Fire in the Knight

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2008)

Gotham city has seen better days.
The Joker's terror campaign has both the public, and even its criminals living in fear. One day, Alfred relates a story of his early days in Burma, to a ponderous Bruce Wane. He tells Mr. Wayne how he and his men began to hunt a jewel thief who was on a killing rampage in the jungle. A man who actually threw the jewels he stole away, because this was just a man "who wanted to watch the world burn."
Bruce asks Alfred how did they catch him?
"We burnt the jungle down."
The opening images of Batman announces this theme of fire, with the Bat signal simmering among blue flames. Gotham has indeed seen better days. And the opening of the film announces, better days are not coming soon. As the joker announces, "people will die tonight, I'm a man of my worrrrd." Oh yes, the jungle is going to burn down, by one hand or the next.
In the Dark Knight Christopher Nolan clearly strove to do justice to the Batman character and the world he inhabits to degrees and depths of character rarely seen before in a "comic book" movie. He has delivered a true epic. Though he still hasn't a clue how to film fight scenes and also dances a fine line of too much story and too many characters. There was obviously more than enough material here for two movies. However, I am very happy things worked out as they did.
The movie is a triumph of vision both in the new realization of the joker, and in the practical manifestation of the Two-Face character.
Aaron Eckhart is sufficiently pretty and viscous as Harvey Dent. Heath Ledger is hilariously creepy, yet I feel both probably deserved a little more screen time. Again, Nolan was juggling a high wire act with all these characters and themes, but yes again, I feel he was almost without fault in doing so. Both of these characters will be remembered. With the Joker, Jack Nicholson's turn in 1989s Batman was menacing and funny. A bravura performance for sure. But I think there was a touch of nostalgia, and tongue in cheek humor in how he played the role to keep him from being frightening. Heath Ledger, on the other hand has succeeded in bringing a more truthful version of the Joker's homicidal rage from the comic to the screen. Ledger's Joker is funny, but not "haha" funny. There are no hand buzzers or whoopie cushions here. He's really something to behold on screen and I feel both Batman movies' portrayals can live side by side in their interpretations for some time to come.
Famously modeled in some way after Michael Mann's "Heat," with Gotham city as the protagonist, the Dark Knight is a chase film of double crosses and revenge killings. It widens the narrative scope of the Batman Begins story-line and confronts the realities of one man's mission and principals to make right, what was once very wrong. This is a film, a true epic film, that engages Batman in a grand struggle against evil, some of which is his own making. Much like in Nolan's "The Prestige," the idea of "getting your hands dirty" reminds us of the type of world that created Batman in the first place; a dark world of shadows and shades of gray.
The Dark Knight is a poem of nobility and justice; a story about the futility and illusions of control. This is a story of the struggle between two sides of the same coin. One man who wants to burn the jungle down and another who will burn the jungle down to stop him. In the concluding soliloquy Batman says, "people deserve something better than the truth." I couldn't agree more. America too has seen better days and this Batman is wondrous pure fiction at the right time. It's a venture down the obscured paths of humanity about a Knight among the darkness. You bet this is better than the truth. This stuff is why we go to the movies in the first place.