The Dark Knight is Nothing to Joke About
I made the trip to the Orlando IMAX yesterday to take in a showing of this summer's latest in what has been a long line-up of superhero action movies. The trip was well worth it. Let me say that the area in which the theater was located was almost devoid of people for late on Friday afternoon, although the fact that Orlando was having one of its afternoon rainstorms when I got there might have had something to do with it. However, once I got to the actual theater I found where the shopping center's populace had taken refuge from the storm. They had chosen to beat the stormy day by embracing The Dark Knight .
Before I actually begin with a review, let me say that I was one of those tweenagers (whatever the terminology is now) at one time who embraced something simply because it was "cool" so to say. I remember the summer of 1989 and how I couldn't wait to get into a movie theater to watch Batman with Michael Keaton in the lead role and Jack Nicholson as his arch-nemesis the Joker. I had everything, the shirt with the logo on it, the soundtrack album done by Prince (or The Artist, or whatever kind of symbol he was at the time) , and eventually a few T-shirts featuring the villain. I enjoyed Nicholson's performance immensely, so much so that I had a poster in my room of him in character with sunglasses on being his hammy self. So impressed by his performance was I that I sought out other performances by the man to enjoy every bit of wackiness he could bring. I actually idolized the man. Boy, I was sick wasn't I? Well, maybe not so much.
Yesterday, and not just at the movie but all around the Orlando area, were individuals wearing shirts with a likeness of the Joker. However, Jack Nicholson was no longer the individual adorning the clothing, but the late actor Heath Ledger. Looking at this Joker one does not get a feeling of quirkiness as in the late 80s, but rather a sense of dread. I remember getting so interested in Batman and the Joker in particular that I requested a collected comic paperback entitled Batman:Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told as a Christmas gift. Upon reading some the stories therein, I came to a realization: the Joker played by Jack Nicholson was not really one true to the original medium. Granted, Nicholson gave a great performance that intrigued me, but it was the fact that he kept the audience under assurance that he was just doing the normal schtick he always did/does, just in white make-up, that made it okay to like him. The Joker of the comics, while humorous at times, was a dark, psychological figure with a need for wanton violence and destruction. Unlike the one of the 1989 movie, he actually sent chills through your spine when you read about his exploits. So dark a figure was he that in a graphic novel entitled Arkham Asylum , his speech was written in red blood marks as opposed to the traditional white balloons. In short, he ain't a pleasant guy!
The Dark Knight is without a doubt not only the finest portrayal of the Joker character ever brought to screen, but one of the most chilling villains in recent movie history as well. Heath Ledger is not the pretty boy actor he once was when he started in movies like 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, nor is he the sympathetic character from Brokeback Mountain. He is what the Joker was and always has been, a psychopath capable of giving chills not seen since the likes of Hannibal Lector. Only twice has a performance been so intense that it gave me chills, one was with the aforementioned Lector, and the other one was yesterday.
I could go on for days about Ledger's performance, but I think enough reviews have done that already. The Dark Knight has depth to it, it is a "real" movie so to say, not a typical serving of summer escapism. Granted, it has lots of thrilling action sequences (which look damn good in IMAX) , but unlike much summer fare, they are there to help the story and not sequences with a paper thin plot written around them. The characters are people you care about, and like any good story, it is not afraid to place them in situations that yield tragic results. I accredit much of this to the screenwriters , who have obviously done their homework on the Batman milieu. Batman is only a superhero in the sense that he is able to perform daring acts of bravery to make the world a better place (or does he?), but when it boils down he is just a man in a suit with lots of James Bond like gadgets. Cool ones, but gadgets nonetheless. He is fighting the good fight through less than admirable efforts, and for that the law and many citizens of Gotham City dislike him. However, this movie does ask the question of what it is that keeps human beings from turning down the dark path. Just how many 9/11s or Oklahoma city incidents are we away from attempting to take action into our own hands? How long before we end up like the individuals we oppose? Aaron Eckhart (the brilliant actor of the movie Thank You For Smoking) gets a great line as Gotham City's District Attorney Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero, or live so long you become the villain." People have a breaking point, the Joker realizes this and the movie is all about what actions and sacrifices must be made to prevent society from reaching it. The conclusion does not yield the ending typical of summer fare, so be warned.
Yep, it's that deep of a movie. One does not have to view it as such. One could just look at this blog as the ramblings of a comic book geek who finally saw something he enjoyed done to perfection. It is easy to dismiss anything involving characters such as Batman as pure escapism, which it definitely provides, but as with any good fable or contemporary tale it confronts its audience with a question and leaves it up to them to react. I guess that I am happy that after so many years of seeing comic books represented on the big screen as mostly spectacle, a step has finally been taken towards the direction of representing them as a form narrative on the level of real works of literature.
Before I actually begin with a review, let me say that I was one of those tweenagers (whatever the terminology is now) at one time who embraced something simply because it was "cool" so to say. I remember the summer of 1989 and how I couldn't wait to get into a movie theater to watch Batman with Michael Keaton in the lead role and Jack Nicholson as his arch-nemesis the Joker. I had everything, the shirt with the logo on it, the soundtrack album done by Prince (or The Artist, or whatever kind of symbol he was at the time) , and eventually a few T-shirts featuring the villain. I enjoyed Nicholson's performance immensely, so much so that I had a poster in my room of him in character with sunglasses on being his hammy self. So impressed by his performance was I that I sought out other performances by the man to enjoy every bit of wackiness he could bring. I actually idolized the man. Boy, I was sick wasn't I? Well, maybe not so much.
Yesterday, and not just at the movie but all around the Orlando area, were individuals wearing shirts with a likeness of the Joker. However, Jack Nicholson was no longer the individual adorning the clothing, but the late actor Heath Ledger. Looking at this Joker one does not get a feeling of quirkiness as in the late 80s, but rather a sense of dread. I remember getting so interested in Batman and the Joker in particular that I requested a collected comic paperback entitled Batman:Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told as a Christmas gift. Upon reading some the stories therein, I came to a realization: the Joker played by Jack Nicholson was not really one true to the original medium. Granted, Nicholson gave a great performance that intrigued me, but it was the fact that he kept the audience under assurance that he was just doing the normal schtick he always did/does, just in white make-up, that made it okay to like him. The Joker of the comics, while humorous at times, was a dark, psychological figure with a need for wanton violence and destruction. Unlike the one of the 1989 movie, he actually sent chills through your spine when you read about his exploits. So dark a figure was he that in a graphic novel entitled Arkham Asylum , his speech was written in red blood marks as opposed to the traditional white balloons. In short, he ain't a pleasant guy!
The Dark Knight is without a doubt not only the finest portrayal of the Joker character ever brought to screen, but one of the most chilling villains in recent movie history as well. Heath Ledger is not the pretty boy actor he once was when he started in movies like 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, nor is he the sympathetic character from Brokeback Mountain. He is what the Joker was and always has been, a psychopath capable of giving chills not seen since the likes of Hannibal Lector. Only twice has a performance been so intense that it gave me chills, one was with the aforementioned Lector, and the other one was yesterday.
I could go on for days about Ledger's performance, but I think enough reviews have done that already. The Dark Knight has depth to it, it is a "real" movie so to say, not a typical serving of summer escapism. Granted, it has lots of thrilling action sequences (which look damn good in IMAX) , but unlike much summer fare, they are there to help the story and not sequences with a paper thin plot written around them. The characters are people you care about, and like any good story, it is not afraid to place them in situations that yield tragic results. I accredit much of this to the screenwriters , who have obviously done their homework on the Batman milieu. Batman is only a superhero in the sense that he is able to perform daring acts of bravery to make the world a better place (or does he?), but when it boils down he is just a man in a suit with lots of James Bond like gadgets. Cool ones, but gadgets nonetheless. He is fighting the good fight through less than admirable efforts, and for that the law and many citizens of Gotham City dislike him. However, this movie does ask the question of what it is that keeps human beings from turning down the dark path. Just how many 9/11s or Oklahoma city incidents are we away from attempting to take action into our own hands? How long before we end up like the individuals we oppose? Aaron Eckhart (the brilliant actor of the movie Thank You For Smoking) gets a great line as Gotham City's District Attorney Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero, or live so long you become the villain." People have a breaking point, the Joker realizes this and the movie is all about what actions and sacrifices must be made to prevent society from reaching it. The conclusion does not yield the ending typical of summer fare, so be warned.
Yep, it's that deep of a movie. One does not have to view it as such. One could just look at this blog as the ramblings of a comic book geek who finally saw something he enjoyed done to perfection. It is easy to dismiss anything involving characters such as Batman as pure escapism, which it definitely provides, but as with any good fable or contemporary tale it confronts its audience with a question and leaves it up to them to react. I guess that I am happy that after so many years of seeing comic books represented on the big screen as mostly spectacle, a step has finally been taken towards the direction of representing them as a form narrative on the level of real works of literature.
posted by Darth Liberal at 7:51 AM
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