First mythology of the 21st century

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2008)

There's not much left to say, everyone here's already said it. I'd just suggest seeing this film a few times. In the first viewing the movie overwhelmed. In subsequent viewings I had a chance to catch the details that really make it special. The facial expressions of Ledger's Joker; the little mocking moue he pulls after his interrogation-room guard answers that 6 of his friends had been killed and his brief pause as he plumbs his dark mind for his next words calculated to break the officer. The hysterical glee, that seemed to have little to do with acting, as the Joker tells the interrogating Batman that he does not want him dead.
Just about every word this creature says is a lie, the only literary creation to even approach this Joker's essence of pure evil is Lucifer. And for all his heroism and his having survived the film's moral minefield Bale's Batman leaves off alone and seeming essentially doomed.
Nolan has created a visceral, three-dimensional, fully realized Gotham, I could so easily see myself living there, then turns it into a battlefield for warring gods.
There is something mythic in this production that for me only increases on subsequent viewing. Pretty magnificent stuff!