A Dark Night At the Movies

Rating: 5/10 (15 August 2008)

This film should almost be titled "Two-Face", because it tries to be two different movies, and fails at both; one that presents itself as grim, depressing and adult, the other one aimed at 14 year-olds. The result felt like watching "Portrait of a Serial Killer" aimed at kids. Watching this big, expensive, super-hyped movie was a strangely joyless, almost depressing experience. At the end, I was as worn out as if I had watched a documentary on spousal abuse, complete with raw footage of victims being beaten while we helplessly watch.
The mob bosses are presented as idiots who can't stop one guy, and the cops, who start off being competent, become more and more incompetent throughout the movie until they start to resemble the cops from the Adam West Show.
Moments of silliness do not transition well with scenes of police officers being brutally murdered by shotguns at point blank range. If you want audiences to enjoy the movie on a comicbook level, then don't show graphic scenes of people being murdered, threatened with mutilation and being pushed to their death. It's these two things together that make for an unpleasant viewing experience.
The moralizing is extremely fatuous: "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". Really? So Superman, Spiderman, et. al are due for villain status pretty soon. Firefighers and police officers if they live long enough will become criminals. Pronouncements like this in the movie sound slick, but don't hold up on examination. "But it's only a comicbook movie". That's the film's trouble. It tries to have its cake and eat it too.
The three lead characters, Bruce Wayne, the Joker, and Harvey Dent are presented as the only competent people in the movie. Even Gordon is seen as ineffectually leading the incompetent police. Batman is the only character in the movie able to throw a punch to stop an armed gang, even in scenes of rooms crowded with men.
Forcing the audience to watch long, protracted moments of the Joker holding a knife to a helpless victim's face as he threatens to mutilate her, shot in loving 360 degree panoramic closeup, is like being forced to watch a snuff film shot by Martin Scorsese. Worse, it forces the audience to participate in the victimization. The makers of the film call this being "grown-up". Since when is showing graphic sadism being "grown-up"? They want it to be a "grown-up comicbook". Fine; then don't show the rest of the characters as being incompetent cartoon buffoons, and assume your audience is stupid; this constant shifting is playing fair with the audience.
The Joker seemingly has an army of hundreds of highly organized commandos, but all of the unbelievable pyrotechnics are orchestrated by one person and a handful of schizophrenic patients. Even comicbooks have some kind of credible storyline and idea of what's physically possible, and this completely ignores them to the point of disregarding the audience's intelligence (and patience.)
Finally, Heath Ledger's performance. Heath Ledger tries very hard in this role, and you can't blame him for lack of effort. He plays a twitchy, sadistic psychopath in clown makeup. But is it the Joker? Well, that depends on your view of the Joker. If your view is a twitchy, sadistic psychopath, then he has succeeded in presenting it. If it's someone who is fun to watch,with a deranged sense of humor that makes you laugh in spite of yourself, then it isn't. The Joker as presented here is as joyless as a serial killer who only feels when he tortures someone, and as irritating as a Bugs Bunny character that is drawn as one step of the good guys, defying physics and logic, so he can continually dangle victims out of windows and force the victims into making sadistic choices. Finally, this is the filmmakers' view of what this comicbook is. It isn't necessarily ours. To add to the irritation, there are long, long interludes where the Joker gives his personal commentary on life's meaninglessness, as he threatens and tortures his victims. These commentaries are presented as "deep" and "heavy", when they are in fact as meaningless, and without relevancy; comicbooks succeed better than this.
Finally, we reach the end, which provides an irritation and insult to the audience all on its own: the movie actually makes the statement that the public can't handle the truth, that unless it is covered up, all the criminals will be freed and society as we know it will fall apart. Therefore, in order to continue and have hope, the public must continued to be deceived, and Batman must be martyred and chased by the hounds for the crimes he did not commit. Uh, what? Nice statement there: Bush's administration is correct after all (in fact, all institutions are correct), and we, the ignorant masses, can't handle the truth about one person, without losing all hope and reason. The idea that hundreds of criminals will be freed, and that crime will win, just because one district attorney became criminal, is ridiculous. The end actually sets Batman up to be a martyred Christ figure at the end. I found myself laughing at the end, much to the annoyance of my friend, at this "poignant" moment. This film took itself much too seriously, and its audience not seriously enough.
At the end, the score is: Batman competent, everyone else helpless and stupid. That's the message of this film. I came to see a movie about a comicbook character, and instead was inflicted with a pompous, psychobabble morality play instead. It was not fun. And after all, isn't that what a comicbook should be?