There are but few moments you have in your lifetime inside a movie theatre that stick with you forever.
No, I’m not talking about the time when you were 16 and reached for your date’s knee, only to dip your hand in their cola. I’m talking about when you saw that star destroyer zoom in the top of the screen for the first time, when the Terminator introduced you to morphing, when you had to be part of the Titanic phenomenon or seeing Middle Earth come to life for the first time. First moments with a movie that stick with you forever.
I had another such moment last night after taking in an advance IMAX screening of “The Dark Knight.”
Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film indeed lives up to the hype but not in the way you would have expected. You won’t be high-fiving each other upon leaving the theatre, just in quiet repose of what is a masterful, yet very brutal, work of art. Think of how you left “Platoon” and “No Country for Old Men,” not how you left “Spider-Man” and “
With that most reviews I have seen are quick to try to compare “Knight” with other film of the comic book heroes genre as well as others. The best comparison is not to make one. “Dark Knight” fits into a genre all by itself. It doesn’t fit in with other hero movies. Comparing this to Iron Man is like trying to compare “The Princess Bride” with “Lord of the Rings.”
As a kid, I remember the abrupt jump those comic books I scrounged under the couch for coins made in the 1980s. They went from Superfriends dealing with tough dilemmas like how to keep kids from hitchhiking to the elaborate, true-to-life plotlines of the graphic novels. “Dark Knight” makes the same kind of jump from any previous film involving a caped crusader.
It’s actually closer to something Scorsese, Coppola or Mann would make but doesn’t necessarily fit there either. It creates its own genre: the costumed crime thriller.
“Knight” has a lot of surprises, not the least of which is you’ll be surprised by your watch at the end … that you didn’t realize two hours and 30 minutes went by. Not to mention how much writer and director Nolan packs into that timeframe. Put it this way:
The worst thing about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is it’s going to be his last. His Joker had me looking at that American Film Institute list of best film villains in history, and he easily fit into the top spot above Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. In the same way Jack Nicholson made you forget about Cesar Romero, Ledger will make you forget about Jack.
The Joker isn’t about committing crime in comedic style or being motivated by insane greed. He’s just truly scary with death as the punch-line to his cruel joke. Each of his crimes involves a moralistic dilemma where there isn’t a good answer and there is almost always a loser.
It isn’t overstating to call Ledger brilliant, but lost in that may be how great the other performances in the film are, especially that of Aaron Eckhart as new District Attorney Harvey Dent. He is the beacon of light at the start of the movie but his journey to a different place proves to be the center of the film’s message of the balance between the side of us that shines, and the other side the sits in darkness. And that yin and yang doesn’t just exist between good and evil, but within the side of good itself.
But we can’t forget Bruce Wayne himself. Christian Bale captures what it’s like to set the train in a runaway motion without realizing what happens when the track runs out. He is the darkness of good to Dent’s shining beacon of hope, though it proves inevitable that the light will burn out. What stands out in Bale’s performance is his ability to present this divide without treading into moping, woe is me territory. You can see
Gary Oldman bolsters his title as the best actor to never win an Oscar in his role as police lieutenant James Gordon. He is the only character in this play of masks without an ambiguity between his light and dark side and Oldman truly brings him to life.
Also in enjoyable returns are Michael Caine as
I may have been one of the few who actually felt Katie Holmes’ work in the first movie wasn’t sub-par. But after getting past their lack of visual similarity, Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn’t skip a beat as she portrays Rachael Dawes dealing with her own internal division.
While the divisions are evident within the characters in the film, the transition between scenes filmed in the IMAX format and those not was absolutely seamless. You don’t notice the switch other than noticing the top of the eight-story screen darkening out at certain points.
This is the first mainstream movie being shown in IMAX theatres that truly belongs there. The already incredible action sequences take on an epic quality where you feel like you’re zooming through traffic right along with the Dark Knight.
I had but one disappointment and it was with the score. The work by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for the first film was one of my favorite soundtracks of the last few years. While you expected and wanted to hear a lot of those themes again, I didn’t expect as much straight, lazy rehashing of previous themes and little new material.
But that may be reaching too far for a flaw in a film without many. That said, I could see some tastes not finding the Dark Knight to their liking. It lives up to the “dark” of the film’s title and is far from the feel-good movie of the summer. Those for whom the Adam West Batman is still the best might feel disappointed. And the film reaches as far to the edge of PG-13 as a film can and I wouldn’t recommend this film for younger kids.
If you’re willing to experience a film that transcends genres and is truly a masterful work, you’ll leave with that movie-going experience that will stay with you for good.
