What I Love about The Dark Knight

Hey all,

Just a quick post about what I really enjoyed about The Dark Knight movie, currently in release. If you read my recent post about my 10 favorite movies, it was the only 2008 contender (it's currently #18). Frankly, it surprised even me that it was that high up. I'm not really one of those front-runner, fashion-over-substance guys. But there it was, higher than a thousand other award winning movies I've seen.

Here are some of the reasons why.

***SPOILER ALERT -- If you are one of the seven people who hasn't seen this movie, there are spoilers throughout this post. So please drop what you are doing and get to your local theater before you come back!

1. For the most part, the writing is excellent. Most super-hero movies skip the nuances of language that make a lively script, all in the name of simplified lines that don't distract from the action.

The Dark Knight avoids those traps with an out-standing Joker and dialogue that moves both the story and the characters forward. One of the best examples is Batman's admonition to Harvey Dent: "You'd leave a man's life to chance?... He's a paranoid schizophrenic, former patient at Arkham, the kind of mind the Joker attracts. What do you expect to learn from him."

Not only does the scene reveal Dent's love for Rachel (in his desperation to save her) and foreshadow his eventual turn to evil, but it explains the Joker's unending supply of fresh henchmen and also makes clear that Batman will not to stoop to the Joker's methods to fight him. Pretty good for a few quick lines.

I also loved the hospital scene with the Joker and Dent, was impressed with the added "s" that morphed the message on the side of the truck into "Slaughter is the Best Medicine," and I promise to follow the Joker's advice -- "If you're good at something, never do it for free."

But the most writerly turn of phrase was when Rachel's voice-over said "If you lose your faith" just as the camera showed Harvey Dent with half his face blown off. "Faith" sounds so much like "face" (in fact, it's how a person with a lisp would pronounce "face"), there's just no way it was an accident. Good stuff from the Nolan brothers.

(Note: some of the speeches at the end are a little tedious, which is why I liked the writing "for the most part.")

2. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker is as good as everyone says it is; maybe even better. He could end up with a posthumous Oscar, but that don't mean a thing. More important is his creation -- a complex, riveting, masochistic, sadistic, and sometimes sympathetic psychopath, who speaks the truth often enough that everything he says makes you pause and wonder.

His assurance that, "I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve" speaks to the impotence of traditional police work in the face of destructive, winner-take-all criminality. Batman himself proves that the Joker is right by breaking the law in order to bring the Joker to justice. And no matter which story you believe about his scars (if you believe either of them), you know something or someone seriously screwed him up, and he never hesitates to do the same to whomever stands in his way.

Ledger's lip-smacking is creepy in a Jabba the Hutt sort of way, and when he says, "Well hello beautiful," he sweeps his hair to the side like silent stars used to twirl their mustaches. The slightly bent frame, sadistic laughter at the pain of his henchmen, the sheepish looks whenever someone calls him crazy or a freak -- they all bespeak of a disturbed individual who's out to prove everyone else is just like him.

Oh, and that dialogue. I could watch and re-watch the scene where he goads the cop in the holding cell. Excellent writing with unparalleled delivery. A character much scarier than any science fiction monster.

3. The story was a superb interweaving of three character arcs -- Batman, the Joker, and Harvey Dent. Batman thinks he's destroying the mob, but is stymied by the Joker because he can't understand him (and in fact, never does). The Joker knows he's more ruthless than the mob, and reinforces his image of people by getting Batman and Harvey to question their principles. And in the end, Harvey becomes Two-Face, the perfect random criminal to carry on while the Joker is up in the air.

A movie with just Batman and the Joker would never have come off, because neither of them would give in. So bringing the Harvey/Two-Face plot line into the picture was the perfect way for the Joker to think he won and Batman to hold on (barely hold on) to his sense of being good. And even though he didn't do anything wrong, in the end, Batman is a Gotham City outcast -- just as the Joker predicted. But it was Batman's choice, which gives him a way to believe that the Joker was still wrong and he's right.

Pretty interesting stuff.

4. The guys making the current Batman movies put together a very good documentary about the psychology of the Batman villains. What they didn't look at is how The Dark Knight takes a serious nod from fairy tale mythology.

In traditional fairy tales (real ones, like the Brothers Grimm -- not the sanitized/Disney-fied versions), nature is to be feared and ultimately either conquered or avoided. The woods, mountains, rivers, oceans, unknown roads -- they usually represent evil, uncertainty, destruction, randomness, and chaos.

OTOH, good is often represented by a benevolent person, a walled city, a farm, or just being at home. In other words, the good is where people assert control over the unpredictability of a random and uncaring nature.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker declares himself an agent of chaos -- which is what people in fairy tales fear. And his random destruction has people living in fear of the every day. No one is safe and no one feels safe, not even mobsters who used to control all of Gotham. And Batman clearly represents man's attempt to re-assert control over a force of nature that refuses to give in.

These themes give the mythology of Batman its cultural touchstones, subconsciously bringing to mind ideas as ingrained as the survival instinct itself. And by combining that mythology with the intricate criminal psychology of the villains that have been developed over decades of graphic novels, The Dark Knight is the first of the Batman movies to present such a fully formed and textured thematic tapestry to the silver screen.

5. The Dark Knight has no opening credits, the first movie I've seen since Apocalypse Now to eschew them. And more than just a device, it is a signal that the movie thrusts you into another reality and won't let you go until the closing credits. The action starts about 30 seconds into the movie, and doesn't let up until it's over.

6. I love that annoying whine the comes up as the movie begins. It sets the audience on edge and is repeated multiple times when the Joker is about to enter. Sort of like when they put the sound of bees in the background of The Exorcist -- just to make people subtly uncomfortable.

7. The idea of Batman imposters just cracks me up, but also seems reasonable and predictable. After all, the hero-worship of a fictional Batman is nearly a religion all to itself. Imagine if Batman was actually real -- there would be imposters everywhere!

That is all for now. I hope you enjoyed the movie as much as I did; but if you didn't, c'est la vie.

- Scott