It is dark, deeply dark. It’s fraught with twists and turns. It’s got well developed characters. It’s well written, the story is airtight, nothing is wasted. Its plot is complex with multiple layers and yet you still know what’s going on. It’s not over-explained. What it is NOT is a superhero movie. Calling it a superhero movie would be doing it great injustice. It is chilling and engrossing, a thriller that happens to have a hero in a bat suit. What it is is a movie that will never be forgotten and will unanimously instantly enter our list of movies with cult and legendary status.
For a movie whose tagline reads: Welcome To a World Without Rules, Christopher Nolan has changed the rules. Yes, Heath has redefined the Joker, but Nolan wrote and directed the movie.
Nolan first. What we have here isn’t a comic-book plot of good guys kill bad guys. The Dark Knight’s themes delve into the nature of good versus evil and the fine line or grey area that divides the two in the humans.
And the dissertation is put in motion with the appearance of Joker. This is no villain harboring a dark past and sob story now plotting world domination, or revenge, or infinite wealth, or destruction for some personal agenda. In fact, we don’t even know what his past us. And it doesn’t matter. That’s the beauty of the Joker. What if, just imagine for a moment, power and brains had no ulterior motive other than to wreak anarchy?
Now, Heath — No, I’m not going to really talk about how his incarnation of Joker has changed the character and its evilness forever. I mean, c’mon… your personal reaction watching the movie would probably speak louder than any reviewer’s analysis.
The character he portrays, however, is ruthless. Plays with lives. There are scenes where we see this demonstrated out with great graphic (and well edited) finesse, and then there are scenes where it’s only suggested. In which case, our imaginations figure the rest of the violence out. The beauty of the Joker is also how he fcuks with your mind so effortlessly.
Make no mistake the movie is graphic. Far more sinister in subject and tone than Batman Begins, which was also by Nolan. One friend called it disturbing. The Joker’s insane and no one doubts it. It’s actually Alfred’s voice in the first trailer from long ago that put it best: Some men aren’t looking for anything logical. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
It’s a strange comment, but I see a lot more windows in this film. It almost makes this version of Gotham more real, more familiar. (I’m not saying this just coz I was recently in Chicago and was also distracted by- Hey, that’s the IBM Building/Wacker Drive/Marina City/etc! Hey, I was on that bridge!) It’s bleak, but believable enough to be what we might see outside our windows. Crime is the mob, the gangs, the drug dealers. And in this case, the Joker as well. The same way this feels like a crime saga which happens to have a good guy in a bad suit. The hideouts are still there, and the ”cool superhero technology stuff”, but they’re played down, as are the gadgets and hardware.
Another thing that I love about this movie is that things are not over-explained. Viewers are not morons. Save for a handful who’ve just arrived from some obscure nation with no access to media in the past seventy years, or from Mars, everyone knows who Batman is, and what the basic premise of costumed hero and villain would be. So let’s just can with the time-wasting, oft-conflicting non-canon back-story and go straight into how psychotic and evil the guy is and how the heck are we gonna stop his mindless violence and rampaging crime.
Anyway, I heard the hype days before the movie opened. People were talking about it like it was the Second Coming. Even the ones who weren’t comic book or movie fans or geeks were whispering juicy news they heard about it.
“The night is darkest before the dawn.”
Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman deliver as expected. I love how Gary Oldman is simply absorbed into any role he plays, like Lt James Gordon. Aaron Eckhart did a stellar job as Harvey Dent. The public hero, the people’s poster boy, the White Knight to the nameless, faceless Dark Knight. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a noble Rachel Dawes.
Over the weekend, The Dark Knight broke box office records by pulling in $158.4 million. It deserves every cent. RIP Heath.
Tags: christopher nolan, dark knight, joker, movies
