I went to the cinema this afternoon to watch the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Reviews by my favourite blogger Andrew Bolt and in the Wall Street Journal encouraged me to put up with the anti-social elements that seem to congregate at the Salisbury Odeon (last time it was rowdy teenagers, this time a screaming toddler). Both Bolt and the WSJ found the film sympathetic to George W Bush:
Andrew Kavlan: "There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past. And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell."
Andrew Bolt: "The film explains more convincingly what the comic didn’t - why it is that Batman is at times almost as hated as he is admired, and why he accepts being unloved as his burden. Doing real good does not always mean winning admiration and gratitude, and most certainly vice versa. A guardian, as the film says several times, is not the same as a hero. A guardian has higher responsibilities. Mind you, some vile autocrats have thought much the same, and the film acknowledges that dilemma."
Cosmo Landesman in The Sunday Times sees the film as lefty-liberal fare, however, (I think he's wrong) and, more significantly, Peter Whittle doesn't like the tendency to over-read these movies. Has anyone else seen it?