The Dark Knight. A movie which will partly go down in history as one of the finest example of flawless viral promotion. Ranging from Maggie Gyllenhaal’s online speech about ‘why she supports Harvey Dent’ to the little Joker-cards spread around LA. Unfortunately this movie will also take its place in history as a prime example of ‘unwanted’ promotion. Heath Ledger’s death and the urban myths which placed the Joker’s sociopathic influence as a negative downwards spiral for any method-actor also fuelled the interest in the great actor’s final performance.
This enormous promotional campaign, to me, is one of the main reasons why ‘The Dark Knight’ currently occupies the number one position in any moviechard. We expected nothing less than pure and utter brilliance and comical magic. Did the movie succeed in reassuring our expectations? Yes, it definitely did. But, as a note here, ‘the Dark Knight’ will not replace classics as the ‘Godfather’, ‘Star Wars’ or even ‘Heat’. The current hype surrounding the ‘perfection’ of ‘The Dark Knight’ is only the first reaction, fuelled by promotion and the moviemaking skill. After a few weeks negative responses will follow, redefining ‘The Dark Knight’s place upon the moviehistorical ladder. In short, The Dark Knight’ will never become number one, but damn its close.
Batman Returns (again)
Three years after Bruce Wayne’s alterego Batman (Christian Bale) initial rise to fame the fine city of Gotham seems to embrace the Caped Crusader’s crusade against organized crime. Not only does Batman receive the amateuristic help from various wannabe Batman’s, also the police force led by James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the city courthouse seem determined to fight evil. In the courtroom it’s Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), helped by Wayne’s love interest Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who unscrupulously delivers justice for all when he prosecutes one godfather after another.
The times certainly seem bleak for organized crime in the city where they once reigned. Especially when Batman and Gordon want to hit the maffia where it hurts the most, their wallets. Enter: the Joker.
This theatrical madman offers the simplest of deals. Half of the maffia’s wealth in exchange for the death of the Batman. But, as one can guess, it’s not the money the Joker’s interested in, it’s the game. Once the Joker is unleashed, the game is at foot, and Batman has to endure far more than he ever expected should Gotham ever be safe again.
The Perfect Sequel
One of the interesting things about ‘The Dark Knight’ is the fact that this isn’t really a Batman-film at all. The movie isn’t about the persona Batman himself but rather about the people surrounding him. Whereas ‘Batman Begins’ focussed primarily on Bruce Wayne’s change into this mythical figure, ‘The Dark Knight’ focuses mainly on the response Batman receives from the other players (be it Gordon, Dent or the Joker).
As a sequel this is a stroke of brilliance because it allows the moviemaker to step back from the Batman to give this hero back some of his mystery. We know all about Bruce Wayne’s character and the choices he makers but when he becomes Batman he becomes another person, a mythical being and therefore harder to define by his choices.
The second reason why ‘The Dark Knight’ is the perfect example of a sequel is because it upholds the ‘sacred rule of sequels’. In the 2nd ‘Godfather’ Michael Corleone has no choice but to murder his own brother. In ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ Luke, Han and Leia get (to quote Carry Fisher) ‘their ass kicked’.
Without giving away too much of ‘the Dark Knight’s story it is safe to say that you’ll leave the theatre without a clean-cut feeling of satisfaction of good triumphing over evil.
Yes, Batman will prevail, but at what price?
Why so serious?
Should Heath Ledger be nominated for the Oscars? Yes, definitely! His performance of the Joker is one of the most intriguing villains I’ve seen on screen in the last view years (even though ‘No country for old men’ has a great one as well).
What fascinates me about the Joker is that ten minutes in you forget that you’re watching Heath Ledger (a twenty-so actor). This is because the Joker, due to the heavy make-up, is ageless, he could be twenty or fifty. This element of agelessness and the fact that you receive no (true) information about his origins clouds the character in mystery and makes him scarier.
A second point of fascination is the Joker’s brilliance. The Joker may appear silly and playful but like any jester at the king’s court he knows exactly what he’s doing. But why he’s doing it, once again, is shrouded in mystery.
I’d like to define his character as pure apathy, a character that simply doesn’t care what happens to him or anybody else. The only thing the Joker seems to care about is the game itself (and even there he doesn’t mind losing). Combining this apathy with the mixed usage of emotions a sociopath suffers from Heath Ledger has managed to create a character of which every gesture, every time his wets his lips with his tongue builds up to the madness the Joker is. Ledger truly makes you forget Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the white-faced criminal in favour this new brutal sadistic bastard, a tremendous accomplishment.
In the story of ‘the Dark Knight’ the Joker-character is the perfect choice to disrupt the fragile balance. On the one–hand there’s Batman – the dark knight – fighting crime following his own ruling of right and wrong. On the other there’s Harvey Dent – the white knight – using the law to reach the same ends. Put an anarchistic criminal like the Joker into the mix and all hell would (and does) break loose, especially when he ‘gives birth’ to two-face.
Two-face
Two-face has always been one of my favourite characters of the Batman-saga. The way he flips his coin to decide pretty much about anything. I’ve been intrigued by this ease of decision-making since I saw Phil Collins throw the dice in the movie ‘Frauds’ as a kid. If only life was that simple!
Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal of this half white, half dark (knight) in the second half of the movie is, like Ledger’s Joker, believable and utmost scary (or should I say scarry, because the make-up is amazing). It’s a beautifully written and executed piece of work that changes this loveable Harvey Dent from a shy-ish righteous prosecutor to an evil emotion-driven schizophrenic. Not minding who he kills as long as he get his (own) just revenge. Dent’s transformation into Two-face fits perfectly in the arch of the movie. It doesn’t feel weird or even strange, it’s the sadness that you’ll feel the most. As Dent phrases in his speech, “you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”.
Nolan’s Directing
With ‘The Dark Knight’ Nolan showed, in my opinion, that a movie is truly a gesamtkunstwerk. Not only should a script be well written. The actors, also, need to give top performances. And last, but not least, a bad director (and a bad editor) could easily mess everything up.
Nolan showed that he is capable of creating a movie that’s almost unsurpassable on any of these levels. The story creates a perfect balance between the white and dark knight (even on an empathic level as the love-triangle between Bruce, Rachel and Harvey entails) only to be disrupted by the villainous Joker.
All actors play their parts as genuinely and skilfully as humanly possible. The three main male actors Ledger, Bale and Eckhart -having the hardest jobs to portray believability through a mask of extensive make-up and wardrobe- play topnotch in creating caring and fear. Whereas the supporting cast of Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Maggie Gyllenhaal don’t simply recite their lines but emphasise their importance and their function as counterweights to the main characters. Even Eric Roberts exceeds expectations in his portrayal of moblord Falcone. He play the villain exactly as it should: smart, witted and (unfortunately for him) with a basic human fear of death instead of pain. A normal villain in a mad world, one could say.
Nolan’s visual style of the movie never becomes too arty. He does ‘borrow’ various shots from different movies (for instance, several shots from the initial bankheist are direct copies from ‘Heat’) but he never attempts to play around with the camera in a disarranging fashion because it’s the story itself which is the most important and the camera underlines the story. He subtlety uses the camera to express certain motives and power-relations but never in a forced manner. The Joker, for instance, is hardly ever shown from a low perspective to emphasise his control of the situation. The actor’s performance is enough to emphasise this.
The colour’s of the movie are easily identified as dark and bleak. Batman’s city-lair is a post-industrialistic minimalistic room lighted by cold white halogen lamps. The same goes for the mobsters kitchen and the prison cell, and these are just the ‘day shots’. Since a lot of the action takes place during the night the main part of the movie is shot with blackened backdrops only reinforcing the darkness of the tale. The only ‘highlight’s in the movie are the two ‘yellow coloured’ parties which Bruce, Rachel and Harvey attend. Apart from combining the yellowish lighting as a motive for the love-triangle it also breaks away form the Joker-infested harshness of the outside world and creates a safehaven. But, naturally, as such things tent to happen in movies, the second time around the Joker does appear and tosses one of the guests from the safe' yellow' room into the darkness of the night.
The greatest strength of ‘the Dark Knight’s visual style, though, is what I’d like to call the ‘x-men trick’. In Singer’s original ‘X-men’ the movie began in the bleak dangers of a concentration camp and, as such, created a direct link between the fiction of the comics and the reality of everyday life. ‘The Dark Knight’ does exactly that. It doesn’t visualise the comic as an fictional story but as a reality that could happen. Gotham could just as easily be, in fact, Chicago.
Thus, naturally helped by the storyline and the various reverences to real-life examples of (e.g.) terrorism, the movie backs away from colourful depictions in favour of current gritty urban surroundings. The flowergarden of the comics becomes a cementgarden in Nolan’s view.
But the main genius of Nolan in this urban landscape is, once again, a scripted element. Namely, the speed the story is told in. The story is fast-moving but never too fast. It gives the audience time to think. This time is needed because Nolan hardly ever repeats himself. Whereas other summer blockbusters tent to overtly repeat the motives “why they have to save the earth”, or, “why he’s willing to blow himself up while riding on a asteroid”, ‘the Dark Knight’ gives (some of) the motives cut-clear and requires the audience to remember them throughout. For instance, it isn’t truly clear how the Joker creates two-face, but, given the information received, the audience can quite make the educated guess. It’s this need of an audience that makes ‘The Dark Knight’ more than a simple ‘pass the popcorn’-flick. It challenges the audience to take part in a dark tale about love, justice and a scarred clown who never tells the same story twice.
To Summarize ‘The Dark Knight’ is the righteous summer blockbuster of 2008. The story is flawless, the acting is fabulous, the directing and editing is cut-clear perfect. And even on the level of sequels it manages to portray itself as an example of ‘how it should be done’.
Only time will tell what place this movie will receive in the annals of movie history. But one title I’m more than willing to give it: the greatest comic-adaptation yet.
