Week of July 24, 2008, Issue #666
FILM
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan creates a new kind of superhero film with his brilliant, engrossing Dark Knight
DAVID BERRY / david@vueweekly.com & JOSEF BRAUN / josef@vueweekly.com
Emerging from the ruins of a severely scarred Gotham City, the Batman we watch flee into shadow at the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the follow-up to his revisionist Batman Begins, is one reborn of grave resolve, haunted, hunted, even hated. It’s a striking, broodingly operatic ending to an often thrilling, wildly bleak movie in which crime escalates to catastrophic heights, madness and corruption permeate every corner and nobody enjoys what you’d call a happy ending. It also produced the biggest box office smash of the year. So much for crowd-pleasers. Vue critics David Berry and Josef Braun discuss their responses to the summer’s most heavily anticipated movie.
David Berry: Before we get into The Dark Knight, what’d you think of Batman Begins?
Josef Braun: I found the Mongolian origin story pretty silly. It didn’t fit with the stark, mysterious, urban, sensuous Batman, and tonally got off on the wrong foot. The movie felt overburdened with justifications.
DB: Well, I really liked it. I found myself sucked in by Nolan’s ability to insert Batman into something like a real world setting. Admittedly, it’s oddly paced, and the ninja stuff’s awkward. Plus, the whole James Bond, jet-setting persona that creeps into both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight—
JB: You mean the “Operation Hong Kong Secret Stash” sequence?
DB: Exactly. It does take you out of the dirty Gotham thing.
JB: The persistent question with Batman films is how to fuse the demands of the superhero movie with something more adult and morbid. I think Nolan’s solution here was to produce a new myth for the age of terror. The Dark Knight presents us with these psychotic fundamentalist anarchists, criminals whose guiding motives are beyond monetary gain. Not beyond celebrity, obviously, since Joker seems eager to saddle the psychiatrist’s couch every time he’s with an audience—which is creepy in its own way.
DB: I agree, but I think the real coup here is the introduction of Two-Face. I kept thinking of Batman Forever (1995), where Tommy Lee Jones’s Two-Face basically just chews scenery. Here they’ve taken the same over-the-top supervillian and made him believable, even tragic.
JB: I think of Two-Face as the culmination of the single-most compelling motif in The Dark Knight: its proliferation of doubles, starting with the phony Batmans, running through the different approaches to justice embodied by Batman and DA Harvey Dent, the yin-yang relationship between Joker and Batman, and finally the unholy emergence of Two-Face himself. It’s a very satisfying thematic progression.
DB: Definitely. I really appreciated the willingness of Nolan to delve so thoroughly into these themes, even if he did often have the characters spell them right out. The scene where Joker explains why he and Batman are destined archenemies works that way—but it works beautifully. Where a lot of comic book movies are content to stay on a level of action and surface-level characterizations, Nolan’s unapologetic in how seriously he tackles the psychology.
DB: The moral questions, about vigilantism say, are definitely writ-large, but the thing is they play out through action, not just talk. The stakes are too urgent for the film to feel excessively ponderous. It goes to show that just because things are bigger than life doesn’t mean you can’t have texture, too.
DB: Heath Ledger’s Joker has been the centre of anticipation for The Dark Knight, and I know you’re a big fan.
JB: He was pretty wonderful, I thought, mesmerizing, and remarkably free of camp, in a role that requires a delicate balance of mania and purpose, ecstasy and exactitude. But he’s hardly alone. Gary Oldman’s terrific as Gordon, one of his most appealing characters, and Aaron Eckhart’s charming and persuasive as Dent, the film’s white knight, kinda stealing the spotlight from the ostensible star Christian Bale, who’s also strong, but, appropriately enough, spends much of the film in the shadows.
DB: Yeah. I really liked Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Batman (’89), very over the top, yet perfect for the movie Tim Burton was making. But there’s certainly a gulf between what Nicholson did and this really nuanced, honestly disturbed performance from Ledger—the difference between a thug in clown makeup and an honest psychopath. Still, like you, I wouldn’t want his performance to overshadow everyone else’s. I actually really like Bale, specifically the way he creates this oblivious playboy persona that works as a nice mask for the other side of him, this growling gargoyle. I love that voice Bale uses as Batman, how it fits with his reliance on fear as a tactic. But, anyway, I think of this not so much as a Batman film as a film set in the Batman world.
JB: It really is an ensemble film.
DB: Were there particular things you didn’t like?
JB: I don’t think Nolan’s great with orchestrating coherent action sequences, but that’s a common problem with many younger, post-MTV filmmakers. I had a hard time buying the flying, and that ridiculous sonar cell phone device. Overall, there’s just a tendency toward excess, the final scenario making for one too many massive set pieces in a movie already brimming with them.
DB: The whole Batsonar thing whizzing through the building absolutely was just confusing. I had trouble figuring out where everyone was supposed to be. But there’s the James Bond thing all over, needlessly loading Batman up with gadgets.
JB: Totally. But I guess, nitpicking aside, The Dark Knight ultimately really is an extraordinary example of its genre, offering all those rare things you crave in a big summer movie: it’s entertaining, spectacular, sometimes even nerve-wracking, but it sticks to your ribs. And, as promised, it’s further evidence that Ledger truly was a special talent, cut down just as he was getting started. V
Social Bookmarking
Got something to say? Send a letter to the editor.
letters@vueweekly.com