind of deranged) as Robespierre.
That’s all. Sorry.
