THE DARK KNIGHT (2008, dir. Christopher Nolan)

You know how I feel about spoilers. Bring it on...


Ok...

No. No. It was good. I liked it. Just give me a second to scrape myself off the floor. Regardless of your level of enthusiasm for Batman or Nolan's reincarnation of him, you will likely have to do the same after the two and a half hours of The Dark Knight.

Easy. Easy. It wasn't bad. I liked it. I just had to reach deep into the inner caverns of my shattered well-being to find the energy to leave my seat once the credits started rolling.

Huge Batman fan here. Love the TV show. Love Frank Miller. Love the Animated Series. Love Burton. Even have space in my heart for Val Kilmer and Jim Carrey prancing like idiots. I draw the line at Batman & Robin. Huge fan of Batman. I don't know. I love him because it's like he's a millionaire with a tortured soul and beats the shit out of people and gets the shit beaten out of him. What more could a girl ask for. Pre-pubescent Arden was so into him. I think... when it comes down to it though... the enduring allure of Batman for this cinephile... He has the best villains.

Spider-Man's villains blow. I don't give a shit about Lex Luther. But Batman's villains. They fucking rock. Consistently! Like great backstories. Best pathos. And when they face off against a man (not an alien or a man with superpowers) but a regular guy who dresses up as a FUCKING BAT... well, it seems like an equal match of crazy. They're always sort of tempting him to give in to his obvious mental issues, appealing to his inner freak between blows (BLAM! KERPLOOY!), desperately trying to encourage that seed of insane planted firmly in his subconscious. And Bruce Wayne never gives in. Never! Not even to this woman:

That's willpower.

Right...  So Nolan. Alright. I don't hate Nolan. I'm not psychotically impressed by him either. Look. It takes a lot of chutzpah and gumption to take on the Batman franchise and I applaud him for succeeding at it. I also appreciate him taking it seriously. But bare with me for a moment. Let's say you're a film student in the year 2034 being introduced to Christopher Nolan's work pre-The Dark Knight. Then you're asked to write a paper about his style. First and only word that comes to mind for me???? Grey. Just the color: grey. A lot of it. And possibly you could stretch it out to include random spurts of post-Tarantino violence with the occasional reoccurring theme of avenging the death of a beloved woman.

But that's really all I got on Nolan. He's good at it. Those symphonies of greys!! (There's a deep blue!) No discernible style or director character traits. He doesn't stand out as an individual at all. He steals A LOT from Michael Mann and Ridley Scott for The Dark Knight. Which is fine. That's fine, man. Whatever you want to do. You get the feeling that Nolan so DESPERATELY wants to make a smart "superhero" movie but that he's limited as a filmmaker in his ability to meld genres or transcend one. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Seriously. You don't need a mad virtuoso at the helm of your DC Comics franchise.  Can you imagine like Peckinpah or Altman directing Batman? Weird. Maybe cool in a novelty kind of way. But weird.

But if Nolan's quest to deliver an elegant superhero film has taught me one thing about Nolan himself, it's that he cannot make a firm decision. I absolutely despised the first 45 minutes of Batman Begins. I think you could hear my eyes rolling. It was like... when is this movie going to start?! When are we going to decide whether or not we're in a samauri flick or an action movie? Then it did go with the latter. And I ended up liking it. Especially the last moment when they promised the Joker. But I found myself feeling similarly schizophrenic in The Dark Knight. Am I in a Western or a gangster film? It's an action movie! Wait. It's a drama. ACTION!!!!! Then... WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT?!!?  Everything and nothing.  How much grey can we shove into one's eyeline!?!?  What if we also include weirdness!?

There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of misshapen tone. It's definitely experimental. It's risky and dangerous. But, man, can Nolan really pull it off? I'm gonna go with a "no" here. Just no. He can't. He's trying. I appreciate that. I am very glad he is making a shitload of money. But he can't do it.  Mostly because he can't make a picture with the camera.  He can only point it at stuff.

Sigh. Sorry. Let's move on. Smack dab in the middle of the film. There's a nice stretch of time that was fantastic. Iconic. Exciting. Dramatic. I'd say it lasted about 50 minutes. Bat-motorcycle faces off against an 18-wheeler. Joker in a jail cell and interrogation room. The abduction (off-screen and then explained through dialogue for some reason) and sacrifice of two major characters. I got a little misty. There were images I will carry with me. The rest of the movie. Meh. I would like to see it again. Make sure I didn't miss anything but I don't think I did. I think part of the reason I enjoyed this part so much was because it was the only stretch of time The Joker was allowed to be truly and ingeniously cruel and psychotic.

Heath Ledger died. Which is really fucking sad. I felt bad cause I poked some fun at him on this blog. And not to jump on the bandwagon but he was really talented because he was totally crazy. I really love him for that. Critics have been like "Ledger stares into the abyss". Honestly... It's not that he doesn't. I just wish people had let him do it more. Besides the mid-point I just described, he does get some merry exchanges with other characters but Nolan cuts away to drone on about dignity and civil rights.  WHAT?! GIVE ME MORE JOKER!! Then he's back! His relationship to his slashed up cheeks and the rest of his props (knives, wigs, detonators, champagne glass) are unbelievable. His accent is indecipherable. The amount of work Heath Ledger did was staggering. It's a performance that's impossible to process completely in one viewing and even more impossible to shake. Here's an artist who makes twist and turns in motivations and tone seamless. If only the rest of the film could've managed a steady cadence with dips and dives into mania. Like I said. I wanted more. I wanted him to chat up Bruce Wayne not just spar with an aggro Batman. I wanted to see him skulk around with Harvey Dent not just give him a pep-talk. I wanted to see this brilliant realization of a character INTERACT with other characters!!! 

No one's up to the challenge I'm afraid.  At least with Nicholson, the other players had the sense to play the straight man.  Here.  People are either ignoring that they're in a scene with a crazy person or using it as an excuse to overact.  Despite the fact that Nolan seems to be under this weird illusion that people come to see Batman films for the hefty ensemble cast, the director oddly shoves Ledger into scenes where he's acting opposite glorified extras for the most part.  Gary Oldman kind of throws down.  In his one scene with him. Bale, Gyllenhaal, Eckhart. All of their faces twist up the second they enter the frame with Ledger. Like they are pouting because he's playing a completely different game than everyone else. HE IS!!! STEP IT UP!!!! Oh wait... you can't. You're mediocre.

So at the center of this soulless movie is a wandering unbalanced violent soul. And it's not BATMAN. It's HEATH LEDGER.

Christian Bale. Likeable. Much more sold on his Bruce Wayne than his Batman. Probably because there are shades of Patrick Bateman still lurking in the corners of his eyes. Again, I really wanted that guy to get into a tussle with the Joker as well as a cowled up avenger. Nolan's Batman isn't really framed well. Not Bale's fault. He's always jumping into the shot or the camera is just catching up with his momentum. Ok. That's one way to do it. His vocal choice for Batman. WEIRD. WEIRD. WEIRD. Aaron Eckhart. I like him. I get his casting in theory. I probably would have casted him myself given his canon of smarmy asshole heroes with shit-eating grins. But his transformation into Two-Face (while technically fantastic!) happens too abruptly for an actor of Eckhart's broad strokes. He's all justice and shine as he looks gangsters in the face and lives to disassemble their guns during cross-examination. Then he's a disfigured beast with a weird voice because that's what Heath and Bale are is doing! You needed someone a little more delicate in that role. To hint at the self-entitlement brewing beneath Dent's shimmering facade. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Yawn. Not pretty. No better than Katie Holmes. Very bored by her and the Rachel Dawes storyline. Thank God it's over.

My only hope is that Nolan gets a kickass Catwoman to counteract the paralyzingly boring female contingent going on in his series. Someone really crazy. Like Amy Adams.

Bottom Line: This is one Batman installment where I am disappointed that the filmmakers didn't let the villain hijack the movie.