Dark Knight Rises Ending Interpretation By Christian Bale
On this site we have spent a bit of time delving deeply into a number of different insight out ideas as they relate to various head job movies. We have unpacked Memento until it absolutely hurts (4 years and counting and over 300 comments or something?) The Prestige, definitely. Passing on The Edge of Tomorrow was completely out of the question. Upstream Color and Primer also got a fairly deep unpacking. And recently The One I Love.
But how often do we hear from the actors themselves about what they think of the movie they starred in? Hardly ever. Occasionally we will get opinions from the writers or directors letting us in on their creative insights and processes. But very rarely do we hear from the characters themselves. Well, this month in Entertainment Weekly there was a story that pointed me to this Sound Cloud recording of a fan asking a fairly insightful question of Christian Bale. Here was the question that was asked:
“In the Dark Knight Rises, Alfred tells Bruce a fantasy, a fantasy which pertains to Bruce being down with Batman and seeing him in Italy and happy in a relationship. At the end of the movie when it seemed like it actually happened was it a dream sequence or were you really in Italy with Selina? And did Alfred ever come over to the table and join you or was he just content with you being alive, and left?”
Now, as far as questions go, this is a fairly stellar one. We deal with these kinds of questions out here on the various movies we play with quite regularly. Was it a dream? Was it real? Was he dead? Was he alive? Reminds me of a conversation I’m sure we will soon have with regard to Interstellar and my belief that the last third of that movie is conducted with Cooper deceased. (Oh, did I say that out loud? My sincerest apologies.) Anyway, here is Bale’s response:
“[Alfred] was just content with [Bruce Wayne] being alive and left because that was the life he wanted for him. And I find it very interesting and I think with most films I tend to say it’s what the audience thinks it is. My personal opinion is no it was not a dream. That was for real and he was just delighted that finally he had freed himself from the privilege but ultimately the burden of being Bruce Wayne.”
So basically Christian Bale takes a very literalist (and quite boring, but what do you expect really?) approach to his response here. Yes, it was real. Yes, he survived. And no, Alfred would just be content he survived. (Which I might add makes NO SENSE whatsoever. ZEro. You trip across a friend you thought was dead… not a friend, basically a SON, and you don’t at least say HELLO?! hahaha. But I digress.)
I must say that as far as questions go, while it was a finely formulated question, what a WASTE of a question!!! Gah. If I had had the mic, I totally would have asked Bale this instead, talk about a softball in comparison!
Mr. Bale, in the Prestige, could you simply tell me this… Did the Tesla Machine work or not?
Easy. I would give important body organs to have that particular question answered thank you very much. Anyone? Anyone?
