An Oscar-worthy Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2008)

Stunning, amazing, brilliant, fantastic and perfect, even with knowing about all the hype going into the film it still blew me away from the very start to the final scene. I don't think I've had a film experience such as this before, where right from the opening scene which literally grabs you and pulls you into the screen, to about half way through you're completely submerged in the movie, with scene after scene just escalating the tension and delivering so much brilliance  what do I mean by brilliance? Well, everything from the story, the performances, the cinematography, the music, the direction  with no one thing overbearing another, just a perfect balance  how the hell did Christopher Nolan do it? Give the guy an Oscar, and while you're there make sure Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart and Christian Bale are all nominated.
The film settles down about half-way through or so and lets you take a breath but that only works to the film's benefit as it starts to build the tension again and heads for an ending that leaves you wanting more.
The Joker was the perfect psychotic mysterious villain  R.I.P. Heath, who with this performance and his performance in Brokeback Mountain has convinced me that he was one of the outstanding talents of his generation and I wouldn't have been surprised if he had gone on to win multiple Oscars  it sounds like I'm just eulogising because he's gone, but I genuinely believe he had the ability to become the character in such a way that all you saw was the character and not the high-profile actor underneath it  that's difficult to achieve because all actors have quirks they carry with them from one film to the next, he seemed to be a blank palette who could metamorphose himself into whatever he wanted. In my opinion Heath and Daniel Day-Lewis are on a different level to their peers.
If LOTR: Return of the King can sweep the Oscars, which it deserved to do, I feel the The Dark Knight should do the same. It's done what no other comic book film I've seen has done before and delivered characters with so much depth to them working evenly together in a story packed with plot and balanced with exciting action sequences.
It's funny because I really didn't enjoy Batman Begins when I first watched it. I had in my mind the Batman films I'd seen before and Begins was such a departure, I was really disappointed with the film and also with Christian Bale as Batman, even though he's an actor I really like. After all the hype with The Dark Knight and with the excellent trailers I re-watched Begins and because this time I knew what I was going into I enjoyed the film and Christian Bale's performance more. I changed my rating from 5/10 to 6/10  maybe on further viewing it will go up to 7/10, but that's it. It's a film that deserves a lot of credit for trying something new, but it's flawed. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, is a masterpiece.
Chritopher Nolan is a genius, not just for this, but when you include his previous films, I think it's hard to argue that he isn't the greatest director working today.
There has to be a third Batman film, sadly it will have to be without the Joker, as any replacement would feel like an imitation of Heath and detract from the film, but despite that, it's still going to be a great film, you just know it. Chritopher Nolan can't do anything average.