The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Richard Feilden.  Viewed in theater.

If the box office figures are anything to go by ($155 million on its opening weekend) you’ve probably already seen this film and so this review is somewhat moot! If you haven’t then honestly, what are you waiting for? Put your disappointment at the summer’s earlier blockbusters behind you and revel in The Dark Knight.

The film carries straight on from Christopher Nolan’s previous hit Batman Begins, with Batman (Christian Bale) cleaning up the remaining criminals still roaming after Arkham asylum was cracked open by The League of Shadows. Meanwhile, a gang wearing clown masks is raiding mob banks, led by Batman’s eternal nemesis, the Joker (Heath Ledger). As Batman, Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) put the screws on Gotham’s organized crime, the psychotic Joker offers the mob bosses his services in ridding themselves of the Batman.

This is a long film. Coming in at over two and a half hours it runs the risk of becoming bloated, but for me it never crossed that line. As the story twisted and turned I was glued to my seat. One of the ways in which Nolan managed this was by refusing to water down his vision of Gotham. This is a bad place. Bad things happen to nice people. He has given us an Empire Strikes Back of a film – darker, more brooding than the first and with a feeling that, at any turn, the good guys could really, really suffer. Wonderful!
Of course, it is impossible to discuss this film without turning my attention to the characters, and the actors that portrayed them. And it is impossible to discuss them without the attention being focused on the late Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. I’ll not beat around the bush – it is stunning. While the comic-book basis of the film gives Ledger the opportunity to really flex his acting muscles, he never goes so far as to render his character actually comic. His Joker is a bag of nervous twitches and tics, unpredictable and truly scary. Where Jack Nicholson gave us a Joker for the 80s – flamboyance, excess and greed – Ledger gives us a new millennium whirlwind of chaos. He is capricious, sowing seeds of fear in the hope that we will turn on ourselves, undoing our own civility in our panic. When we fall upon ourselves, terror has won. But rather than simply overshadowing our hero with his performance, as Nicholson threatened to do to Michael Keaton’s version of the character, Nolan and Ledger’s Joker exposes Batman and all his shortcomings. The Joker reveals his weaknesses, he brings the criminal world’s nightmare into the place where he is rendered impotent – into the light. Strip Batman of his ability to strike fear and he is just a man in an expensive cape. It is the question of whether he can survive this, of whether there is more to Bruce Wayne than a trust fund and a bag of tricks, which drives this film.

The other actors, although not able to revel in their roles as much as Ledger’s lunatic criminal, are also superb. Michael Cane dishes out his pearls of wisdom, but also gives Alfred a more human touch than was previously apparent. Oldman is restrained but effective and Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces the last film’s weak link, replacing Katie Holmes as Rachael Dawes. Bale, in his role of Batman and Bruce Wayne, is effective as well, making believable a man who fears that in hunting monsters he might become one, or perhaps that he might not be able to.

Whilst it is not the new Citizen Kane or Casablanca that some critics seem to be making this film out to be, it is the best of the summer crop so far. This is the one that you don’t want to miss.

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Published:
09.03.08 / 1pm
Category:
Films