When critics hype up a movie I tend to stand back. I stopped reading reviews the moment the words Oscar and Ledger were combined in one sentence. I hate to deconstruct expectations. I rather build upon certainties once I've seen it all. There are several things that are certain in this movie, and help me God, I'll go over them without a glimmer of fandom in my eye.
- Christopher Nolan will not allow us to forget that he once directed a movie called MEMENTO. The Dark Knight does not conform to superhero movie style, it takes itself seriously. This is a crime drama and it has moments of suspense and edge of your seat tension. It is effective in it's reach, connecting the audience with a city that usually acts as a backdrop to the story, however in this particular installment is brought out in the open as the main component of the film.
- It holds no bars tackling a very delicate subject for the Batman aficionado... it unmasks the superhero without taking the cowl off his face. This is a brilliant character study about what makes Batman tick. While movie versions usually avoid getting their main character's hands dirty, this one throws it all at Bats. The audience is left to ponder whether it's hero will endure, will he concede or will he need to reinvent himself in order to keep going. The line between righteous vigilance and criminal insanity of blurred deeper and further than in any other film. Christian Bale reprises his role and once again it is perfection, you can see him taking the pressure in, trying to keep Bruce Wayne to cross paths with his alter ego. He struggles to balance his moral and his ethics against the opportunity of saving countless lives by walking into a downwards spiral. And of course all this insanity is brought about by ...
- The Joker. I'll get into Ledger a little later. Right now I am just amazed at what they did with the character. This is not Romero or Nicholson. This is a level of perversion that barely showed through Allan Moore's "Killing Joke". It is a Jungian nightmare. Allow the nerd to elaborate:
According to Jung, the archetype of the trickster- in this case the clown- functions at a very primitive level as a messenger, essential to contact the sacred. This from the happy train of thought that sustains that peoples of the old world could not commune with the gods without the liberating power of laughter. Beautiful, ain’t it? Now imagine our jolly, universal clown gone insane. He is still in a sense a messenger and a mirror, however the message conveyed is one of undiluted terror. This movie pushes the boundaries of PG 13 and successfully exceeds them avoiding the censors because the nature of the violence develops, not from the graphic source but from the ailment of the mind. The Joker does not come off as much of as an individual but as the personification of a chaotic, traumatizing event that takes both characters at a personal and city at a global scale unaware and unprepared for the devastation at hand.
I have to stop myself from converting this into a Anarchy 101 lesson, but that is how fundamental this character is to the story line. Even if he is not consuming screen time, he is ever present.
- Heath Ledger did an outstanding job as the Ace of Knaves, Oscar worthy, although I will not place my hopes too high with the Academy. I'm not a crazed fangirl, but I know fans when I see them and this is how I came to my conclusion: I went to see the movie late, late at night, you know it's my favorite show of them all. Yes, that's when the crazies act out; the people who will laugh riotously at the "amazing pencil disappearing trick" ; I went, and waited for their moment of silence. See, Ledger's dialogue is witty, but his monologues are terrifying. He looses himself fearlessly in a character that wants to "watch the world burn". There is one particular rant in which even the hard core joker fans were not cheering, and that is when he delivers the speech about introducing chaos in a society of rigid order. As I heard it I thought, dear God, one hour and a half of the scrawny JJ Abrams monsters tearing up the city of New York could not achieve the emotional impact of these two minutes of dialogue... yes, there is a bit between the lines about us all and what became of us all during and in the aftermath of 9/11. I'll leave it to you to caliber, but it is worth a statue in my book. Ledger's performance is a gift, and of course, it hurts a little to step out from the theater into the real world and know that we will not see him again, but that is another story.
- But is is not all about the Joker as you might think. This is far and foremost the story of Harvey Dent, the man who stands between the criminally insane mastermind and the uber-righteous vigilante. It is his fall from grace, not Batman's ability or inability to deal with the unexpected what drives it all home. Don't forget Aaron Eckhart, he did his character justice.
All in all, brace your self for an unexpected movie par with any decent cop drama or high stakes thriller set in a world too close to ours for comfort, even if it's the play ground of the Batman and the freaky guy with the insane clown posse. It is a world exposed to blunt trauma and given alternatives, not the ones they think they deserve, but the only available to choose... either walk away from in all putting their faith, or lack of there of in chance, join the insane parade bent on destruction, or endure in the face of it all and rise the hero.
This is the most I can say without spoilers , so I'll leave it at Best movie of the year so far.
The quote:
" Madness, as you know, is just like gravity, all we need is a little PUSH"- the Joker, trying to get Batman to catch in on the punchline.
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