It is not the best movie ever made. Depending on your tastes, it may not even be the best comic book movie ever made. And this may not be Heath Ledger's best performance nor even the best interpretation of the Joker (though I would say it is the best portrayal on film). In fact, after having seen this movie twice, I think I can come to the blasphemous conclusion that the second installment in Christopher Nolan's Batseries may be...overrated.
But, you know what? This was the most exhilarating experience I had in a movie theater in recent memory. This film has taken me as it has so many others and turned me into a nearly-mindless drone. I love, love, love The Dark Knight. And the fact that so many others do too gives me hope for the future of blockbuster entertainment.
For the record, Batman Returns was my first foray into anything Caped Crusader, followed shortly by the animated series. Looking back, it was really messed up, but it kept me endlessly entertained and was a fixture in my VCR.
In the second grade, I knew this girl named Whitney who I guess I must have found annoying. She lived in the neighborhood and she wanted to be friends with me, so she brought over Batman Forever. At the time, I was less concerned with the quality of the movie so much as with how to get the cootie-carrier out of my house. Considering I haven't been able to get a girl so desperate to come by my place again, I probably should have been nicer to her in retrospect, but them's the breaks. At any rate, I was still able to figure out that the movie was...off. Worse than Returns by far.
Since the whole geek community is having a cathartic collective bashing of Batman and Robin, I'll sidestep the travesty altogether.
Let's talk about the real Batman movies. Let's talk about Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale.
I think Begins had promise more than anything else. It didn't stray tremendously from your standard popcorn movie. Its villains were kind of simple-minded, even if their atmospheres were satisfyingly creepy and gritty. The fight scenes, while not overly theatrical, were disorienting and messy. It had a heavy-handed motif, a damsel in distress, and a silly macguffin.
But it didn't have puns. And Gotham looked like a real city. And James Gordon wasn't a buffoon. And Rachel Dawes wasn't a gallivanting tramp. These touches along with the fascination of Bruce Wayne's training and the plausible introduction of a masked vigilante, rose Batman Begins head and shoulders above the average.
Also, it had the Tumbler. And don't lie, the real climax of that movie was when Batman was playing chicken with all of those cop cars on the freeway.
It was a relatively simple movie, but it was good and that's hard to ask for these days from studios who apparently know what we like better than we do. So I know I was excited for an inevitable sequel the minute "Batman Begins" appeared on the screen (which was the end credits). As disappointments like Superman Returns and Spiderman 3 came out, Dark Knight seemed like our last hope for a competent superhero movie. Iron Man came along and created a little upstart that would have given The Dark Knight some stiff competition in quality...
...were it not obvious from shot one that this is a very different type of movie entirely.
Whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger.
The frenetic energy and grand scope of the initial bank heist is the first hint of genius. The tense note of the electric guitar as the window gets shot out and the clowns go down the zipline set the mood for a different type of criminal indeed. The plan is simple, but meticulous. Elaborate in its own way, but far from ridiculously complex. Without hearing that much from the Joker himself, we see his manipulation of the weak come to spectacular fruition and watch him steal the mob's money without a care to the consequences.
"What do you believe in, huh? What do you believe in???"
When we see that bus join the line right as Gotham's schools let out, we appreciate the Clown Prince of Crime's stroke of genius, as well as his twisted sense of humor.
The Dark Knight is a study in crime and the people who stand against it. Gotham's citizens, politicians, and law enforcers have all gained some backbone since the first movie, thanks to the symbol that is the Batman. At the forefront of this stand against injustice is District Attorney Harvey Dent, who had been vying for your vote during the movie's viral marketing campaign.
Decent men in an indencent time.
I loved Harvey Dent in this movie. Aaron Eckhart captures the essence of a reckless man with the world in front of him. Very rarely are Batman's allies at all interesting, but now the Nolan brothers have introduced a man that for whom Batman himself would step aside. He's determined and a bit reckless, but he represents the hope Bruce Wayne was hoping to inspire. Rounding up 500+ mobsters in a public display of justice is one of the characters' shining moments.
I would totally watch a show that was called Harvey Dent, D.A. Or, as Gordon put it, The White Knight. It almost makes me wish the Batman mythos didn't go down the path it does.
But what did Gordon say at the end of the last film? Things were inevitably going to escalate in response to Bruce Wayne's open defiance of the despicable status quo. The Joker is the embodiment of that escalation.
Unstoppable force...immovable object.
One of the best scenes in the film is the interrogation between Batman and the Joker. When I first saw the screenshot, I thought it was kind of silly to stick Batman in an interrogation room, but the oddity is quickly pounded out by Batman's fierce assault and the Joker's unrelenting disdain for the system. "You complete me," he tells Batman, obviously mocking, but also revealing a truth.
Psychopaths like the Joker are partly Bruce's responsibility. As long as everyone was willing to stand by and let organized chaos ruin their lives, true chaos had no reason to rear its ugly head. When Batman demanded order, anarchy answered gleefully and in full force. And, unfortunately for some of the new war's casulaties, the process is irreversible. Even if Batman were to hang up the cowl, he's "changed things...forever."
Heath Ledger's portrayal of a villain who is seeking something other than tangible gain or traditional power is the primary draw to The Dark Knight. The Joker is horrifyingly fascinating and a twisted delight to watch on screen. Ledger produces laughs from the audience with a simple fleeting expression, an inscrutable gait, and a murderous wit. But unlike past screen Jokers, he is not a silly joke. He considers our attempts to control life to be the greatest joke of all and he loves to use death and mayhem to drive the point home.
Watching the world burn.
Joker's attacks on Gotham's psyche are a definitive stroke of wonder in Dark Knight. The tension makes the heart beat and grips your attention relentlessly. This is a major component in the film's greatness, but it's also a potential drawback.
The movie can be exhuasting. Scenes such as the simultaneous assassination attempts of public servants induce nail-biting in between violent jumps and starts. Characters are put in unberable moral dilemmas and millions of people are terrorized. Since the movie doesn't let up, the pace doesn't necessarily drag, but it's so packed with mini-climaxes that The Dark Knight might feel longer than it actually is.
Howard and Zimmer's score is liable to induce a heart attack if you listen to it set against enough explosions and murders. But for the atmosphere, it works excellently and has quickly become some of my favorite thriller music. Their good job at narrating the chaos is a factor in the tolerable snaking of the plot. At the end of the showing, I really wouldn't have minded if the movie reached Lord of the Rings length.
I think you and I are destined to do this forever.
DEATHS AND SPOILERS SECTION - SKIP AHEAD
The quintessential tension scene would probably be the ferry scene. I really enjoyed the concept and the mindgame, but I wasn't sold on the outcome. It was artistic to make the convict toss the detonator. It was unconvincing when the civilian didn't turn the key. Unfortunately, maybe the Joker won in my head, because I do believe any normal group of people would blow up a boat full of convicts to save their own skins.
Perhaps if Nolan had built things up more to show evidence of the town being more magnanimous. Instead, we spend two hours watching them unravel psychologically only to have a magical sweep of conscience. It's this type of crowd compassion that made the Spiderman movies barf-tastic and while it's not handled with such heavy-handed propogandization, the film would have benefitted by acknowledging the unlikely decision and the psychological steps needed to get there.
I was convinced Two-Face was dead when Batman turned him pretty-side up and I was happy with that decision. When he was holding Ramirez at gunpoint, I remember thinking "Wow, they're using a lot of Two-Face in this movie, why not just hold off until the third movie?" Well, this movie was as much about Harvey as it was about Batman (Joker encompasses everything), so it was fitting to follow his story arc to its end. Mainly, I don't want to see Two-Face fall prey to sequel-itis, as Scarecrow did, to a small extent.
They showed the man he was. They showed the demons he had before his disfigurment. They showed his downfall. Stick a fork in him. As far as the movie franchise goes, he's done. To bring him back would be a cheap ploy to milk the character and I'm perfectly satisfied with him bowing out and giving other rogues a chance.
Joker, on the other hand, was written to be Batman's permanent foe and while I think it would be inappropriate to recast in the third movie, I would hold out and see if Nolan makes a fourth or a fifth and call for Joker to return for the final movie of the extended series.
For as much of an improvement as Maggie Gyllenhall was, it's good that they finally got rid of Rachel. She was bland and useless alive. She did a lot more good dead and Joker's fakeout was one of the hardest-hitting moments in the movie.
But the death that affected me the most was Gordon's. I couldn't understand how they could kill him before he became Commissioner, but when Stevens gives Barbara Sr. the bad news, I was convinced they had actually done it to make a point. And I was angry, confused, sad, and distraught. I didn't realize how much Gary Oldman's portrayal of Jim meant to me, but it was apparently a lot...
...which is why I jumped in my seat and applauded when he revealed himself again. And when Dr. Richard Alpert granted him the office of Commissioner, I could have given him a standing ovation. I had invested a lot in Gordon.
And it's moments like those that make The Dark Knight special.
END SPOILERS
So...this film shattered all expectations. If I had my way, I'd see it win Best Picture. I'd see it break Titanic's money record. But, objectively, I have to wonder if our expectations were not skewed down by the slew of crap we've been force-fed over the years. I know that I love this movie. But I don't know if it did its best at exploring its questions, partly because I was too enthralled at the ass-kicking going to really notice. I'm actually sure it could have been even more thought-provoking, that it could have hit stronger emotional chords and the pacing could have been tight and even more heart-racing.
But this isn't a case where the gift Bat should be looked in its mouth. Just because it hinted at better cinema doesn't make it a failure. Far from it, it's making audienes across the world realize that superheroics are real. I can only hope that it inspires others to follow suit. And I can healthily expect for the next Batman film to be something special too. Perhaps, if we let him have his way, Chris Nolan will go even deeper and produce something beyond the platinum he put in front of us this summer.
I'm tempted to say that the Batman film franchise should only be left in his hands indefinitely.
But consider Harvey Dent's words..."You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
It seems to me that Nolan and Bale will want to quit while they're ahead and maybe they'll be right in doing that. But...well, call me foolish, but I'd like to risk it and see them take it as far as possible. Oddly enough, this movie has inspired a sort of optimism in me and hope for the state of our culture.
If Harvey Dent were real, I would believe in him. Right now, I believe in the capacity for great movies about great heroes. I believe in DC Comics. I believe in Christopher Nolan.
I believe in The Dark Knight.
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