The Joker wins

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2008)

The new Batman film is out and it has triumphed as only a blockbuster can. It has made more money in less time than any other American mega-buck movie before it. It has brought the audience to its knees. Something approaching $200 million (enough to make 100 French art films) got spent on it, but soon the expenditures will be recouped. Wow. Good job, Chris Nolan.
'The Dark Knight' tears up the screen. Villainy, as embodied in the triumphant and voluptuous posthumous performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker, so spills over Gotham that it seeps into the hearts and minds of the leaders of the Good Guys. That's what they mean by 'Dark.' Gotham is No Country for Old Men.
What's happening to superheros these days anyway? Hancock (Will Smith) is a foul-mouthed drunk who causes major damage. The new Batman movie raises the issue that vigilante justice, even meted out by a chiseled millionaire with glowing skin, encourages lawlessness and may over all be a Bad Thing. The Joker is a sadistic lord of misrule. He has serious childhood issues, but he only uses them to tease and torment people ("know how I got these scars?"). To hell with money, he says, setting fire to a two-storey Step Pyramid of bundles of cash--prompting thoughts of the drooping dollar, Bush's war, and the way Hollywood throws money at a franchise like this one. His pleasure is all in sowing the seeds of chaos. And it's his movie. We don't see that much of Batman, or much other than his masked face, and the Joker is just way more fun to watch.
Ledger-The-Joker tears apart the movie, too--yet seems sometimes all that's holding it together. Punctuated by his appearances, The Dark Knight barely comes to life till he shows up twenty minutes in, then is shaped by his always-flashy and riveting turns. But the movie is troubled by its own chaos. It's too long, and grows increasingly incoherent toward the end.
Noise is pervasive, urging the audience to be excited from the first frame. This is always a problem with any film, especially a very complicated one like this: if you start out at too high a pitch, it'll be hard to sustain that and if you do sustain it, you risk wearing out the audience. Contrast the 'Bourne' movies. They're pitched high, hard and fast, but they're essentially simple chase stories with the hero in nearly every scene so they hold momentum easily. 'The Dark Knight' has us following too many different forces, and who's aligned with what gets too blurred. DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhardt), Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), the DA's new--and Bruce Wayne's old--girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllanhaal), Wayne/Batman's loyal sidekicks Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Alfred (Michael Caine)--the latter two film idols who grab the screen and create a void around themselves (they're shot that way too). There's also police lieutenant Gordan (Gary Oldman), perhaps the least interesting yet nearly the most important character, and a mayor (Nestor Carbonell) with huge eyebrows and black-rimmed eyes. Except for the loyal sidekicks it's hard to know which way some of these people are going to go but they're all vying for the audience's distracted attention.
And then there is the further major distraction and overkill factor of the gadgetry, the weaponry almost everybody has in his hand, the Bat-suits the thuggish-heavy Batmobile--virtually indestructible, like some giant prehistoric beetle, and the Lamborghini, whose smashup was, for me, the film's saddest moment. What a beautiful thing! It cost hundreds of thousands to custom-make, and then they run other vehicles into it and put big dents in it. That's a blockbuster. It destroys all in its path. It burns up pyramids of money.
Then also you've got sonar or radar or something in cell phones and tanks of gasoline, and dynamite and flame-thrower weaponry. Little things with blinky lights, a match, anything will do: The Joker likes to blow up things. And if you like to see explosions and fires and hospitals collapsing and cars and trucks flying through the air spectacularly (and pretty convincingly) this is your movie.
If you like dialogue, it may not be. Voices get muffled in the noise and Christian Bale talks in a hoarse whisper as if he's trying to turn into Darth Vader but needs more amplification. Here again Heath Ledger stands out, and so does Maggie Gyllenhaal. They both speak their lines not only expressively but clearly and distinctly. Aaron Eckhardt gets to wear some pretty elaborate makeup. He, like Maggie, is a good addition to the series: she offers heaps of believable personality and his square jaw is made for a comic book hero. He could play Dick Tracy. He seems a long way now from Neil LaBute. And I'm sorry, 'The Dark Knight' lectures us an awful lot for a big budget action movie, about good and evil and law and order and stuff, but it's a long way from meaning anything--except that it's a terrible shame Heath Ledger had to die. He dives into and romps with this role. It's scary fun. He had much pleasure to give us. He was just beginning. The Joker rules.