The SM and I met up Heidi and Patrick and admittedly, totally nerded it out; we saw the Dark Knight last night at midnight. Holy shit, my friends. It was brilliant.
I usually don’t care about comic book stories with all the suspension of disbelief and superpowers. Real life tends to be about as freaky enough as I can handle. But the Dark Knight met and exceeded all the hype.
Christian Bale was fantastic and mysterious as the charming millionaire Bruce Wayne. Maggie Gyllenhaal was smart, yet vulnerable and beautiful as Rachel Dawes. Aaron Eckhart’s transformation from the heroic, humble savior figure of Harvey Dent into the arbitrarily sick and violent Two-Face was shocking and convincing. But of course, everyone there paid to see the absolutely epic portrayal of Heath Ledger as the evil, bone-chilling Joker.
Quite simply, Heath Ledger was everything the critics said he would be; reaching a level of disturbing and creepy met by very few villains, if any, in the history of film. I would put Ledger’s portrayal in the same category as Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter without a second thought. The Joker absolutely steals the movie, seemingly steals your soul with his sinister stares, and in my opinion, steals the summer. Even despite Ledger’s uncanny talent to completely envelop himself in the character of The Joker, you can somehow still sympathize with this psychopathic murdering criminal. It’s no surprise to hear that he took motivation from Sid Vicious (who had a life of debauchery, drugs… and untimely death in 1979) and the “ultra-violence” of Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. After seeing his depiction of the Joker, and knowing Heath’s method of acting, there is also no surprise that he would have been on the toxic mix of anti-depressants and sleeping pills that tragically took his life.
The plot wasn’t all about Batman, how so many comic book movies tend to be with all the exposition and explanation of his grossly extravagant toys. It’s like Batman wasn’t the main character at all; It was the Joker. It has been reported that even though he was the title character, Christian Bale was glad that The Joker stole the show; the dynamic made the film even better. The whole movie was very dark and hopeless almost but despite that, it’s definitely the movie to see of the summer because of the superior acting, astonishing cinematography and regretfully, the unrepeatable decision to cast Heath Ledger.
I think comic books and their movies are our generation’s equivalent of westerns. Heroes, justice, ordinary men doing the extra-ordinary…and the good guy (almost) always coming out on top. My dad always said he watched Gunsmoke and Bonanza because it renewed his faith in the human condition. Batman just traded in the horse for the Batmobile, brandishing his cunning instead of a six-shooter…the venue moving from the OK Corral to Gotham City. You will have to see the movie to see all the twists and turns to see how this one turns out and which character rides off into the sunset.
