Reflections on The Dark Knight Rises

Advance warning: the below is less a review than thoughts and discussion of The Dark Knight Rises and its meanings, as such there are substantial spoilers, as in ruin everything up to and including the final shot of the Movie spoilers, which will ruin the film if you have not seen it.

I haven't really had time to proof read the below much but I thought I would post it while it still has a mild touch of relevance to anything.

Rises is an extremely good film that offers a satisfyingly meaty conclusion to an excellent trilogy. Nolan builds on foundations laid over the two preceding films and creates an opus that justifies its considerable length by pitting competing ideals and visions of the world against each other. Whilst ostensibly this third film of the trilogy is similar in design to the previous two, in that it plays out as a contest between two men using an entire city as their own personal battlefield, there are distinct differences between Bane and the Joker which change the nature of the confrontation and thus the film.

Evolving Genres

The Dark Knight Trilogy (as I have just decided to call it) has veered strongly in genre over the course of its constituent parts. While the first was an alternate world set sci fi film, and the second was a crime drama with costumes, the final film is very much a comic book Movie. The kind of world where villains humans can achieve the impossible, and where plots can envelope entire cities. It is a world where broken backs can be fixed in 5 months and one detonator can trigger bombs across an entire city. Its the most comfortable fit of the three, Batman Begins never settled into a coherent atmosphere and struggled to locate its mood. In the end it was neither other worldly nor realistic. The stricter reality of The Dark Knight conflicted with the more extreme elements of the Joker's plans, specifically the hijacking of the ferries felt jarring within the confines of a Michael Mann-esque crime epic whilst the Joker's plan to get himself captured felt beyond the bounds of the film's own realities. However, with Rises, Nolan has now found the right voice to tell a modern Batman story. Bane's inhuman strength and massive secret organisation sit comfortably next to the Bat Wing and Catwoman's audience pleasing outfit.

Gotham all Grown Up

Alongside the changes in genre, it is gratifying that the unnecessary near future aspects of Gotham's design were dropped for the sequels. The Gotham of Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises is very clearly a modern American city. This is a much better fit for Batman as his origin is emotional rather than sci fi, and means his technology, whilst impressive, doesn't come to dominate the film.

Gotham itself has also moved on through the trilogy. In Begins it is a city under siege from low level street crime and a very powerful mob. In Dark Knight, the streets are cleaner but the mob is still all powerful, at the start of Rises there are barely any criminals to be seen. The city has now come under the thrall of corporate power and traders. The Gotham of Rises has its cracks concealed under a paper thin layer of respectability built on a repressive law and order regime inspired by a mythologised Harvey Dent. In this Rises is a remarkably prescient film, written and filmed in 2010, before #occupy and the Arab Spring, it predicts the caustic meltdown of social structures that comes when relentlessly growing wealth exists in an ever poorer world. Gotham was always at conflict, but in Rises the conflict is between the haves and have nots, its much sharper than the lawless versus the lawful of previous Movies but more on that later.

The Bat, The Cat and The Monster

Christian Bale is again superb. He has nailed a Batman character that is powered by vengeful anger and self righteousness. If there is a flaw it is simply that he suffers so little self doubt as to make the film processional. Even an inescapable prison on the wrong side of the world and a broken back are merely obstacles to overcome, not the end of his journey. This relentless self belief infects the audience too, at no point do you doubt that Batman will return to Gotham, and in effect the Prison sequence, while effective, is an extremely lengthened Rocky montage as our hero implausibly trains up for the fight of his life. However Bale spends much of his time in the Movie as Bruce Wayne, reclusive, embittered, wounded and lost. Batman barely appears, and suffers a little from this. Due to the brilliant work on Bane and Not Catwoman he is essentially the only costumed character in the film and it makes some of his surprise entrances strikingly uncomfortable within the new Gotham.

Not Catwoman, as she is never named thus, is a curious character. Like so many in Nolan's recent films she becomes a bit of a cog in a storyline machine rather than a rounded character. There seems little reason for her demeanour to change as it does through the film other than this is typically how characters evolve through a film. The key moments that form this arc: leading Batman to the beating of his life, realising the house she occupies during the revolution was once a family home, and understanding the depth of Batman's commitment to Gotham are not handled uniquely. The same events could have happened to any character and formed an arc. It is harsh to criticise as good a performance as Anne Hathaway's but she is let down by a script to hung up on her looks and not concerned enough with her thoughts.

Bane on the other hand is so much more than I hoped. He is a zealot, a leader, a physical powerhouse and a demagogue. Tom Hardy conveys significant emotional beats with the bare minimum available to him, eyes, body language and a disguised voice. The look in his eyes as Talia leaves him for the last time is perfect and adds a touch of humanity to what could easily have been an inhuman part. His voice, while occasionally difficult to understand, is gloriously lyrical and intellectual. It floats from the Monster's mask yet conveys great power at the right moments. It is as unexpected and as brilliant as Ledger's turn in Dark Knight but will win considerably fewer plaudits because of its less showy aspects. Tribute must also be paid to Hardy's physical presence, Bane needed to be played by a huge man to get the character right and its clear Hardy has put the hours in to achieve a truly threatening physique. His solitary hand on Daggett's shoulder inverts the relationship between those two characters because of this. It also makes the first meeting between him and Batman a true reflection of their relative stature at that point. Its a stand out sequence for the film. I remain conflicted as to whether “Victory has defeated you,” is Bane's best or worst line but it plays well in a scene where Bane completely dominates an arrogant Batman. It is also a nice touch that Bane is so powerful that ultimately someone has to break Batman's cardinal rules to stop him. Not that Batman seems too conflicted.

If there is an issue, its the interactions between these characters are not powered by as deep conflicts as between the 3 main protagonists of Dark Knight. Cat and Bane barely interact and the scenes between Batman and Selina Kyle just don't have the frisson that they should have if she is to be the woman he settles with. On a side note, their twin fighting scenes feel exceptionally forced. If Nolan has directed a worse series of shots than Catwoman leading Batman to Bane I have yet to see them.

Bane and Batman are both calm, collected rationalists driven by deep anger and both seek control of Gotham. They are both so restrained that, their confrontations don't lend themselves to drama. Whilst Bane is a more existential threat to the existence of both Batman and Gotham, he doesn't feel as threatening as the Joker to me. Heath Ledger's criminal clown felt capable of anything putting all of his scenes on a knife edge. Bane's actions feel more pre-determined, feel more logical and just simpler. When the Joker burnt the Mob's money and betrayed his fellow gangster it felt like a genuine betrayal, and that the city had been handed over to a madman. When Bane murders Daggett it feels inevitable, not scary. Bane may break Batman's back but it felt to me that the Joker got a lot closer to breaking his will. Joker proved by turning Harvey Dent that anyone after a very bad day could do the unthinkable. Bane never gets that far into Batman's head.

The Supporting City

There are so many supporting roles in Rises that it feels as if Nolan has genuinely brought a city to life, from Wayne's cohort of Lucius and Alfred, to the range of policemen, and assorted villains from the corporate to the military. Nolan is an excellent caster and he pulls the same tricks here with Aiden Gillen and Burn Gorman appearing in minor but important roles. Even Cillian Murphy makes a repeat performance, indeed his continuing survival is one of my favourite aspects of Nolan's trilogy and help keep the films held within a consistent world. The film is universally well acted and its one of the great strengths of the series as a whole that there is hardly a single clunking line reading to interrupt progress.

I'll speak about Alfred later, but the rest of Batman's team of helpers do their jobs well. Trying to coax him out of his slumber and then looking to him for leadership when he is needed. Part of the joy of these films is the relationships between both Fox and Gordon and Wayne/Batman are so perfectly played mixtures of awe, frustration and a certain deal of love. It helps humanise an occasionally hard to love character. The major change to this set is John Blake, an idealist even in anarchy. He is the future of Gotham that Batman was trying to build but, while well acted, the role feels a little slight right up until the ending of the film (of which more later). Joseph Gordon-Levitt must have some kind of record for most minutes on screen in Nolan films whilst yet to gain a real character trait. Blake is a little too clean, a little too idealised and just a touch shallow compared to the pits of humanity he plays against like Gordon, Wayne and Alfred.

The array of minor and supporting villains are for the most part adequate. As a fan of the comics it is gratifying to see Dagget make his appearance in Nolan's universe, while Bane's men are generally silent. But with a villain as dominant as Bane, other characters on that side of the fence are largely unnecessary. Miranda Tate/Talia is the only other significant villain but she again feels underdeveloped. Her tryst with Wayne has to be explained away by the revelation regarding Rachel, because there is so little between the characters at that point. There never feels any reason for Batman to worry about her more than anyone else, unlike his relationship with Rachel. Indeed there is little to Miranda at all besides the late twist. Due to the completely underdeveloped nature of her character the twist feels, like Catwoman, as a cog in the machinery of the plot rather than a genuine character moment as it should be. (It could also be questioned why she spends so much money developing a Fusion power source before anyone works out how to weaponise it, but that’s a discussion for a much more pedantic blog.)

Nolan's supporting casts are always a strength of his films and they are again here but two new characters, Blake and Tate, that needed to be strong and developed simply aren't.

Reflections on the Revolution in Gotham

The centrepiece of this epic length film is Bane's revolution in Gotham. It is clear to the audience from the outset that this is merely a lengthy stay of execution for the doomed city but to Gotham's inhabitants it represents five months of apparent freedom. Bane promises anarchy, where the people will be able to take back what the 1% have stolen for themselves but, in actuality, the Joker is the true anarchist of Batman's enemies. Bane is a warlord presiding over a military dictatorship and employing the kind of brutal repression such regimes are famous for.

There are echoes of the French Revolution with Crane's Mountain from which he passes judgement, to the notion of show trials, ritualised executions, and attacks on the homes of the wealthy. The only problem is very little of it feels real. I accept the need for comic book exaggeration in films of this type but Gotham just never has the look or feel of a city breaking down, or a city being tortured. It just feels too clean, too ordered, and too much of what happens is done in clip format. Gotham felt more anarchic when the Joker shot a couple of police officers than when Bane traps the majority of the GCPD underground.

Bane's army is not explored enough either, who are these people, why are they working for him in overthrowing the existing social order. Are they simply his warriors and the freed prisoners or do the dispossessed and poor of Gotham join in. I don't feel like I know if Bane did force a revolution or if he simply invaded.

If the film is a metaphor for revolutions then Bane's bomb stands for the inevitability of bloodshed in such acts. It undermines the development of Free Gotham by promising a set date on which everything must be wiped out to begin again. Bane and the League of Shadows want to rebalance the world by removing Gotham's decadence and crime, his time bomb is the metaphorical terror necessary to complete the job that a mere revolution cannot do.

The adaptation of the No Man's Land storyline is a bravura touch for a director clearly full of confidence but a film has limited time to really get to grips with all the issues flowing from such a plot. By making the bomb a time-bomb Nolan deliberately undercuts the storyline to free himself from having to explore it in further detail and Batman's motivations for starting a war. Batman's actions are made correct by the presence of a timer, without which the massacre of cops and gangs alike could be deemed a more questionable choice of action. It is easy to cast Batman as the 1%'s avenger, using the strictures of the ancien regime to overturn an uprising and defend the rich who are the only ones who can stop the city being destroyed. Trust the rich and powerful as they no better could be seen as the message if you want it.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Truth is a keen theme for the film. Specifically correcting the convenient lies that littered the end of the Dark Knight. Characters continually expect the truth to do one thing when it actually ends up a very different way. Alfred's moment of truthfulness destroys his relationship with Wayne as expected but only pushes him towards Tate and even greater depths of anger. It makes him arrogant and nihilistic as he watches his fortune disappear, sleeps with a mysterious acquaintance before pursuing Bane without any reasonable expectation of victory.

The scene between Alfred and Wayne should be a key one for the trilogy but it just doesn't quite grip right. It doesn't twist your heart as it should do, partly because its not entirely clear what Alfred logically expects to achieve by telling Wayne. There doesn't seem a real connection between 'Rachel didn't love you' and 'stop being Batman' but then there isn't a logical reason linking Rachel loving Wayne and him staying as Batman but he seems to see one. The rest of the film distinctly misses Alfred as the one man who genuinely loves Wayne and not Batman. The burning of Rachel's letter was one of the outstanding moments of the Dark Knight, the ultimate act of paternal care from Alfred to Wayne but its revelation in Rises feels more like a footnote.

Bane chooses to break down the other lie built into Gotham's mythology by exposing Harvey Dent as murdered and madman. He uses it to destroy the foundations of Gotham's law and order regime when all it actually does is free the Batman to become his city's saviour. Bane doesn't realise the power of Batman's symbol because he can only perceive of the man he defeated in combat. It goes to Bane's core that he is a man of action and deeds, not built to really understand people and their moods. In exposing their false God, he gives them their true titan. I like that this moment facilitates the film's ending and its a neat little touch to turn Gordon and Batman's scheming on its head.

Endings and Beginnings

This is definitely the end of Nolan's trilogy. I can't guarantee an idiotic studio might try to squeeze a few more pence out of an incredibly successful series of films but Nolan is clearly done and his ending carries his points through. Nolan does what no other Batman writer has done in any form I have encountered, not in comics, other Movies, TV shows. He gives Wayne peace. The ultimate gift that Wayne has always shown himself incapable of receiving is finally delivered by a heroic sacrifice where he is finally secured as his city's saviour. Finally Batman becomes the symbol he hoped it could be, and a much more potent symbol than the Harvey Dent as he went through Gotham's darkest hours and stayed true. Wayne apparently sacrifices Batman to give the city the uncorrupted figure it needs, the unveiling of a statue to him shows the depth of their gratitude for a man they once tried to capture.

But its not just that Wayne is free, its that Gotham still has a vigilante avenger. Blake's rejection of his idol's compromises mark him out for Wayne as a true idealist to carry on his work. The entire trilogy has built to its final shot, finally a man steps forward who can be trusted to work hard enough, to stick to the unbreakable rules and take on the mantle. As the music rises and Blake ascends into the Batcave, Wayne's work is done. He has got Gotham to produce its own protector by providing the embattled city with a powerful symbol of hope and resistance to crime. It is deeply satisfying moment, and a moment that has been truly earned. By Wayne, by Gotham and by Nolan.

Rises has to go down as the best concluding part to a trilogy that I have seen but it still has its flaws, principally that Nolan has become a little too keen on his plots and not interested enough in his characters. However, those flaws are in the context of a phenomenally impressive piece of work. Nolan has made an indelible impression on the character of Batman which is a staggering achievement when you consider how many words have already been written about one of the mainstays of American popular culture for the last 70 years.

Reflections on Hawksmoor's Churches

The Hawksmoor Churches have become minor cultural icons over the last half century, despite being almost forgotten since their construction in the early 1700s, but perhaps not in the way their creator, Nicholas Hawksmoor, may have wished. Since Iain Sinclair's poem Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches first espoused the notion of some satanic connection others have picked up on and expanded the theme, notably in Alan Moore's From Hell and in Peter Ackroyd's post modern novel Hawksmoor. It is from the latter that I became aware of the churches and intrigued by the tremendous power they had over the writer and his unfortunate characters.

So it is I recently completed a rather different sort of pilgrimage to explore these apparently arcane creations dotted throughout London's East End, from St. Alfege's at Greenwich in the South to St. George's in Bloomsbury. Exploring the city on foot reveals the power of these structures even now when most are surrounded on all sides by ever taller buildings and their fundamental grandeur is still undiminished by man's constant expansion towards the heavens. Their spires, which once denoted the promise of safety and worship, now became beacons for the architecturally curious as they appear and disappear between more modern titans of brick and glass. They still rise into view, filling what space is afforded them between cramped houses and businesses and narrow streets. The sheer confidence of their power cascades down from their towers, each quite different but sharing a common power to enthral and silence even the most casual of viewer.

Their varying characters react to the changing landscape of London and its teeming inhabitants, seeming to capture the spirit of the place in all its guises. St. Alfege's is perhaps the calmest of the six, an impression helped by its now curiously backwards composition. The main road passes by the rear of the church with its serene columns and large stained glass window whose true beauty is only revealed to the worshippers within. Meanwhile its ornate tower and frontage is turned away from the casual spectators as they pass by and instead faces back towards the church's grounds and school. Even this tower when fully revealed has a solemnity to it uncommon to Hawksmoor's other more challenging designs. This, perhaps more simplistic, creation slots into Greenwich with a distinct ease, reflective of the slower pace of this tranquil part of London. In Hawksmoor's time this would have been a place of recuperation and reflection as injured sailors recovered in the new Royal Hospital for Seamen whilst man watched the stars from the Royal Observatory. Perhaps Hawksmoor was also aware of the placement of the church near to one of the many great triumphs of his master, Sir Christopher Wren. The Royal Naval College looks out onto the Thames with supreme mastery and even a work of Hawksmoor's true power may have struggled to live beside it. Whatever the cause, St Alfege's is a place of welcoming worship, where all feel free to saunter inside its gates and place themselves in His domain. A place of worship is perhaps the simplest of the purposes of a church but it is not the only reason for their existence nor is it the only face of the church as an institution.

Hawksmoor's St. Alfege came to be after a previous church on the site was too badly damaged to be repaired. Its parishioners petitioned the crown for help and from that movement came legislation to build 50 new churches throughout London. However, only twelve were ever built and the six Hawksmoor churches make up half of that quota. The churches were deemed necessary in response to new religious threats that had rushed into the city after the Great Fire, sweeping up lost congregations into new orders. Anxious for their drifting flock, the masters of government deemed new churches a priority to provide places of shelter and worship. Hawksmoor may have been aware of the lost souls and degrading power of the national religion, but perhaps he felt the people of Greenwich needed no such allures as their campaign had created the rush of building, hence the calm, inviting style. However, other areas of London needed to be reminded of the raw power of the church, perhaps none more so than the notorious squalid lands of Spitalfields.

Christ Church Spitalfields is less a church than a searing imposition of will upon the surrounding area. Soaring above all around, it demands attention and plunges its neighbours into the metaphorical and literal shade. The narrow façade shoots skyward, turning into a steeple pointing towards heavenly bodies as if it is an eternal reminder of His presence. The surrounding area had long been a slum area, and was now home to the establishment's permanent bête noire, mass immigration, as Huguenots ploughed into London. Its poverty led to desperation and perceived moral decline, long held historical rumours of thieves and prostitutes mixed with the religious threat of new chapels built by the French immigrants. A hundred and fifty years in the future Jack the Ripper would plunge the area into terror and grimy mythology but even in Hawksmoor's time it was notorious. Nowadays it is a new sort of godlessness as the casual urban youth, ironic, detached and cynical, meanders about in the faux decay and measured detachment of modern cool. Hawksmoor's call to order and God stands watchfully over the low market stalls its power undiminished but its influence waning. His harsh walls and geometric shapes do not offer comfort, only a calculated kind of perfection, an icon of the possible if one devotes to God. Rising out of the squalor it was designed to send a message to all, that ascension is achievable, even from the foetid earth and rancid meat of an 18^th century marketplace. Its clean, white stone contrasting with the surrounding mud and filth. The church as an ideal, as a hope, as a saviour.

Where, perhaps in Hawksmoor's view, the people of Spitalfields needed enforced inspiration, the smallest of his churches represented a very different view. The only Hawksmoor church within the City of London, St Mary Woolnoth, is crowded on all sides by old and modern monuments to economic advancement. In its day it was overshadowed by the Royal Exchange, and soon after its consecration, the Bank of England. Now it sits above a tube station that at once stage threatened to demolish it, on one side of the church a lift to the platforms and an inevitable coffee shop have been built flush to its original walls. Hawksmoor responded to these threats and the tiny allotted space with an altogether different style of church. St Mary Woolnoth appears almost as a fort with high ramparts jutting into the sky. Its compact, box like shape implying solidity and untold depths of resilience. Built as the power of finance was becoming clear it is perhaps designed to be a last redoubt for religion in the square mile where economic imperative frequently triumphs over moral direction. In its limited space Hawksmoor packs in feature after feature, not the tall, silent walls of Christ Church Spitalfields but an ever more complex mesh of lines, pillars, arches and windows. So often stuck in the shadows it takes on a brooding countenance, watching, waiting, unmoving as the City's perpetual state of flux speeds round it. Once St Mary Woolnoth has your eye it will not let go, each feature leads into another. Constantly changing parameters as your eye is drawn to its distinctly unecclesiastical peak. No spire or steeple for the City, it would soon be outmatched by more dominant neighbours. Instead its square towers suggest there is a force to this church, a sense it will never leave. This church feels ready for battle with its monetarist surroundings and represents the church as defender of faith in the face of the ideological modernity of the City.

While St Mary Woolnoth finds Hawksmoor in combative mood, St George's church in Bloomsbury finds him at his most whimsical. The front of the church is an almost Roman-esque design of tall columns supporting a distinctly temple like roof. Designed to give the gentry of the day an alternative to other local churches principally located in slums, St George's is a stately, regal presence, now partially hidden by office blocks. This church is not about power, or even much about God, as much as about societal expectations of the church. Impressively ornate, the frontage of the church is back from the street, allowing it to be properly appreciated and this feels like a church designed for proper appreciation, and it does not dominate or impose like its siblings. This theme of societal ideals and regal solemnity extends to the steeple, one of Hawksmoor's most unusual creations. A stepped tower inspired by Roman architecture is beset with figures of lions and unicorns, seemingly contesting for space, while at its peak stands George I in Roman dress, watching over his city with a patrician's gaze. It is one of Hawksmoor's more bravura moments but it is in keeping with the lofty ideals of the church. It seems to represent the building's pre-occupation with the social order of the church, the monarch as literal head of the church with the power to look down upon all who worship there. Perhaps one of the reasons this church feels so out of step with its current surroundings, particularly compared with his other works, is that this social structure no longer comes from the church. Whilst his other buildings still have a modern, relevant power to them, St George's Bloomsbury feels more like a relic of a forgotten time, a place to think about what was, not ponder what is and what will be. In that respect the face of the church it represents has shifted, once it was the social order of the church, now it is the church as link to the past. One cannot look upon its set columns and restrained façade without reflecting on the church through time as the constant line in a mismatched frenzy of history. This is the church at its most solid and comforting but also its least relevant.

If St George Bloomsbury detaches the church from religion and God by marshalling it into a social order and hierarchy, the St Anne's Limehouse wallows in the spirituality at Christianity's core. Something ethereal and otherworldly seeps out of the very stone of the walls and the ground of the churchyard. Only adding to the air of a mystery is a pyramid that was originally destined for the top of the church but which now sits, isolated and without context in the grounds. It is no wonder that this is the source of so much of Hawksmoor's recent association with the demonic and malevolent. There is an air of the dead that makes itself known as you wonder around the grounds kept in shadow by bending, twisting trees. Unlike his other churches St Anne's feels sunk into the ground, as if it its being gradually reclaimed by the former worshippers buried all around it. St Anne's is of the earth but also free from worldly concerns, not only out of its time but also out of its place. When you enter the churchyard you are transported as if to another place, one where London is not present, where there are no cars, no shops, no Mondays, nor any other earthly concern. Again it is tempting to think that Hawksmoor saw the needs of the surrounding area and accommodated them in this extraordinary creation. Limehouse of the time was another of London's desperate slums and remained so for centuries after, supported by the dockyards it was the home of disease, hard labour, and strife but without hope. The dockyards would always be the dockyards, the necessary and unpleasant side of becoming a global trading super power. Without the promise of salvation on this earthly realm Hawksmoor may have tried to give them something else, a brief window into the everlasting afterlife. A place where the soul could free itself of mortal concerns and consort with the angels of promised freedom. St Anne's is the church as a spiritual place, a side of Christianity that is increasingly obscured by our obsession with earthly matters. Maybe this is why modern writers feel the satanic breath upon them here, as we have so forgotten its angelic equivalent. Hawksmoor did not mean for this place to be so interpreted but modern faith has stripped heaven of its incorporeal qualities while allowing the devil and his cohort of demons to take their place as the epitome of the supernatural.

It is the last church of Hawksmoor's set where this divergence between the church of his time and the current church becomes all too obvious. St George in the East is a towering, magnificent and imposing structure, imbuing all who see it with a simple message that God is Great. This is distinct from a wrathful or terrifying God, but a God that is bountiful in His magnificence. Hawksmoor's building inspires as a symbol of what mankind can achieve when its sets its eyes on His countenance and fills the viewer with an awe of religion. This is perhaps the crucial aspect of the church of Hawksmoor's era, it was the sole owner of spectacle, it had a distinct faith in its own richness that no other body could match. Science and godless culture were yet to attain the brilliance and grandeur that He and His representatives could claim. Hawksmoor's creations are astounding because the great creator was astounding. They harnessed His power but in modern times the church has fallen behind.

Spectacle is now mass produced, packaged and sold piece by piece. Architecture has moved on from the baroque of Hawksmoor to new styles and ever more impressive feats and heights. The swagger of Hawksmoor's works are now replicated by any large company or product with a power untamed by any religious force. St George in the East is now looked down upon by that new edifice to our current churches of commerce and capitalism, the Shard's neo-brutalist spire of steel and glass. A phallic protuberance reaching ever higher, piercing His perfect canvas with all the arrogance and temerity that has become the hallmark of our godless consumerism. The ephemeral transience of the City's new glass towers, to go with their glass empires of imagined money and digital data, contrasts with Hawksmoor's hard stone. The fragility and transparency of these building's almost implies they are built ready for a time when they and their money will not be needed, whilst Hawksmoor's solid, eternal churches are crafted with a certainty that an Earth without God is as impossible as unimaginable. But modern Christianity does not have Hawksmoor's faith, it has yielded in the face of these threats and has become lesser. Indeed, it has forgotten that God is Great, instead God is now nice. Never was this clearer than the interior of St George in the East.

Rebuilt after destruction during the blitz, the interior of the church has been built in what could be called the church's modern style. The baroque grandeur that once was has been replaced with inoffensive pastel walls, wide spaces and a pulpit no higher than its congregation. God is equal. The walls are adorned with stories about cake sales and bike rides, nothing that could be objected to, nothing which could imply the existence of heaven. Here God's mission is more likely to explore the intricacies of baking than the afterlife. Faced with threats, the church has turned in on itself and removed the potentially distressing parts such as, faith, sin, the wonder of God's infinite love and the spirit of His staggering creation. When one looks for God's greatness in the modern church one can only see the fearful hatred and retching disgust aimed at the hell-bound. God used to be Great, he once created all life out of love. Now He condemns homosexuals and abortionists to fiery hell and endorses turgidly minor acts of everyday charity. But God can be great without being vengeful, He can be magnificent without hating. If one needs the proof you need only look at the works he inspired in Hawksmoor, not just staggering works of boundless genius but works reflective of the forgotten faces of Christianity. A welcoming call to worship, an transcendent ideal, a defence against ruthless capitalism, an attachment to the past, a deep spiritualism and a boundless brilliance. Even as an atheist it is hard to deny the raw power of such ideas, and sad to see them so dissipated in the modern faith.

Reflections on Bauhaus: Art as Life at the Barbican

Bauhaus emerged from the ruins of a shell shocked and traumatised Europe. Blinking into the sunlight of peace after five of the most brutal and destructive years ever forced upon the continent. The seemingly unending nightmare of the First World War had left Britain, France and Germany bled dry, collapsed against each other like drunken fighters with no punches left to throw. The war and subsequent peace treaties had led to the complete break up of what remained of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as most of Europe was torn into new countries, territories and occupied zones. War followed by pandemic had nearly wiped out a generation of Europeans while the economies of Europe had been stripped bare in the mutilating drive for greater armament production. The only institutions and factories left standing were unsuited and unused to peace.

From such destruction, the desire for change is inevitable. Driven by the belief that something in society must be fundamentally wrong for such acts to occur, people reached out for causes, leaders and philosophies that would burn the past. This desire became an ideological scorched earth tactic that would drive the following tumultuous decades. Russia, having suffered humiliation and starvation, collapsed into murderous civil war and surfaced as the first Communist state. In France the search for cause became a demand for vengeance as successive Governments meticulously crippled the German state, while in the UK the Labour movement gained power for the first time as they replaced the Liberals at the top tier of British politics. Radicalism even extended to global politics as nations attempted to build a new world order with a supranational arbiter authority to decide conflicts between nations. The League of Nations' lofty ideals were too great a mismatch with the chaos of the age to last.

In Germany, the destruction spread to every area of society and government but, more than these physical scars, defeat was a blow to their national identity. Despite being a relatively new nation, unified only in the previous century, repeated military success and the political skill of Bismarck had put them at the centre of world affairs. A naval, military, economic, and occasional colonial power that had shaken the European balance of power to its core, Germany now lay beaten and crippled as French and English scavengers picked the bones at Versailles. In truth, the German spirit had already been broken. The sickening, rotting, maddening anger at the very core of the German heart expressed itself in so many ways in these fateful years. From failed communist revolts, to attempted Nazi putsches, from the illogical belief in Dolchstoß, the stab in the back myth, to the sadistic compulsion to print money even as hyperinflation raged, this anger was everywhere. In every aspect of life, Germans sought to break down the accepted way of things to form something, anything, new. In trying to avoid a repeated destruction they engaged their most destructive tendencies.

From this obsessive desire for the new came the Bauhaus movement. An artistic and creative drive to try new forms, new pedagogies, new ideas and new techniques. The earliest works of Bauhaus are almost methodical in their abstractness, showing a consuming desire to avoid the usual, the pre-existing or the functional. One notable sculpture is an abstract relief design carved into the wood of what used to be a propeller, the machines of the great war turned into the products of new art. Master Itten studied old masters on a geometric level, the paintings stripped down into mathematical formulae or their images viewed through a prism of raw emotional resonance. Everything about the school was rebuilt through this mindset, even their timetables were redesigned to look unlike those of the past.

The geometric abstraction soon merged with the burgeoning constructivist movement and Bauhaus had its motif. Angular designs and bold colours brought with them a new modernism contrasting sharply with the annihilated buildings and muddy quagmire of the Western Front. The naturalism and curves of previous art was to be wiped away, Bauhaus experimented with a linear functionality building back up to the useful and practical from these new ideas and transformed basics. The school collaborated on a project to build a timber house in line with their ideas. Dominated by mesmeric patterns of geometric shapes and filled with functional if abstract furnishings such as the famous rotating bookcase, it was to be a triumph not just of design but of a communal and collective spirit as Masters and Students alike contributed their time and worked as equals to building the structure from scratch.

The desire to create a movement that could change how people thought about the world was now in full flow but the almost deliberately uneconomic minds of the Bauhaus masters were running into conflict with the ever collapsing German state. As hyperinflation ran wild and society broke down even the concept of money seemed to be under threat from the rampant destructive energy of this perfect storm. For a time the masters at Bauhaus helped design banknotes with ever more ludicrous numbers on them. The notes now sit comfortable amongst the more outrageously surrealist works produced by the school. With their funding withdrawn Bauhaus moved to the growing city of Dessau with new backers, responding to threatening economic times by shutting their productive and successful pottery workshop.

Dessau was to be the Bauhaus movement's crowning triumph, with their new funds affording them a prime campus location with the freedom to do as they wished. The result was to be an idealised vision of architectural modernity inspired by the school's founder and director at the time Walter Gropius. Sweeping away Gothic and traditionalists design principles, the Bauhaus Dessau's straight lines, sharp edges and clean design tried to create the functional and modern out of the design practices of their school. Designed with students as well as masters, the building is grippingly modern. This was the working space rebuilt from new foundations, and new ideals and was a towering achievement.

Elsewhere on the campus the master's houses were designed with new standards of living in mind. Simplicity, clean lines, and functionality were key as the Bauhaus sought to bring its design gifts to work on how people ate, slept and entertained. Light, tubular steel chairs, re-positionable lights, and sofas that could be transformed for more or less people were the order of the day. They believed with an almost religious fervour that the geometric designs of the future would sweep away the heavy, solemn furniture of the past.

These were growth years as Germany and the world looked to recover, and the Bauhaus turned their attention to even loftier ideals. Herbert Bayer attempted to create a universal phonetic alphabet and font to unite languages and people. Other masters focused on the idea of a complete art, one uniting all mediums. A theatre owner commissioned work for an automated theatre where the Bauhaus' artistic ideals of the stage could be played out. They already held their own entertainments and bizarre parties where students would have to attend in outfits according to a design theme. The Bauhaus branched out into clothes, and wallpaper, bringing their ideas of design into people lives and homes. The heady days were not to continue and the automated theatre was never to be built.

The aesthetic and functional movements within the school came into conflict with new director Hannes Mayer pushing the school to make a profit on its design radicalism. Some idealistic masters left, including Bayer with his unsuccessful universal font. But worse was to come. Just as the world thought it was beginning to recover it crashed again, first on Wall Street and then everywhere. Extremism was reborn with an even greater fury and the Bauhaus was a target.

In a deliberate attempt to de politicise the school Mies Von De Rohe became director but he was unable to stem the criticism and, following an unsuccessful move to Berlin, the school was forced to close under unrelenting political pressure from the Nazi party. Despite being denounced as “degenerate” and “un-German” art, the movement the Bauhaus created could not be stopped and its influence pushed well into the future. However for Germany a different kind of modernism was coming. The Nazis were also invigorated with the sense of creative destruction but their aims were much more sinister. The new tools and aesthetics of modernity, the autobahn, the Volkswagen, the Panzer and the gas chamber were their signatures as they attempted to break society down and rebuild it from the ground up. Where once the Bauhaus had attempted to use modernity to bring new design into functional use and merge art with life, the Nazis used the same forces of modernity to mass produce murder and push their death cult into the everyday lives of Germany’s citizens and victims.

At the Barbican's exhibition on Bauhaus there is a large section on the design and construction of the Bauhaus Dessau. The limitless hope that pours forth from the note books, publications, and design models which portray the new modern living is in complete ignorance of what was to come. It is enough to break the stoniest heart.