Don't worry. No specific spoilers in this post.
OK -- I saw it. And despite my high expectations, which readers here would know were inordinately high, I was still blown away. Like blown out of my seat. Like that guy from the old Maxell commercials. Holy shit, Batman.
Click to get blown away, man.
This movie seriously is on my Top 20 list of movies for life. That's a serious list, too: Alien, Aliens, Predator, Terminators I and II, Pulp Fiction, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Good Fellas, etc. If that list sounds like anything that'd fit on your list, then you need to stop whatever you're doing on August 7th (or 8th, and I'll confirm exact times later) and see this movie in Imax at Yongsan with us. It's that good.
OK -- the Joker? He's up there with Nurse Ratchet, Hannibal Lecter, and the crazy lady from "Misery" on the scary-as-fuck-o-meter. And not one-dimensional, Jason or Freddie scary, but the delicious kind of psychologically menacing, get-under-your-skin scary that leaves you some cud to chew on after the movie ends.
I've heard comparisons to "Heat" and "The Departed" around the American internet, but I think that totally underestimates the pure oomphage of "The Dark Knight." The venerably aging classic that is "Heat" simply drags by comparison, both because it's dated as a piece of filmage from a different time in Hollywood, and also because it was overrated in the first place. "The Departed" was good, and I'm not slighting it -- but during TDK, I was just literally sitting in my seat like that Maxell guy, clutching my empty popcorn bucket, and not moving an inch throughout the entire 2.5 hours. There were no points of drag -- that movie just whipped you up from one level of tension to the next, until you realize that you've shed tears, but not because you're moved, but because you literally forgot to blink.
That's "The Dark Knight" in a nutshell.
Since I can't talk about plot points here, let me just say that there will generally be two reactions to the movie, especially when the Joker chimes in with his dissonant notes of grotesque levity: you will either be cackling gleefully at moments of the Joker's inspired depravity, or your will be sitting in stunned silence, thinking, "Dude. That's hella fucked up." I think either way is a good way to enjoy a good villain -- to each, their own.
The Batman was kind of the straight man in this movie, and the guy whom we already came to know in the first, excellently executed first installment, "Batman Begins." So while one might say the Batman doesn't "do much" in terms of his character, I think it's more that the solidity of Bateman's character gives a stable foundation upon which to let the screenwriters and Ledger let the Joker rip.
In a way, the entire first film was a perfect character setup for the Joker, who himself wasn't really explained, but just appeared. In that first film, we get treated to a great explication of who Batman was, as well as why he IS. The second was like "X-Men 2" but better, since it's easier to make a good film that really moves once you get the foundational stuff outta the way. Which is why we get to enjoy the Joker in TDK from scene one. No bullshit origin stories and other cliches. The Joker just IS. There was a certain economy with which such things were handled, and I was glad the filmmakers and actors took the audience to be smart enough to just jump on board a train that was already chugging.
Dont believe me? Read reviews in the Telegraph, Rolling Stone, the NYT, and check 'em all on Rotten Tomatoes. The words of the Telegraph express my feelings nicely, both about Ledger's performance and the movie itself:
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is said to be reluctant to honour a performance in a summer blockbuster, and there are fears that an Oscar would be regarded as some sort of lifetime-achievement award, handed out for all the wrong (ie sentimental) reasons in the wake of 28-year-old Ledger's death from an accidental drugs overdose in January.
But all such prejudices should be swept aside. The Dark Knight has plenty of high-speed, maximum-volume action sequences, but it is also one of the most intelligent big-budget Hollywood movies of recent times; and no sympathy vote is required for a cinematic creation as accomplished as Ledger's deranged, demonic Lord of Chaos.
It is a genuinely unsettling, brilliantly nuanced portrait of evil.
There it is. Once you see it, you will most likely join the chorus of people who will boo if Ledger ain't announced at least as a contender. And as for the movie itself, I don't know about Best Picture, but the thing was certainly bigger than just some old roll in the summer hay -- it felt as Oscarish as any of the other "epic" or "Oscar-worthy" films that often so self-consciously pander for Academy recognition that it makes the categories of films that win these things almost cliche.
"The Dark Knight" kicks ass as a summer blockbuster. It also works as a real film, a work of art. And the performances are complex and smart -- especially the many supporting ones, which just riff and flow off of Bateman's so well: Michael Caine is the very picture of the father figure Alfred without sinking into cliche, no one else but Morgan Freeman could have channeled better the moral stubbornness and churlish humor of Lucius Fox (geez -- one wonders how the Lucius Fox character ever got written BEFORE Morgan Freeman played him, since it really seems like the other way around), and Harvey Dent/Two-Face was finally done right, after the non-start of Billie Dee Williams and Tommy Lee Jones farcical stab at it.
But I'm no New York Times writer. Let me end this little review with the words of Manohla Dargis, who characterizes the movie much better than me:
Apparently, truth, justice and the American way don’t cut it anymore. That may not fully explain why the last Superman took a nose dive (“Superman Returns,” if not for long), but I think it helps get at why, like other recent ambiguous American heroes, both supermen and super-spies, the new Batman soared. Talent played a considerable part in Mr. Nolan’s Bat restoration, naturally, as did his seriousness of purpose. He brought a gravitas to the superhero that wiped away the camp and kitsch that had shrouded Batman in cobwebs. It helped that Christian Bale, a reluctant smiler whose sharply planed face looks as if it had been carved with a chisel, slid into Bruce Wayne’s insouciance as easily as he did Batman’s suit.
The new Batman movie isn’t a radical overhaul like its predecessor, which is to be expected of a film with a large price tag (well north of $100 million) and major studio expectations (worldwide domination or bust). Instead, like other filmmakers who’ve successfully reworked genre staples, Mr. Nolan has found a way to make Batman relevant to his time — meaning, to ours — investing him with shadows that remind you of the character’s troubled beginning but without lingering mustiness. That’s nothing new, but what is surprising, actually startling, is that in “The Dark Knight,” which picks up the story after the first film ends, Mr. Nolan has turned Batman (again played by the sturdy, stoic Mr. Bale) into a villain’s sidekick.
That would be the Joker, of course, a demonic creation and three-ring circus of one wholly inhabited by Heath Ledger. Mr. Ledger died in January at age 28 from an accidental overdose, after principal photography ended, and his death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive. But his Joker is a creature of such ghastly life, and the performance is so visceral, creepy and insistently present that the characterization pulls you in almost at once. When the Joker enters one fray with a murderous flourish and that sawed-off smile, his morbid grin a mirror of the Black Dahlia’s ear-to-ear grimace, your nervous laughter will die in your throat.
Ain't that the truth.
In its grim intensity, “The Dark Knight” can feel closer to David Fincher’s “Zodiac” than Tim Burton’s playfully gothic “Batman,” which means it’s also closer to Bob Kane’s original comic and Frank Miller’s 1986 reinterpretation. That makes it heavy, at times almost pop-Wagnerian, but Mr. Ledger’s performance and the film’s visual beauty are transporting. (In Imax, it’s even more operatic.) No matter how cynical you feel about Hollywood, it is hard not to fall for a film that makes room for a shot of the Joker leaning out the window of a stolen police car and laughing into the wind, the city’s colored lights gleaming behind him like jewels. He’s just a clown in black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece.
Ditto!
And the next post about "The Dark Knight" will be the official one to gather the troops to go see it opening night at the Imax in Yongsan. Wait for it -- I'll make announcements after buying tickets and having them in hand, which I always do. I never make reservations without tickets in hand, so as to never leave anyone hanging. So just wait a bit longer...
And hey -- WHY SO SERIOUS?!
Hehehehe.
