No Country for Upbeat Films

And a depressing one.

"Yeah, it is grim," acknowledged "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan in Newsweek. "But Batman is a grim character. It's a grim world. And that's part of the fun of it -- it's operatic. It's exciting."

And . . . depressing.

What is it that people want from Batman these days? Or from Anton Chigurh, who lacks the charisma that makes villains palatable? Do we want a fictional taste of our world, in which faceless, random terrorism has jumbled the narrative rule book, in which we can't tell our friends from our enemies, to paraphrase Judi Dench in "Quantum of Solace"?

The films rolling out through the end of the year have a similar void at the center. In "Synecdoche, New York," writer-director Charlie Kaufman seems to conclude that we are in control of nothing. "Defiance" and "The Reader" are about the unstoppable machinery of the Holocaust. In "Doubt," a nun leads a crusade against a priest whom she suspects of pedophilia and arrives not at a verdict but a moral abyss. "Frost/Nixon" is about the ultimate executive betrayal. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet wallow in domestic turmoil in "Revolutionary Road." Then there's the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," updating Cold War paranoia to ecological paranoia; the trailer shows Manhattan going dark and infrastructure being vaporized by an ominous cloud.

Add "ominous cloud" to the list of things that make on-screen New York -- and us -- miserable.

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The recession might actually save us from the horror.

After this season, we may see bleakness retreat back to smaller films, says movie industry columnist David Poland. His rationale: During a recession, major studios will bankroll only surefire hits. In the end, Poland says, people want inoffensive commercial films -- like this summer's "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" and "Mamma Mia!" -- not somber movies in which directors and actors push themselves and their audiences toward despair. Like "Changeling," in which Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie do exactly that.

"Dark, difficult movies tend to be made in part for the ego stroke," Poland says. "Now, a lot fewer places and people can afford those ego strokes."

But rumor has it that "Blood Meridian" and "Cities of the Plain," two more Cormac McCarthy adaptations, are being developed by directors Todd Field (of the grief-riddled "In the Bedroom") and Andrew Dominik (of the saga of dread "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"). Graham King, producer of "The Departed," is on location with "Edge of Darkness," about a detective investigating the murder of his daughter. Scott Rudin, producer of "No Country," is behind this season's "Doubt," "The Reader" and "Revolutionary Road" and is working on "Blood Meridian" and "Goat," based on a memoir about the savagery of fraternity hazing.

These movies will not be billed as "The Most Depressing Movie You Will Ever See." We don't go to the movies to be depressed. We do go to movies that have A-list casts, are an "official selection of the Cannes Film Festival," or ask us, cutely and ironically, "Why So Seriousss?" ("The Dark Knight" teaser poster). There's a bit of mutual deception going on among us, the filmmakers and their publicity machines.