Why So Serious?

Rating: 10/10 (11 August 2008)

Why is "The Dark Knight" so serious? For many good reasons. Christopher Nolan is a true auteur who can take a simplistic comic book story like "Batman" and turn it into a complex psychological movie with plethora of character study. He has directed Christian Bale into the most serious Batman character of all. He sure did direct the late Heath Ledger into performing as the best Joker of them all, and Ledger did not work to upstage Bale or the other actors in any way. Ledger should definitely win a posthumous Oscar for his scary performance of a clown who possesses deep wounds.
If Christopher Nolan was old enough, he should have done Batman movies instead of Tim Burton or Joel Schumacher put together. Tim Burton's mood was dark as well, but as I'm looking at it now, Michael Keaton was a more sloppy Batman, Kim Basinger was a mousy Vicky Vale, and Jack Nicholson overdid his Joker performance. In "Batman Returns," also directed by Burton and starring Keaton, the commercialism continues, adding Michelle Pfeiffer as a more idiotic Catwoman than the Catwomen on the 1960s TV series and Danny DeVito, who still was a wounded Penguin, but not enough that we feel sorry for him. Then in the mid 1990s, Keaton didn't want to play Batman anymore, feeling he was upstaged by all the villains. Looking for more actors often typecast as villains, director Schumacher got Tommy Lee Jones to parody his villain persona as Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. Also, there was still that rubberface persona in Jim Carrey as the Riddler as well. 1997's "Batman and Robin" was a total washout. So Nolan came to rescue this moribund franchise and made his own franchise moody with dark colors, mature, less focus on the action and more on the story and detailed development of each character without exploiting them. In 2005, "Batman Begins" was just the beginning, but "The Dark Knight" is the real story. It would be sin that Christopher Nolan does not get nominated for an Oscar, just as well as Heath Ledger, for best director.
Christian Bale is, and many people would agree with me, the best Batman of them all. With his rich performance, we do know him better than Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney put together. We know Bruce Wayne's haunted past and demons, and why he becomes his alter ego Batman to fight crime in Gotham City. Unlike Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger is a much more complicated joker. He doesn't torture people just for pure torture. He doesn't laugh maliciously between every single sentence. He grew up with such an abusive upbringing that he wants to exploit Batman as a fraud for Gotham City, even bringing in Batman clones with the typical Caped Crusader outfit on the crime scenes just to tell Bruce Wayne "Will the real Batman stand up?"
All the other actors give excellent, detailed performances. Maggie Gyllenhal gives a stronger performance than Katie Holmes (Mrs. Tom Cruise) as Bruce Wayne's love interest Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes, but is smitten with D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) in the end. Gary Oldman, in one of his few good-guy roles, does a fine turn as the mustachioed Commissioner Gordon, more serious than the one we've seen on TV. Veteran thespians Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are always a treat to watch as the faithful butler Alfred and the gadget inventor Lucius Fox. These two men get better with age each time they make movies. And Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey "Two-Face" Dent not as a torturous villain like Tommy Lee Jones did before, but as a victim wounded by the Joker's torture in a gas chamber out to seek revenge with his coin as his calling card for what could be good or what could better yet turn out for bad on his intended targets.
The summer of 2008 had a lot of movies. I've seen "Mamma Mia" as a light feel-good musical comedy riddled with off-key singing, notably by Pierce Brosnan. I've seen "Wall-E," which I thought was Pixar's blander efforts. Remy the rat from last year upstaged this robot on all costs. But "The Dark Knight" is the best movie of the summer. When it comes to comic book stories, as I said before, directors Burton and Schumacher got all caught up in themselves with too much action and seemed to forget their audiences. Nolan never does.