Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
7/20/08
“Once in a while, people deserve to
have their faith rewarded.”-Batman, The Dark Knight
What a truly amazing movie
this is, simply taken on its' own terms. But add to that the pressure
of being the 6th Batman movie, the highly anticipated sequel to one of
the most influential Hollywood hits of the last 10 years, and most of all,
my
pre-season pick for the #1 summer movie of 2008, and it's hard to believe
a film this assured, this structurally and thematically sound, could emerge.
I really feel like Hollywood's turning a corner. Gone are the days
of dressing up beloved properties in disgraceful “crowd-pleasing” parade
floats like Batman & Robin. Increasingly, the studios
are becoming savvy to what we as fans knew all along: give the people
what they WANT, what they dreamed of when they saw the original, read the
comic book or played with the toys, and they'll return the favor.
Like Iron Man before it, The Dark Knight
isn't just “some Batman movie,” it's a great movie, period, a moody, thoughtful
and ultimately uplifting story about one of the central political issues
of our time: can we battle evil without becoming evil? That
Batman, The Joker, and Two-Face are the ones telling us that story is only
icing on the cake.
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale)
continues his crusade against crime in Gotham City as the costumed vigilante
Batman. Some of the results (like a bunch of fanboys in their own
Batman costumes “fighting crime” themselves) are not what he had hoped
for. But others, like the election of crusading DA Harvey Dent (Aaron
Eckhart) are. Dent is “what Gotham needs”, a handsome, charismatic
Hero people can rally behind and dare to hope for a better future.
With Dent pressing on one side, and Batman and his police ally, Lt. James
Gordon (Gary Oldman) squeezing on the other, Mob bosses like Salvatore
Maroni (Eric Roberts) are becoming more and more nervous. First,
they hatch a plan to allow Hong Kong businessman Lau (Chin Han) to launder
their money, but when Batman tracks him all the way to Asia and delivers
him into Dent's hands, they seek a more extreme measure. A mysterious,
clown-painted bank robber known only as The Joker (Heath Ledger) has offered
to end their problems by killing their nemesis, and when they give him
carte blanch to do just that, he begins a reign of terror. One after
another, he announces murders and attacks that will occur if Batman does
not unmask himself, and then follows through. Supported by his faithful
butler/sidekick Alfred (Michael Caine) and assisted by tech wiz Lucius
Fox (Morgan Freeman), Bruce resists the temptation for this easy fix.
He dreams of a day when Dent will clean up Gotham and Bruce can stop being
Batman and win back the heart of childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Maggie
Gyllenhaal). But Rachel's with Harvey now, and The Joker will use
that to push Bruce Wayne and the former Internal Affairs man the cops called
Harvey Two-Face to their limits... and beyond.
The Dark Knight is
the best Batman movie ever, and is certainly in the running for the title
Best Superhero Movie ever. It cuts to the heart of what heroes specifically
and leadership in general are really about: giving people something
to rally around that allows them to imagine themselves not as the expedient
animals our base instincts might encourage us to be, but the decent, thinking
people who can make the world better not just for ourselves, but for everyone
around us. There's only so much Batman can do to stop The Joker's
plans, which involve an ever-escalating number of Gotham citizens:
Gotham City itself must defeat The Joker, and to do so, it must resist
quick fixes and cowardly acts of self-preservation. The Joker doesn't
set out to test Gotham: he's sure he KNOWS it will fail. What
he's testing is Batman and Harvey Dent, not just the men, but the symbols.
Have they nourished the souls of the pathetic, beaten-down den of corruption
we saw at the beginning of Batman Begins to the point where they
can now be the people they must be to avoid a descent into The Joker's
dream of anarchy?
In that sense, writers Jonathan
and Christopher Nolan have fashioned The Joker into the best and most resonant
crypto-Al-Qaeda of the post-9/11 movie era. He doesn't want money.
He doesn't want power. He wants Gotham to burn, and everything he
does isn't just for his own amusement, it's a carefully plotted move in
a chess game designed to bring down civilization itself. The dilemma
they've created here goes far beyond the simple moral imperative of “if
you go down to his level, The Joker wins”, although that's important too.
It's the fact that The Joker's entire point is to reduce Batman, and all
of Gotham, to his level, so to do what is easy and expedient will not only
doom Bruce Wayne's soul, but also his city. The Dark Knight
is a brutal, dark superhero epic that doesn't believe for a moment that
heroism is about kicking the ass of whoever's in your way. It knows
that civilization is an agreement we've all made among ourselves to be
the best people we can be, and that terrorism isn't just about killing
people. It's about killing the right people to convince us that our
agreement is null and void, and then we finish the terrorist's work for
them by slowly but surely killing each other. The Joker isn't so
much a character as a symbol himself. His mouth is scarred on both
sides by a since-healed attempt to “cut” a larger smile into it, and he
has a different sad story about how it got that way for everyone who asks.
We ultimately learn nothing about where he came from other than the fact
that the existence of Batman has stirred something within him to life.
You can't understand The Joker, you can't fight him on his own level.
You can only find a way to contain him, and that process starts with you.
Starting with his sensational
“meet in the middle” mystery Memento, Christopher Nolan has assembled
perhaps this decade's finest body of directorial work: the chilling
ethical police thriller Insomnia, the utterly brilliant sci-fi magic
show The Prestige, and the two finest Batman movies. Batman
Begins is as responsible as any film for the current renaissance of
comic book movies: it wasn't just good, it wasn't just a hit, it
was a movie, in that same way movies about cops, lawyers and 19th century
British authors' love lives are, and in its' own way, it changed what we
expect to see from a film that starts out as a “property”. The
Dark Knight continues and builds on his previous work, putting him
back together with brother Jonathan (with whom he always does his best
work: they previously co-wrote Memento and The Prestige)
and reassembling a truly amazing cast. He's also made a decision
to shoot about 1/5 of the movie's 150 minutes in IMAX, and while I couldn't
tell for certain which sequences are which, the movie in general looks
amazing. Its' Gotham (Chicago stands in) and Hong Kong locations
positively glow, as do the rich blacks of Batman's costume and arsenal
of weapons, including a really nifty Batcycle.
Credit Nolan as well for
assembling as good a cast as you'll ever see. It starts with Christian
Bale, who's kicked his Bruce Wayne/Batman game up to another level.
Gone is the unsure Bruce whose crime fighting was largely a function of
repressed rage at his father's death: Batman is now an attempt to
continue his father's legacy in his own deeply troubled way, and he's reached
a point of no return at which wearing a costume and lurking in the dark
is the only logical thing he can do. Nobody's ever been better in
the Batsuit: his Batman is the hero of a horror movie, a force of
nature that's as one with the shadows until it comes out to get those who've
transgressed against his city. His growling, modulated voice makes
him the first Batman you can talk to and still be considered anything but
an idiot for not realizing who he “really” is. Bruce Wayne, meanwhile,
bears the moral weight of his alter ego, needing to walk among the people
whose fate is shaped by his actions. The chemistry between him and
Caine's Alfred and Freeman's Lucius is formidable, and only better on the
second go-round.
Alfred's living a double
life of his own, and Caine is outstanding at it. Above-ground, he's
Bruce Wayne's irascible butler, cheerfully deferential and an excellent
host. Below the surface, they speak as equals, and Alfred speaks
openly of a very different past when he was a man of action much like his
employer. The witty repartee between the two provides both valuable
comic relief and also important camaraderie for a hero who's very much
alone. Freeman owns the Lucius Fox role with his patented mixture
of cool and moral authority. Oldman does something truly amazing
with Gordon, who's defined “thankless role” for decades: he's so
decent, so utterly heroic that it's fascinating just to watch him no matter
what he does, even when it's not much. Gyllenhaal inherits Rachel
from Begins' Katie Holmes, and infuses the role with a lot of life
and spunk, important given her importance to both Bruce and Harvey's motivations.
Nolan takes advantage of a presumably limitless budget to get quality veterans
in almost every role with more than a few lines. Roberts is the greatest
B movie actor of all time, but it's really nice to see him in an A movie
once in a while. Ditto Palace favorites Keith Szarabajka, who's never
had a movie role as good as Gordon's right-hand Detective Stevens, and
Anthony Michael Hall who makes a triumphant return to A movies as oily
tabloid TV reporter Mike Engel.
Eckhart excels as extroverts
who appear to be more virtuous than they are, and the first time you see
him flipping “that” coin, you know Harvey Dent is not quite so wonderful
as the people of Gotham might believe. He plays both sides brilliantly,
letting you know that this is a man who'll go a long way to do the right
thing, maybe even farther than he should, at the same time as you can never
quite trust him ****SPOILER ALERT!!!**** Of course, he's Harvey
Dent, so you just know how he's going to end up, and a gruesome Two-Face
he is, hideously true to the comic book appearance of the character, if
not its' aggressive duality. But the image of a crusader for justice
reduced to a scarred maniac deciding who lives and who dies on the flip
of a coin is a perfect victory for The Joker, and a distrubing symbol of
what's to come as Gotham City's criminals follow Batman's lead to be become
more and more... colorful.****END OF SPOILERS****
Which brings us to the movie's
best and most discussed performance, the late Heath Ledger as The Joker.
The Clown Prince of Crime has never been a favorite of mine, seeming to
be a Halloween mask in search of a character in all his previous media
incarnations, but here, what the Nolans and Ledger have done with the character
is utterly perfect. A mystery, a madman, a personification of the
abyss, The Joker is Batman's opposite in every way, and Ledger's performance
is as totally transformative as any you'll ever see. His voice, his
appearance, his very way of moving is unrecognizable. Amazing how
far both this and his previous career high in Brokeback Mountain were
from the dashing young star of movies like A Knight's Tale and The
Patriot. Many worried upon his death last winter that the dark
and sinister character would be hard to watch knowing his fate, but it's
a joyous performance given by a man testing the limits of what he was capable
of and finding that they simply did not seem to exist. I was happy
to honor his memory by reveling in the glory of his final completed performance,
just as we should all honor his memory by being sure to check with our
doctors before combining even the most innocuous medicines. His passing
is achingly tragic, let's not compound the tragedy by failing to learn
from it.
The Dark Knight's
production is top-shelf across the board. Hans Zimmer and James Newton
Howard combined on a brilliant score that continues the franchise's long
tradition of same. An army of technicians combined to create a superheroic
world that seems every bit as real as our own: look for a seam anywhere,
an effects shot that doesn't quite work. I know I didn't see one.
Yes, this review has been
an utter geekfest, and The Dark Knight deserves nothing less.
It's the best movie of 2008 so far, the pinnacle of an amazing summer movie
season. It further establishes Christopher Nolan as one of our greatest
directors and Christian Bale as one of our top movie stars. And it
leaves a marker of Heath Ledger's amazing talent in the pop cultural landscape
that will stand as long as the Gotham Cities of the world continue to be
torn between the Batmen of their better natures and The Jokers that seek
to destroy them.
Geek out.
On 8/29/08, I blogged about seeing the
movie in IMAX:
I know
it's hardly a new cinematic advance, but I'd never caught a mainstream
movie at an IMAX location because the exercise seemed kinda pointless.
Yeah, the screen is huge, but so is the ticket price. And the movie
in question is the same regardless of size. Not so in the case of
The Dark Knight, roughly 1/5 of which was actually shot with IMAX cameras,
so I decided to get my third look at the Summer's uber-blockbuster at the
Select Medical IMAX Theater at Harrisburg, PA's Whittaker Center for Science
and the Arts (I assume all IMAX locations are similar mouthsful).
And I was not disappointed.
In
its' IMAX form, the movie toggles back and forth between two ratios, the
theatrical 2.35:1 projected across the middle of the screen like a letterboxed
DVD, and the Good Stuff projected in a square that stretches to your local
IMAX's full towering height. The regular movie is quite large, larger,
I'm sure, than you've seen it before, but it's the IMAX footage that's
worth plunking down your excessive ticket price for. It's clear like
nothing you've seen, and the depth is stunning. As Batman soars through
the skies of Gotham City and Hong Kong, you'll be forgiven a bit of vertigo
even as you sit snug in your seat.
So,
what's in IMAX? Mostly three large Joker-related setpieces:
the bank-robbery opening, the action sequence when Harvey Dent's prison
transport is in transit, and the Batman vs. Joker climax. Other than
that, most exteriors and a few stray shots such as the montage of images
that follow a key character's death and Commissioner Gordon's rousing speech
at the end. It can be odd to go to the full IMAX ratio for a single
establishing shot and then right back to widescreen: it'll be something
when somebody gets crazy enough to shoot a whole movie this way someday.
So
other than ooohs and aaahs, what does one get out of watching the IMAX
Dark Knight? Clarity, for one thing: Christopher Nolan's movie
is quite subtle for a big-ticket blockbuster, and it's nice to be able
to study the frame in such detail so all the little bits and pieces of
the Joker's plans and Batman's counterattacks can be seen moving point
to point to point. Plus, there's the joy of seeing great acting (some
of the year's best) with the ability to study all the little nuances of
the actors faces filling your entire field of vision.
And
a hundred-foot-high Two-Face is delightfully hideous
A final
thought on the movie, having had the opportunity to pile on a couple extra
viewings since filing my original review. I think some people misunderstand
a key aspect of The Joker's character: he's a force of the universe,
pure chaos personified, and we never get to know him in any way other than
by watching his actions. He talks, A LOT, but what he says is always
for effect. There's no insight into his backstory or motivation to
be found in his ever-shifting explanations for his facial scars, his talk
of "knowing" the people he kills in their final moments or his talk to
the wounded Harvey about how he's not one of the "schemers" because every
one of these speeches is designed to move the person he's talking to like
a piece on a chessboard. The Joker is always playing, and he's a
master of psychology. But for the movie's purposes, what he really
is is a mirror. He can't make you do anything you're not willing
to do yourself. Well, expect maybe die.
Did
I mention the IMAX sound is really cool? I mean shake you in your
seat cool. $13.00 ticket cool.
Cool. |
