Tuesday, 22 July 2008

• The Dark Knight (No Spoilers)

  Well, I just saw the movie.  Most probably knew that I would.  I like comics.  Batman is my second favorite superhero.  Batman Begins gave me hope in the franchise again.  So I saw the movie.  My prognosis?

  It was good.

  As I said to the friend I went with, I'm not sure I can say it was better than Batman Begins.  I'm not sure I can say it wasn't, either.  The way I did it was to compare the movies to two classic (and literary) novels.  Batman Begins was, compared to this movie, relatively simple in its formula.  It was a well-made, solid movie that renewed my faith not only in the franchise, but in the superhero movie industry, which I thought had become tarnished with bloated mainstream extravaganza-fests like the third X-Men and Spider-Man movies (I know Spider-Man 3 came out later, but you get my point).  It was like Dracula.  It defined the Gothic nature of its core character and stayed truer to its source than any other superhero movie has done.  Any other one.  It was a foundation.

  And The Dark Knight?

  The Dark Knight is more like Stephen King's It.  Before you knock me for equating the two books (It and Dracula), I would first remind you that this is not necessarily an equation, and I would second recommend that you read them both and then look at the impact both have had on culture.  It helped redefine the horror novel.  It is also one of the main reasons that many people now have an irrational fear of clowns (the Joker is another, and the fact that both works have at their center sadistic figures masquerading as clowns is probably the main treason that It is ocurred to me as an appropriate comparison).  The Dark Knight will help to redefine the superhero movie and pave the way for what I think will be the genre's pinnacle - next year's Watchmen, based on the most literary graphic novel ever written, and the only one to be called a masterpiece by literateurs and fanboys alike.

  But I digress.

  Dracula is a classic of Gothic literature, but it was not that genre's pinnacle, and a lot of people don't consider Gothic literature to be that good any way.  It is a revolutionary moder fantasy/horror novel.  But that's just one niche in the multi-faceted world of modern pop culture.  Neither of these works are epic, or even great.  Neither is The Dark Knight.  As I said before, The Dark Knight was good just as Batman Begins was good.  I mean, let's face it - these are still movies based on comic books.  This is not Schindler's List.  This is not Ben-Hur.  This is not even The Lord of the Rings, Titanic or Brokeback Mountain.  It is a superhero movie.  Not even actors of the caliber of Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine can keep this movie from being merely good.  But there is one aspect of this film that is great, and may even possibly be epic.

  That aspect is the aforementioned Joker, portrayed most excellently by the late, great Heath Ledger.

  I knew that Ledger was a great actor after I saw Brokeback Mountain.  But there were other great actors and actresses in that movie who also had great material to work with.  It was an all-around great film, written by a great author (Larry McMurtry) and based on good source material.  Ledger didn't carry that movie.  He carried The Dark Knight.  He kept the movie from just being okay.  (This, remember, is coming from a Batman fan).  I will not elaborate on exactly why he was an excellent Joker.  You will be able to read numerous reviews about that.  I will just say that he played the most iconic villain in comic book history with a fearlessness that was exactly appropriate to the character in question.  Just like the Joker, Ledger, in this role, was a chaotic force of nature.  As the Joker says to Batman at one point, he was "an unstoppable force."

  Case in point.  There is a point in the movie in which the Joker is not wearing make-up.  I have promised no spoilers, so I will not explain.  But I will say that, at this point in the movie, the thought that occurs is not "Hey, that's Heath Ledger!"  It's "Hey, that's the Joker!"  Ledger immersed himself in this character, and he didn't just steal all the scenes he was in.  He stole the entire movie.  I thought perhaps that he'd be awarded a posthumous Oscar because of his work in this role in combination with the tragedy of his personal life.  I now hope he receives the award based solely on his merit as an actor.

  I will finish with this thought.  When Jack Nicholson portrayed the Joker in Burton's Batman (a great portrayal, and the perfect one for that movie), there was no tragedy in the fact that the character died (sorry if no one's seen the movie - I said no spoilers, but I was talking about TDK).  The movie was self-contained.  There should have been no sequels.  There was no need for more Nicholson as Joker.  I think that, after The Dark Knight, there will be no other villain who can stand in Ledger's Joker's purple suit.  The closest one would have been Two-Face, but even Two-Face has a gimmick.  The Joker is not defined by gimmicks.  Only the Joker would have been able to carry another Batman movie.  Now, I am convinced, the only man who could have played the part in our generation is dead.  That is indeed a tragedy.  It is an insignificant tragedy compared to the fact that Ledger has been lost as a friend and a father, but it is a tragedy nonetheless.

  And it means that the next Batman movie, if there is another, will have to be good on its own merit.  Otherwise, it will go the way so many other superhero franchises have gone: straight down the drain.

  The Dark Knight: B

  Heath Ledger: A+

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