The Dark Knight: Standing Tall
July 20th 2008 03:08
The Dark Knight
For the first hour or so into the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, I wasn't buying it. I hadn't seen Batman Begins, so I didn't know how Christopher Nolan's re-invention of this franchise was going to be and I was getting disappointed. First of all, using Chicago as a realistic setting for Gotham was too bad. Chicago looks great and the skyscrapers look towering and solid as only American skyscrapers can but there was no fantasy, Gothic gloss to the city. Absolutely none. Many critics have loved this "realism" but I missed the shiver of entering a fantasy world.
I wasn't buying Christian Bale's Batman either. Bale is too little in stature to be an authentic superhero. When he dresses up as Bruce Wayne, he lacks a certain magnetism and looks lost in the proceedings. I did love his mechanical lisping as Batman though. But, is Batman still a rookie and learning his craft here? Is it why he stumbles so much? I don't know. Because of the realist setting around him, Batman feels like a guy wearing a strange suit to a party not the crusader in a fantasy land. The super hyped aerial shots didn't really make an impact when not seen on IMAX.
My mind was quibbling over these trifles when a character makes a surprising decision and I was pulled into the vortex of the plot. What the Dark Knight lacks in fantastic parpahernalia, it makes up in heavy plotting. By that I don't mean arbitrary twists and turns but intense conflicts generated by strong characters played across a giant canvass with nothing to hold them back.
The story goes like this. Many Batman impostors are prowling the Gotham. Petty crime is down and the mob doesn't know what to do. A new district attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, is intent on curshing the Mob but through legal means. Batman is trying to improve his body suit and armour and his sercet identity, Bruce Wayne dreams of yielding the crime-fighting mantle to Harvey Dent.
But, a new menace called Joker, played by Heath Ledger, arrives and quickly takes over the Mob, intent on taking over the Gotham ultimately. Of course, he runs into Batman and their duel is not unlike of the one between Peter verkovensky and Stavrogrin in The Possessed or Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead.
Should Batman let Harvey Dent pursue the Joker or should he do it himself? While he is in the crutches of that dilemma, Joker becomes bigger and bigger, like an elemental hurricane. When that force is unleashed against the Gotham, it takes the whole Gotham itself( and not just the heroes) to defeat the anarchy.
Acting wise, everyone shines except for a poorly cast Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has a strong character to play but wrecks it as usual. Heath Ledger's Joker is coming in for a lot of praise but Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is no less inspiring. Bale's eponymous hero grows on you after a while. But, the best performances that elevate the movie to a very high level and lend it a cracking chemistry are from the supporting chracters. Gary Oldman playing Lt. Gordon, Morgan Freeman playing Lucius Fox and Michael Caine playing Alfred the Butler.
The Dark Knight is being celebrated in some conservative cirlces as a triumph of conservative messaging telegraphed in a major hit. All through the first hour I wasn't sure of that. Bruce Wayne's courting of Harvey Dent remined me too much of the adulation of say, someone like Eliot Spitzer but the political references in the later half of the movie particularly, to torture and domestic surveillance, do seem to favor conservative talking points.
Nevertheless, whether it's conservative or liberal at its core, is beside the point. Unlike hundreds of liberal, anti-American movies we have been forced to watch since 9/11 which advance their themes by gratuitous insults, jarring one-liners which don't belong, blatant editorialism, soprofic narratives, spectacles supposed to induce guilt but which produce boredom, all marketed under the sanctimonious labels of dissent and subversion, the Dark Knight does it the right way. It personifies abstract principles within richly realised characters and then lets these characters thrash it out without imposing any constraints, achieving thereby, not only a critical smash but also a bonanza at the box-office.
That's how it should be done.
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