THE DARK KNIGHT

Astoundingly surreal

By DAVID WILDMAN

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 0 Comments

Ever since he mindfucked the world with the unprecedented Memento in 2000, director/screenwriter Christopher Nolan's command of all the myriad of elements of filmmaking— mood, story, character, style and visual impact— has been inarguable. So it's no surprise that his latest, The Dark Knight, is an extraordinarily well-built film, with all the star power and impact of a Hollywood action epic and the probing intellect and grittiness of an indie.

Still, given all that, The Dark Knight is not perfect. But then neither is Nick Cave or Chuck Palahniuk. It is, however, a great movie, one that will be long remembered not for its clockwork effectiveness, but for its willingness to risk looking completely ridiculous in order to go for the biggest statement possible. The film's appeal lies not in its powerful and impressively articulated surface but in its irrepressible heart and soul.

This paean to Batman's darker side could have been a colossal overreach. It tasks itself with tying together the stories of two unrelated bad guys—The Joker and Two-Face—and uses them as symbols to probe deep concepts like the thin line between hero and villain. District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is a crusading public defender whose high-profile attempts to shut down the mob make him the face of good in the city. Batman (Christian Bale) partners with Dent to fight crime, wishing he himself could show his face in public as a crime fighter, instead of having to masquerade as drunken playboy Bruce Wayne to hide his secret identity. Dent is incidentally also boning his assistant Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, a huge improvement over the odious Katie Holmes), something Batman would also like to be doing. But early on Dent utters the portentous line, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain," and you know his fate will not be a pleasant one.

That story arch takes up the bulk of the film, basically a long-ass explanation of the origin of Two-Face, the bad guy who Dent eventually becomes. But we haven't even talked about The Joker (Heath Ledger), whose roots are curiously left unexplored. All we know is that he's a grimy, deformed, inventive and insanely daring criminal genius who comes to prominence because of Batman and Dent's attempts to wipe out the mob. His brand of evil represents the anarchic forces of low-tech terrorism versus Batman's expensive array of military industrial complex-type gadgetry (including a topical reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with a device that monitors everyone's cellphones in the city). In this role Ledger is an electrifying presence. For once a Batman villain comes off as scary and deeply disturbing, instead of just violent, weird and silly. Ledger's ragged, truly mentally ill Joker, with his harrowing black humor, will make you forget all about Jack Nicholson's 1989 portrayal of the character, and that is saying a lot.

Although this is the story of a comic book hero, there is a sense of realism to this film that is uncanny. The whole idea of supervillains and heroes running rampant around a city is absurd, but Nolan and company make you believe it's all possible in ways that few blockbusters have been able to achieve: by making the human element the most convincing part of the story. One of the best innovations of Batman Begins was to make the presence of both bizarre bad guys and heroes seem logical and acceptable. In this respect and many others, The Dark Knight far surpasses its predecessor. At two and a half hours it's a long wild ride, but the momentum is so relentless and the filmmaking so smart you will emerge exhilarated. This version of Gotham City is one location you absolutely must visit this summer.

THE DARK KNIGHT

RATED | R

OPENS | 7.18.08

PQ: It is ... a great movie, one that will be long remembered not for its clockwork effectiveness, but for its willingness to risk looking completely ridiculous in order to go for the biggest statement possible