No family retainer has ever been more faithful than Alfred, the butler played by Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan's Batman films, or more frustrated in his efforts to protect his beloved master from harm. Not once but several times in the course of 'The Dark Knight Rises,' Alfred implores the angst-ridden Bruce Wayne to move on, get a life and find happiness. His appeals are genuinely moving, inevitably unavailing and beside the point. Gotham City needs Batman. Time Warner needs Batman. The world has waited four years to find out how the Batman saga resolves. And feeling good about life is not what Christian Bale's Batman wants. This third - and, the director insists, final - installment of Mr. Nolan's series makes you feel thoroughly miserable about life. It's spectacular, to be sure, but also remarkable for its all-encompassing gloom. No movie has ever administered more punishment, to its hero or its audience, in the name of mainstream entertainment.

Bruce can be forgiven the bleakness of his initial mood. His caped alter ego was unjustly blamed for the death of Gotham City's district attorney, Harvey Dent, who was anything but the model citizen he's become in public memory. Now the billionaire socialite has turned antisocial, a Howard Hughes-like hermit (minus the screwiness) licking his psychic wounds and living with the all-too-real injuries of former battles. But two threats conspire to end his solitude.

One of them is brought home - into his own home - by Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. It's intriguingly difficult to discern her motives, or loyalties, for most of the movie. The conventional rewards of cat-burgling don't justify her dangerous exertions. What's clear from the start, though, is that Ms. Hathaway's zestful performance gives the film some sorely needed grace notes. She rolls her eyes ever so slightly when an earnest cop says the Gotham PD can offer her protection. She alternates Catwoman's rubber-suited athleticism with Selina's demure, ladylike gait, and whispers the script's most haunting words into Bruce's ear. They begin, as the trailer reveals, with 'There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,' and end with 'you're all going to wonder how you could ever live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.'

If that sounds like a comment on economic disparity, it surely is; one of the big action sequences is a terrorist attack on the Gotham City Stock Exchange. But the most proximate source of the threatening storm is Bane - an implacable, bemuscled villain who wears a mask over his disfigured face, and who speaks in muffled tones that make Darth Vader sound like an elocution teacher. (He's not the only one with intelligibility problems; the movie's use of bass frequencies to convey threat and evil does for dialogue what amped-up rock does for lyrics.) As played by the excellent Tom Hardy, who has porked up for the role and is essentially unrecognizable, Bane is not merely evil enough but ambitious enough to bring Batman back into action, since he plans nothing less than the city's enslavement, if not its total destruction.

Mr. Nolan, who wrote the screenplay with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, is an urbanist in a class by himself. He conjured up whole cities in 'Inception,' only to turn them inside out, or make them vanish in a flash. Here he gives us a vision of a great city's dismemberment at the hands of a brute and his terrorist army - a shattering vision that extends from Gotham's subterranean tunnels to its tallest towers and proudest landmarks. (I'll mention just one effect, which also appears in the trailer, so I'm giving nothing away - a quarterback running the ball in a huge stadium without realizing that underground explosions are devouring the field behind him.)

It's hardly news, but worth repeating, that the filmmaker and his production teammates do breathtaking work: they're headed by the cinematographer Wally Pfister and the production designers Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh. And it goes without saying that the staggering commercial success of the previous two films will be matched or exceeded by this one, which brings back Gary Oldman as police commissioner Jim Gordon, as well as Morgan Freeman as Bruce Wayne's armorer, Lucius Fox, while adding two significant characters to the cast: Marion Cotillard's Miranda Tate, a beautiful philanthropist and member of the Wayne Enterprises executive board who helps bring Bruce out of his existential funk ('You have a practiced apathy,' she tells him for openers); and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake, a young cop with extraordinary instincts - beyond extraordinary, at one plot point - whose likable presence is a breath of fresh air, and who does some serious sleuthing on his own when Batman isn't available to take charge of a desperate situation.

Batman proves unavailable for considerable stretches of the 164-minute running time, because he's suffering the tortures of the damned at Bane's hands. 'The Dark Knight Rises' is notable for many things - thrilling chases, supercool vehicles, majestic vistas, an epic scale that hasn't been achieved since 'The Lord of the Rings,' a redemptive climax that brings an end, more or less, to a complex saga. The most stunning thing about the film, though - and this is said not by way of praise, but with anxious wonderment - is how depressing and truly doomy most of it is. Batman, played by a marvelous actor with a singular gift for depicting pain, suffers mortally. Drums beat incessantly - before, during and after a series of numbing, Neanderthal brawls between Batman and Bane. History takes a double beating from a script that reprocesses the storming of the Bastille into an attack by terrorist thugs.

Dark comic books have always been around, but with a difference; as pictures and words on paper, they've allowed readers to choose their own degree of involvement. 'The Dark Knight Rises' allows no choice; it's immersive and assaultive to a degree that could only have been achieved by the conjunction of a quintessentially somber comic and a filmmaker with a complementary sensibility, marshaling the vast technical and financial resources of an entertainment conglomerate. During the Great Depression, moviegoers flocked to escapist films with glittering dancers, happy endings and upbeat songs like 'Happy Days Are Here Again.' For whatever this movie may say about today's world, it rises to a different occasion and dances to a different tune. Happy days are done and gone.
从没有哪个家仆像克里斯托弗?诺兰（Christopher Nolan）《蝙蝠侠》（Batman）系列电影中由迈克尔?凯恩（Michael Caine）饰演的管家阿尔弗雷德（Alfred）那样忠心耿耿，也没有哪个家仆和他一样，一心想要保护亲爱的主人不受伤害却屡屡受挫。在《蝙蝠侠前传3：黑暗骑士崛起》（The Dark Knight Rises）中，阿尔弗雷德不止一次地哀求焦虑不堪的布鲁斯?韦恩（Bruce Wayne）往前看，劝他开始新生活、寻找幸福。他的恳求真诚得让人感动，但照例是做无用功，没说到点子上。高谭市（Gotham City）需要蝙蝠侠，时代华纳（Time Warner）需要蝙蝠侠。世界等了四年时间，就是为了看蝙蝠侠传奇如何收场。而对生活感到满足并不是克里斯蒂安?贝尔（Christian Bale）饰演的蝙蝠侠想要的。该系列片的第三部──诺兰导演坚称这是终结篇──让人对生活彻底感到绝望。影片的精彩不容置疑，但全片弥漫的阴暗基调同样引人注目。没有哪部电影能像本片一样以主流娱乐的名义如此严苛地对待主人公和观众。

布鲁斯起初的阴郁情绪是可以理解的。他身披战袍的另一个自己被诬陷为杀害高谭市地方检察官哈维?丹特（Harvey Dent）的凶手，而丹特绝非公众心目中的模范市民。现在，这位身家数亿的社会名流开始反社会，变成了和霍华德?休斯（Howard Hughes）一样的隐士（只不过没有那么古怪），独自舔着心里的伤口，忍受着前几次战斗留下的遍体鳞伤。但两大威胁正合力要结束他的隐居生活。

Ron Phillips / ?Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection克里斯蒂安?贝尔与安妮?海瑟薇在影片《蝙蝠侠前传3：黑暗骑士崛起》中其中一个威胁来自安妮?海瑟薇（Anne Hathaway）饰演的赛琳娜?凯尔（Selina Kyle），也就是猫女。有趣的是，整部影片几乎都很难辨别她的动机或忠心。猫女盗窃的常规战利品无法解释她的危险行动。不过，从一开始就可以肯定的是，海瑟薇的激情表演为这部影片增色不少，这也是该片急需的元素。当一个热心的警察说高谭市警局可以为她提供保护时，她的眼睛微微转了一下。她换掉猫女动感十足的皮衣造型，变成端庄贤淑的赛琳娜，对着布鲁斯轻声说出全剧中最令人难以忘怀的台词。如预告片里展示的一样，它们以“韦恩先生，一场暴风即将来临”开始，以“你们都会想知道为什么自己活得如此潇洒而留给其他人的东西却如此至少”结束。

如果这听起来像是对贫富悬殊的评论，那么它的确是；片中一个动作大场面是高谭市股票交易所遭到恐怖袭击。但这场可怕暴风最直接的源头是贝恩(Bane)──一个不达目的不罢休、强壮无比的恶棍，丑陋的脸戴着面具，低沉的声音让星球大战里的黑武士达斯维达（Darth Vader）都堪称是朗诵老师。（他并不是片中唯一说话清晰度有问题的人，片中为营造威胁和邪恶气氛运用的贝司音效对人物对话的影响就如重音摇滚之于歌词。）贝恩由优秀演员汤姆?哈迪（Tom Hardy）饰演，他为这个角色增重不少，基本上认不出来了。贝恩不但足够邪恶，同时也足够有野心，足以让蝙蝠侠重新出山，因为他打算控制整个城市，甚至将其全部毁灭。

剧本由诺兰和他的弟弟乔纳森?诺兰（Jonathan Nolan）合作完成。他认为自己是某种意义上的城市规划师。他在《盗梦空间》（Inception）里变幻出一座座城市，只不过是要把它们翻转过来，或让它们一瞬间消失。在《蝙蝠侠》里，他为我们呈现了一个伟大城市在一个坏蛋及其恐怖军团手中分崩离析的场面──从高谭的地下隧道到最高的大厦和最引以为傲的地标，一切都成了碎片。（我只想提一个特效，在预告片中也出现了，所以并不是剧透──一名橄榄球运动员正在一座巨型体育场抱球往前跑，没有意识到地下爆炸正在吞噬他身后的球场。）

虽然算不上是新闻，但还是值得再提，那就是导演及其制作团队的表现令人赞叹：团队由瓦雷?菲斯特（Wally Pfister）和制作设计师内森?克劳利（Nathan Crowley）及凯文?卡瓦劳格（Kevin Kavanaugh）领衔。《蝙蝠侠》前传前两部在商业上取得巨大成功，这部影片也不会逊色甚至会超越，这是不言而喻的。加里?奥德曼（Gary Oldman）重新加盟饰演警长吉姆?戈登（Jim Gordon），摩根?弗里曼（Morgan Freeman）饰演布鲁斯?韦恩的军械师卢修斯?福克斯（Lucius Fox），片中还新增了两个重要角色：玛丽昂?歌迪亚（Marion Cotillard）饰演的米兰达?泰特（Miranda Tate），她是一位美丽的慈善家以及韦恩集团（Wayne Enterprises）执行董事会成员，她帮助布鲁斯从恐惧中走了出来（她最开始跟他说，“你已经习惯了漠然”）；还有约瑟夫?戈登-莱维特（Joseph Gordon-Levitt）饰演的约翰?布雷克（ John Blake），他是有着非凡本能──某个情节里是超凡──的年轻警察，他的出现如同一缕新鲜空气讨人喜爱，在蝙蝠侠没空处理危急情况时他会自行做些侦查工作。

在这部164分钟的影片中，蝙蝠侠在很多时间都难以施展拳脚，因为他被贝恩打得太惨了。《黑暗骑士崛起》有很多看点──紧张的追逐、超酷跑车、壮观的场景，自《指环王》（The Lord of the Rings）以来从未被企及的史诗气魄，将一个复杂的传奇故事带入尾声的救赎式高潮。不过该片最令人惊叹的──并没有赞扬的成分，而是令人不安的惊叹──是大部分时间里沉重的压抑和末世气氛。蝙蝠侠由一个了不起的演员所饰演，他有着非凡的表演痛苦的天赋，将蝙蝠侠所忍受的致命痛苦表现得淋漓尽致。在蝙蝠侠与贝恩展开一系列令人目瞪口呆的野蛮战斗之前、之中及之后，一直鼓声不断。在这个将攻占巴士底狱重新演绎成恐怖分子袭击的剧本中，历史受到了双重冲击。

黑暗题材的漫画书一直都有，但和电影不同；由于是在纸上的图片和文字，它们可以让读者选择投入程度。而《黑暗骑士崛起》让人无法自行选择，它是如此地令人沉醉和如此地刺激，只有经典黑暗漫画加上一位敏感细腻的导演，再集结一个娱乐财团众多的技术和财政资源才能达到这种效果。在大萧条（Great Depression）期间，人们都喜欢逃避现实类电影，有星光熠熠的舞者、大团圆结局和《快乐的日子又回来了》（Happy Days Are Here Again）这样积极向上的歌曲。无论这部电影对现在的世界做何种诠释，它都是在响应一个不同时代的召唤，是在随着不同的曲调踏出舞步。快乐的日子结束了，一去不返。