Jean-Jacques Beineix, the director of "Diva" and "Betty Blue," once told me that "when fiction and reality collide, you have a problem." Beineix was talking about his 1992 film "IP5," in which beloved French actor Yves Montand dies from a heart attack in the film, and actually died from one just after completing the shoot. The press were quick to lay the blame at Beineix's feet.
Christopher Nolan now has a problem. After a delusional gunman who reportedly identified himself as "The Joker" killed and wounded scores at an Aurora, Colorado, cinema screening "The Dark Knight Rises," it has become difficult to separate the film from the tragic event that engulfed it. While it's facile to "blame" any film for acts of violence committed by the insane — dry tinder is not choosy about its spark — the shooting has clearly woven itself into the narrative.
"The Dark Knight Rises" is of a piece with the other two "Batman" movies directed by Nolan: grim, gritty and laced with some unsettling scenes of violence. Nolan's work is revered by fanboys for taking their boyhood comic-book action fantasies and making them deadly serious, with profound moral quandaries, angst-ridden characters and so forth.