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Another Look at The Dark Knight

Batman Begins isn't a perfect film by a long shot. Sure, it resurrected the character on film from its consignment to a heap of guano and rubber nipples, but it over-reached a little here and there. Christian Bale's Batman voice was like scuffed baseball hitting the dirt in front of home plate. The last third of the movie had a surprise superhero, Exposition Man, narrating the climax. The climax was the perfect combination of plot and tone: A train going off the rails. And of course, the fight scenes consisted of 3 millisecond shots of Batman's elbows. The public excuse was that this was a stylistic choice, to make the audience feel like they were right in the middle of it. Most of the audience just wanted the camera to stay still so they could maybe actually SEE Batman.

The film was a stylistic, substantial success in spite of itself at times...

Some of those mistakes get fixed in The Dark Knight: Bale doesn't lose the
sandpaper hacksaw tone, but he learns how to modulate it and make it work. The movie wraps up almost every single plot point and thematic element introduced without having some old guy explain what's going down every 3 seconds. And Nolan locks that camera down, and in doing so, manages to make the audience feel the punches his film is throwing in a way that not only Batman Begins couldn't do, but most films this year haven't been able to.

It doesn't hurt that he's got most of his previous cast returning, down to Cillian
Murphy chipping in two cents as the Scarecrow, as well as Aaron Eckhart's heroic Harvey Dent, Maggie Gyllenhaal's assured Rachel Dawes, and of course, Heath Ledger's Joker. It doesn't hurt that Nolan, in admittedly patterning his film after Michael Mann's crime classic Heat, has let those actors dig deep in a way no superhero film has even attempted before. If there is a case that needs to be made regarding whether superhero films can be counted as "serious" films, as films that can transcend and affect audiences the way art is supposed to, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is making that case, and making it effectively.

Starting with the flashy centerpiece of the film, Ledger's performance of Joker:
Many reams of ink are going spill and run down newsprint like the raccoon circles smearing his face in the film. He's gonna get a best supporting actor nomination. It's going to happen. Whether he wins or not doesn't really matter, of course. The real question is whether this portrayal of Joker ends up being regarded as a malevolent force of nature alongside Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. Because you have to go back that far at least, to witness a highly respected actor go to that proverbial "next level" the way Ledger does here.

But the soul of this movie is split in two. Obviously, one half of that soul belongs
to Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. Batman refers to Harvey more than once as Gotham's real hero. The public face they need to believe in themselves, and Eckhart makes that believable. He delivers a performance assured and strong-shouldered enough to carry the weight of those words, and when he breaks and falls, the combination of rage and sadness would be palpable and disturbing even without the horror hanging off half his face.

But the other half is in Gary Oldman's hands as Jim Gordon. Ledger gives a speech referencing gravity during the final fight between Joker and Batman, but Oldman's every man is this film's center of gravity. He's given a lot more to work with, and if, as rumored, he wasn't looking forward to reprising his role in a major studio tentpole circus show, not a hint of that shows in the portrayal of a plainspoken man trying to hold it together as insanity relentlessly presses in from all angles. Nothing feels phoned in like it did last film.

That goes for most of the actors. Nolan needed Maggie Gyllenhaal's for Bale and
Eckhart to play off of, because Holmes' portrayal of Rachel Dawes wasn't going to be the fuel that ignites the entire last third of this movie in the way Gyllenhall's is. Michael Caine is just as solid as Alfred as he was last go-round, and while Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox is still sort of a stock "Morgan Freeman as wise old man" character, he has more to do, and does it solidly.

I haven't mentioned Bale yet, because the man gets lost in his own movie a little. His Bruce Wayne is much improved, and one of the most fun performances in the film, but his Batman is still sometimes unintelligible and forced. No matter how dour and focused Batman appears, the façade cracks when he speaks. Oldman's Gordon personifies Nolan's approach to these Batman films, the grounding force that makes all this outlandishness seem real, but Bale's Batman strains against that. It's only when Batman stops yelling, quiets down, and emotes a little, that the Batman half of Bale's portrayal works.

That's not the only misstep. There's a 20 minute sequence involving Hong Kong that seems necessary as it unfolds, and is pretty to look at. Only as the movie crosses the 2 hour mark does that sequence start to feel like it's dragging anchor, as you realize nothing in that 20 minutes really has anything to do with what's going on in the climax, and the film could have gotten to it's climax just that much faster without losing any of its formidable punch. It's essentially a beautifully shot and edited DVD extra that managed to sneak its way into the film.

The tone of Heat isn't the only thing Nolan managed to approximate. The film shares Mann's cold, clinical look. The muddiness of Begins is replaced with a cool blue shine. The camerawork, including the groundbreaking IMAX work, shares none of the shakiness that obscured bits of Begins. The sound and the score blend together to highlight the violence, which like in the best of Mann's films, is sudden and visceral. Hardly a drop of blood is spilled onscreen, but the jolts and winces come early and often, from Batman being mauled by dogs, to Eric Roberts' Sal Maroni landing hard on his heels after a meeting with Batman, to Joker's disappearing pencil trick. And the plotting is appropriately twisty as well, forcing Batman to do some legitimate detective work that not only recalls Pacino's cop in Heat, but James Bond as well.

This sorta sounds like "Heat II starring an insane clown and his leather-fetish
friend" but that's not it at all. This is most definitely a Batman movie, probably
the Batman movie that most closely hews to the tone of the most successful Batman stories in the comics. There's gadgets, There's a hell of a chase sequence through Gotham putting those gadgets to amazing work, there's knowing winks and nods (Fox makes reference to Wayne wanting a new suit that he can move his neck in) there's even a speech delivered near the end that reinforces the need for superheroes in society as music swells and rises and capes go a flapping in the whipping wind. But it's distilled Batman, 101 proof. It somehow burns and goes down smooth at the same time. Worth savoring and sipping on for most of its 150 minute length, but with just enough bite to make you careful about taking big swigs with no chaser.