Goodbyes are always messy, especially when you’ve spent a long time with the person you’re saying goodbye to. Every word, every gesture, carries the weight of everything that came before, and we expect the end to encompass all of it. Sometimes, we even expect the end be the pinnacle, leaving a burst of light that lingers.

“The Dark Knight Rises,” the final movie in Christopher Nolan’s great resurrection of Batman’s movie career, inevitably won’t be all things to all people. The album is, however, a sweeping, intimate, fitting and surprisingly hopeful goodbye for this current incarnation of the Dark Knight. The story takes time for both social reflection and highly personal issues, addresses the nature of heroism, and made me bawl like a baby more than once.

But in a good way.

Though eight years of story-time has passed since “The Dark Knight,” the opening of the current movie immediately springboards from the end of the last one.

Commissioner Gordon, played by an always-excellent Gary Oldman, has been cleaning up the city based on the lie he and Batman let stand about Harvey Dent’s death. Bruce Wayne has been a shut-in for the last eight years, and Christian Bale’s portrayal of the character’s physical and emotional hermitage is heartbreakingly tragic. It’s also the perfect setup for the rest of the movie. Michael Caine does some of his best emotional work of the series as Alfred, the butler who is essentially the only family Bruce Wayne has.

For more information check out the July 26 edition of Davis Clipper.