S P L I N T E R E D | L I G H T

Last year’s Oscars were swept by dark films like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, now this summer’s biggest blockbuster is also its blackest. Remember how The Godfather II took the evil and depravity of the first movie and made it almost unbearable? That is in effect what director Christopher Nolan does with the sequel to Batman Begins. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any attempt to do right carries with it unforeseen consequences. The Dark Knight is the milieu that results when those consequences become too much to handle.

In the wake of the events in Batman Begins, Gotham is all stirred up, and Bruce Wayne spends nights rounding up tubby imposters. He must now continue to intimidate criminals, but also control the atmosphere of vigilante justice he has created. When a fearless public servant appears in Gotham’s new D.A., Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Bruce Wayne begins to wonder if he shouldn’t hand the reigns of public protector over to this legitimate hero and role model. In the meantime Harvey Dent and the Batman linked by the unflappably good Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) form an allegiance to reform the sin soaked city. But their renewed efforts drive a new, inexplicable evil into the limelight.

The film opens with clowns offing each other as they rob a bank. While the standard criminals are calling off deals and lying low, a new breed has become intrigued. Drug deals and embezzling money leave no room for imagination and personal flair, but subverting a city wide effort to reform and exposing the Batman – that requires creativity. So with no allies, no history (he gives several but contradicts himself), and no goal but to frustrate goals, the Joker slinks out from his den to turn everything on its head. Channeling 1930s gangsters and A Clockwork Orange, Heath Ledger has undoubtedly created one of the greatest villains ever to appear on screen. It is such a total transformation from the masculine, silent, brooding types he perfected in films like Brokeback Mountain, I’m Not There, and Candy that the actor disappears behind the creation. The twitches, the walk, flicking his hair, and licking his lips, crooning high then droning low, speaking fast then slow, with sadistic intonation and backwards logic, he is unplaceable, indecipherable, unrelatable, implacable – pure anarchy. This is acting at the Hannibal Lector, Jack Torrance level at least. The script doesn’t hurt either. The Joker has such great lines. He is obviously the smartest guy in the room and controls every scene with his cunning and wit. I don’t know if I have ever seen a villain this good.

Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne actually shares his leading role with Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger. He is upstaged and overshadowed by them, both in the script and in terms of performances, but then Batman is upstaged and overshadowed in different capacities by both Harvey Dent and the Joker. This inadequacy is the demon Wayne must struggle with in the film. The Dark Knight makes it very clear that Batman is overmatched and questioning his vocation. “People are dying. What would you have me do?” he implores of Alfred. His only answer, “Endure . . . be the outcast . . . make the choice that no one else will face - the right choice.”

A great strength of The Dark Knight as a sequel to Batman Begins is that it deals with completely new themes. The first film was about fear, the second is about chaos. This is part of what makes Batman the most interesting of superheroes. He is anything but one-dimensional. The Joker’s terror attacks so deeply challenge Gotham’s moral crusaders that by the middle of the film everyone is resorting to terror tactics and torture to find the truth. But the Joker has obscured it too completely, and the good men must try to do what’s right while it remains fuzzy and out of focus. 

As a result of all this the movie is both exhilarating and exhausting. There is action, a lot of action – intense, unremitting, fast-paced action. But this is top-shelf, hard-hitting stuff without the stench of CGI. It is so visceral. Batman gliding through Hong Kong at night, and leaping from the top level of a parking garage to crush a van as it passes below were my favorites. In a lesser film all this action would be too much, but the drama is so tied up in it, and the characters are so compelling, that we do not loose sight of them even amidst the explosions. As Harvey Dent lay tied up, facedown, throbbing for breath in a pool of oil, I really, really wanted him to be OK.

Many have criticized its hectic cutting and manic pace. But, you see, The Dark Knight had to have hectic cuts and a manic pace to tell its story. The presence of the Joker turns everything to chaos. There is no way to cut an evenly paced, neatly climactic film with this Joker around. Although it is exhausting it would not have worked any other way. Just like you cannot finish The Godfather II or There Will Be Blood without feeling the weight of evil and corruption, you cannot walk out of The Dark Knight without the swirling cameras and frenzied action creating in you a little of the Joker’s insanity. In this way we get a taste of what Bruce Wayne must be feeling – that is good film making. 

Every aspect of the film deserves comment – the costumes, the set designs, the effects, the editing, the camera work, the razor-sharp, glistening photography, dynamic, unsettling score, and the sterling cast. This is the kind of film-making that needs to happen. Cutting-edge, but old-school, shot outdoors on location in the weather and city streets with stunt doubles and real explosions. We should all thank Nolan and crew for a truly cinematic experience.

Harvey Dent tells us that the night is darkest just before the dawn. This is that darkest night. Will there even be a dawn? The Joker at times seems more than a match for Batman, and by the end I’m not sure he wasn’t. In a chilling game of chicken Batman flinches – the Joker, for once, doesn’t twitch. The ending of the film is tragic, bold, and open ended. Both sides score a sort of triumph, and both sides suffer defeat, there is no clear winner. This is how it has to be when you deal with a fathomless evil. There has never been a superhero franchise as compelling or a comic book adaptation so thought provoking as Christopher Nolan’s Batman.