Midway through Christopher Nolan’s tour de force comes the realization that you are no longer watching a movie, as much as experiencing one. It’s a ride – like watching Star Wars for the first time or Raiders of the Lost Ark – except this is no popcorn-chewer. This is a great film, a work of art.
One strange trip after another, Nolan carries you to a dark place called Gotham during the worst of times. It’s weird, it’s terrifying and it’s a magical movie that’s elevated the genre of the decade to the next level.
It’s epic in scope and in execution, giving the viewer a ride through what Baghdad pre-surge. The movie isn’t so much about the “war on terror” as it is just about “terror” and how good, flawed men deal with the battle and its own consequences.
Heath Ledger shines as The Joker. He’s every bit deserving his Oscar nod, but the forgotten focus of the movie is the three protagonists – Christian Bale’s Batman, Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent and Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon. The Joker is as much a force of nature as he is a character. He’s like the tornado in Twister. Leger pulls it off with perverted brilliance, but he also had one hell of a script. The dichotomy between the three heroes is what moves the movie and moves the viewer, and it’s wonderful to watch.
Oldman’s Gordon is an old school policeman. Once the only honest cop in a bad town, he’s now on the winning side, but having to use the tools he has instead of the tools he wants. Oldman could get hammy, but he doesn’t. He carries the character with an earnestness and respect. If Batman is the hero we want to be, Jim Gordon is the hero we are.
Bale leaves no doubt that Bruce Wayne is his own territory. If you have doubts about the greatness of Bale, watch the horrid Batman and Robin and compare him to Hollywood heavyweight George Clooney.
Batman has had much success since the end of Batman Begins, he’s torn crime apart in the town, helped clean up the police force and forced gangsters to meet in broad daylight with bodyguards. But the true test begins when confronted with unconventional evil. The story of the movie is escalation. You bring a stick, they’ll come back with a bigger stick. How Batman and Bruce Wayne deal with this is the story. This isn’t a reluctant hero done ad nauseum. Batman has to be the hero, but he’s also good at it and does it because it’s what is right. He wants to be the hero. It’s a throwback notion that seems in an age of pointless Iraq flops, slick politically correct detective shows and moral-less medical dramas, refreshing.
Another man up for the challenge is Dent, whose charismatic and heroic district attorney is the key to the whole movie. Dent is what Batman isn’t. He’s more human, which in ways makes him more courageous. He doesn’t have the gadgets and the secret identity. As Bale’s Batman utters, he’s the hero Gotham deserves.
Nolan blasts formulaic conceptions of film away. They could have made this like the other countless superhero movies and still raked in $300 million. Nolan didn’t, and chose to make something that will last the test of time. The conclusions you make at the end say more about the viewer than they do the movie. It’s a Rorschach test of the soul. Liberal critics see the film as nihilistic and a hopeless commentary on the Bush years. Conservatives see this movie as a test of will.
Question or not whether Batman is Bush, there is no question that the Joker is a Al Qaeda. He’s pure, unadulterated evil in every form and Nolan does a brilliant job of making him a blank slate for the dark side. He has no name, no ID. This isn’t the “good guy twisted by technology/power/greed” tale that envelops the Spider-Man franchise. There is no question what the Joker is.
Almost as a joke, Ledger gives speech after speech on how he received his facial scars, each one of them obviously a lie and each one different. It’s a fitting shot at the endless rhetorical “daddy made me do it” line of thinking that’s permeated society and bad film for too long. It’s a shocking bit of moral clarity from a town that favors blurring lines and colors when they need not be blurred.
In terms of filmdom, comic-based movies have been in vogue for nearly a decade, starting with X-Men in 2000. Just when the genre was in danger of becoming a parody of itself, comes The Dark Knight, to lift the genre to great art and Iron Man, which was lifted to greatness by one great acting performance. Bob Kane would be proud.
I really need to see this movie.
Rufus,
YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS MOVIE?!?!
HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?!?!
Thanks for tyhis thread. You are doing a great job with your Straight to DVD series. The best part is you get right to the meat of the movie and the performances.
I haven’t kept up with the earlier movies. Whatever happened to Robin?
And why did they cast Maggie Gyllenhaal? IMO, there is nothing interesting about her at all as an actress and she gave a very weak performance. Maybe she was supposed to?
And why Morgan Freeman?
re: Freeman. Was he the Liberal counterbalance?
Rufus is lying.
Robin has never been written in the series. The new series of films, starting with Batman Begins, is a reboot and has nothing to do with the Joel Schumacher, Tim Burton movies of the 90s. Robin is probably too childish of a character for the darker, more realistic newer movies, but you never know. Robin died when the Burton series ended with Batman and Robin, or as I call it “George Clooney in a nipple suit.”
Ah, I forgot Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Freeman and Caine provide moral clarity throughout the movie. They add balance. If you want to know what the moral story is, you listen to Caine. He’s the soul of Batman, so to speak. Freeman is that ethical boundary that keeps Batman from falling too far over the line. Both are wonderful in the film.
Evidence that Bale is better than Clooney and DARK KNIGHT is better than BATMAN AND ROBIN
Exibit A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqLaBO5IcjA
Exhibit B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2U7p3zZ-hw
Never leave the cave without it!
I really need to see this movie again. Is the IMAX re-release this weekend?
Last weekend E.
I need to see this movie again. I really enjoyed it the first time I saw it. I was wondering how the moral clarity issues made it past the Politburo. I believe in their upsidedowninsideout world view, they may have thought they were making the opposite point, like the Joker is really Tim Robbins speaking trooth to power.
Like bad liars they get caught up in their own traps.
Evidence that Bale is better than Clooney and DARK KNIGHT is better than BATMAN AND ROBIN
Exibit A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqLaBO5IcjA
Evidence that Bale is better than Clooney and DARK KNIGHT is better than BATMAN AND ROBIN
Exhibit B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2U7p3zZ-hw
Freeman. Was he the Liberal counterbalance?
He was more like Lord Acton, reminding Bruce that, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The extent of the power that he was wielding threatened to subvert what he was fighting for. Nonetheless, for the threat that they were fighting, it had to be used.
The tension of what Batman does and how far he goes have been themes long explored in the comics.
Dammit! Eh, need to see if it’s around still. Probably is.
Oh, a funny riff on Stan Lee, with some stuff about Bob Kane.
“Almost as a joke, Ledger gives speech after speech on how he received his facial scars, each one of them obviously a lie and each one different. It’s a fitting shot at the endless rhetorical “daddy made me do it” line of thinking that’s permeated society and bad film for too long.”
Interestingly, there’s another movie that did something similar: the underrated 8MM. At the climax of the film, Nicholas Cage’s character confronts a vicious murderer and asks him why he does what he does. The killer responds that he had a very healthy childhood, and he does what he does simply because he likes it.
While Cage’s character is able to destroy the evil men he meets, his soul is ravaged by the knowledge that they exist, and that there is no rhyme or reason for the evil they do. At the end of the film, he collapses into his wife’s arms and says in despair, “save me, save me.” Very powerful stuff.
Ironically, 8MM was directed by Joel Schumacher, who made Batman and Robin. Hard to believe that someone who could make such a good thriller could also make such a bad Batman movie.
“Ironically, 8MM was directed by Joel Schumacher, who made Batman and Robin. Hard to believe that someone who could make such a good thriller could also make such a bad Batman movie.”
As William Blake asked: “Did he who make the lamb, make thee*?”
*the tyger.
As I wrote on Dirty Harry’s site months ago, this movie has a great message, but the story and pacing is bad in parts. It’s a good movie, but not great. The problem in this one is the same as most Batman movies … they have to have two villains. So we have two endings which was unnecessary and really dragged it out. Other than it needing a serious re-edit job, some of the plot devices are kind of dumb. But my main problem with it was that it never convinced me that they couldn’t call in the FBI or SWAT team, to take care of the Joker. I didn’t get the urgent sense of needing a superhero (though, without powers) like Batman to do the job. Ledger was great (with his Edward G. Robinson impression), but they didn’t give the character Joker-level material. The Joker’s mastermind plot with the ferries was just anti-climatic compared to the plot he had in the first Burton movie. That plot showed that they needed a superhero to counter. I still say it’s a good movie, but conceptually flawed.
Matt, though I really didn’t like Burton’s Batman (Burtons great on style, very short on substance), I too thought the Joker’s plot with care products was kinda inspired and keeping with his character.
Matt Helm,
I felt the ferries plot was quite climactic. If you watch the movie, everything he does is to push people toward and beyond the edge of their moral boundaries.
Remember the famous “Why So Serious” scene when he has the “tryouts” for a position in his “organization.” The three men had to kill each other to survive. Do it with a spear.
The ferry was just the ultimate example of his attacks. 2 ferries full of people.
re FBI or SWAT:
SWAT: They did call them in, multiple times. They had SWAT snipers during funeral procession and brought the SWAT in to rescue the hostages in the building toward the end, an act they would have screwed up big time if it were not for Batman to reveal (sort of) the trick the Joker had pulled (disguising the baddies as hostages and the hostages as baddies).
FBI: the Joker was able to sneak poison into the Comissioner’s office, bombs onto a ferry, kidnap and steal the uniforms of the firing squad (or whatever the relevent term is) and the FBI (in real life, at least) can’t find a Centennial bomber unless a beat cop finds him sifting through a dumpster. The Joker was also wildly unpredictable and behaved in ways that most terrorists do not. the FBI would be just as clueless against the Joker as the Gotham PD was.
Now, while I have a general rule to myself against attacking others’ tastes, I am STILL in the DARK KNIGHT MANIA. So, yes, I am certifiably insane. However, I do NOT paint my face like Ledger’s Joker.
I contend that Rachel is NOT dead!
What say you Darknightites?
I felt the ferries plot was quite climactic. If you watch the movie, everything he does is to push people toward and beyond the edge of their moral boundaries.
Well, it forced them to make a choice about their moral boundaries. In the case of the ferries, after all the stress and confrontation, they didn’t budge.
The interesting thing is that the Joker, in trying so hard to prove his point, misses the point entirely. He can;t force people to be like him. He can threaten their loved ones, enflame their tempers, and even drive them mad, but he can’t get them to be him, so casually evil. They equivocate, they resist, they grieve, they turn away in revulsion, all things he seems incapable of doing.
“Well, it forced them to make a choice about their moral boundaries. In the case of the ferries, after all the stress and confrontation, they didn’t budge.
The interesting thing is that the Joker, in trying so hard to prove his point, misses the point entirely. He can’t force people to be like him. He can threaten their loved ones, enflame their tempers, and even drive them mad, but he can’t get them to be him, so casually evil. They equivocate, they resist, they grieve, they turn away in revulsion, all things he seems incapable of doing.”
Sums up the movie.
An entire city, ready to believe in good.
David,
During the ferry scene I thought at least one of ‘em was gonna go BOOM!
Kit,
I actually thought that myself! One of the reasons TDK was so good was that I forgot I was watching a PG-13 comic book movie. In any other film, I’d know a ferry full of people would never blow up, or that the camera would cut away before the Joker slices someone’s cheek, or that Gordon really wasn’t dead (still can’t believe I fell for that one). This one actually had my adrenaline pumping.
I know I’m a few days late, but thanks so much for this post! The Dark Knight was amazing for all the reasons listed, and I was starting to get tired of the typical internet BS where people feel compelled to tear everything apart. (Not that the movie is for everyone, but there’s a hugely disproportionate amount of backlash tainting pretty much every TDK discussion.)
I thought you wrote “Darknighties”. Quite an image for a monday morning.