Warner Bros.; 2008
The Dark Knight is the sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s “reboot” to the DC Comics hero’s film franchise. I enjoyed the previous film well enough and had been excited about seeing the sequel ever since I heard that Heath Ledger would be playing the Joker. I saw it just over a week ago in IMAX and I was not disappointed.
The film is far darker than Batman Begins (which attempted to bring some much needed grit to the series, itself) and also far better. Begins lost points, for me, because of its focus on the mostly nameless Gotham mobsters, a crappy villain, a crappy villain ex machina, and Katie Holmes. The Dark Knight benefits from Holmes’s replacement, a boost in the importance of Gary Oldman’s Gordon character, a sublime villain, and, well… extra points for the sublime villain part. As good as it is, The Dark Knight loses some points of its own, especially with regards to the new clean Gotham. I thought the first movie did an excellent job of creating a dark, dirty city, so it was a bit of a disappointment to see that setting transformed into a clean and bright Chicago for the sequel.
Heath Ledger is awesome. His Joker is awesome. He pretty much makes the movie. Almost any scene he is in is excellent purely because of his involvement. This is a credit not only to Heath but to Nolan, who wrote and directed him. The Joker’s schemes and pranks are awesome, too, from the opening bank heist to his assaults on Batman’s psyche to the final climactic showdown. Aaron Eckhart makes a great Harvey Dent, even if he is a bit too squeaky clean. I felt that his transformation into Two-Face was a bit rushed and not entirely convincing, but it did provide a nice frame of reference for Batman’s ambiguous moral situation. Michael Kane and Morgan Freeman are back in their supporting roles and they’re both as excellent as one would expect. Christian Bale is fine as Batman, but I would have liked to see a bit more of the public face of Bruce Wayne (because he’s hilarious).
The movie is long, long, long, and some of the scenes seemed like they could have been trimmed down a little bit. I’m thinking particularly of some of the motorcycle / Batpod sequences (of which, it seemed, there were many). The whole Hong Kong scene seemed like little more than an excuse to showcase some of Batman’s gadgets (the toys that made Jack Nicholson’s Joker so jealous), but I still thought it was pretty cool. Still, the film doesn’t feel as long as it is, and the pacing is good enough that it doesn’t drag at any point.
This review is pretty much spoiler-free, but I can’t guarantee the same will be true of the comments, so continue at your own discretion. That said, more in-depth and spoiler-filled discussion of the film is welcome in the comments.
28 July 2008 at 9:03 pm
“I’m going to make this pencil disappear”.
Best part of the entire awesome film.
28 July 2008 at 9:44 pm
Yeah, considering he didn’t do a whole lot of talking in the bank heist scene (which was great in and of itself), I think the disappearing pencil trick was an awesome way to really introduce him.
26 January 2009 at 8:59 am
Nice review Mr Kong.
The best line, of many, sums up the movie, “sublimely” indeed. Joker to Batman, who’s incapable of murder: “this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object” (I quote from memory).
The strength of Ledger’s Joker is that he’s “no, … not crazy,” (or did he say “mad”?) as he insists in one of his few insistent moments. He just recognizes that good and evil are two side (two faces??) of human devise, not unlike the binaries that bind Batman/Bruce. And how fun it is to play with such fictions – how eerie too, as his convincing, yet contradictory, scar explanations evince. The card up the Joker’s sleeve is a universe that’s indifferent to morality and other forms of imposed order. He is “evil” because he interprets meaninglessness of the term absolutely; he is immovable to human solidarity, not to mention his own meta-madness.
The strength of Batman’s character is that has the same postmodern recognition as the Joker, yet for the “good” of Gotham, and yes the world, he relies on a very Platonist position: lie. Nietzsche said we have art because the truth is unbearable. The human mind needs fictions, imposed order, to orient itself in a disorienting, chaotic universe. Batman is good because he affirms humanity in the face of its meaninglessness. Like Candid, he’s drive for life is unstoppable.
This aesthetic perspective, to which I subscribe, nevertheless supports a dubious form of politics. Aesthetically sound – and some quirks aside, like that dumb Kumbaya scene on the boats – the film is essentially a validation of the Bush years and a blatant endorsement for the McCain campaign. How does Batman track the Joker’s movements? He has an ethically-torn Freeman tap into cellphone conversations. Ring a bell? Though the Bush administration would have loved a White Knight for their war in Iraq, the idea of lying to the public for their own good is very Republican.
Thus, the “good” Batman is perhaps “evil” beyond his fictional context. He constant surveillance actually calls humanity into doubt, the assumption being we’d all become like Joker if only we really knew the truth.
Or do we, like the pathetic citizens of Gotham, (real)ly need him?
26 January 2009 at 9:07 am
Gosh darn it, I can’t seem to write a freekin’ response without typos.