I have to admit. I watched The Dark Knight primarily as a tribute to Heath Ledger, and secondarily because it got great reviews. I didn't even watch the first Nolan Batman film.
But I was simply blown away with The Dark Knight. (Can you imagine sitting through around 45 minutes running time having to pee but never being able to leave the seat because you just have to find out what happened to the people in the ferries or the hostages in the bus or if Rachel or Dent was saved, etc. etc. ?)
I left the cinema disturbed and exhilarated at the same time. The movie made me explore my dark side as a human being, and made me wonder what I would do if I were in the situation placed before ordinary Gotham residents.
I am one of those people who want everything under control, all details planned out; I want to run the show because I want everything I want to happen, happen. If someone throws in a Joker into the mix, I would have panicked. I would have been the first to volunteer to detonate the bomb in the other ferry.
The duality of human nature, that forces of good and bad within us, can be seen in how we can help people one moment and reject them carelessly the next; in how we bring people up into the spotlight, just to make them crash to the ground all the more. Even if we are kind, we are not perfect. Even with stereotypes of heroes and villains, good cop and bad cop, there are ethical boundaries crossed.
I shrug and say, Hey, it's what makes human beings interesting.
And when amplified into the big screen, in a richly woven complex script and credible acting, the audience becomes putty in the producers' hands. I heard it broke all weekend box office records with $158.3million, topping Spiderman III's $151 million in 2007.
So watch it. Please. And watch it again. To pay tribute to Heath Ledger's astounding portrayal of a villain made all the more scarier because he doesn't want anything, only anarchy. To learn something more about yourself. To experience a great movie and take part in yet another historical annotation in the annals of Hollywood films.
Review:
Roger Ebert
The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His clown's makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his father exacted on him when he was a child. In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves.
Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.
Comments:
Andrew Drilon
Watched the premier with my cousins tonight. Was riveted throughout. Ended up dazed and thoughtful, unable to completely comprehend what made the whole thing work, but reveling in its insane brilliance. You know how you watch these summer blockbusters for some fun, then walk away feeling as if you just ate a lot of junk food? That's not the case with this movie. It's real brain food that's two and a half hours long and leaves you both full yet hungry for more.
For a superhero movie, the treatment is almost counter-intuitive--a dark, dirty color palette, quick stabby scene shifts, tightly-controlled performances and understated drama. The action scenes go ballistic without sacrificing believability. The real action, though, is in the sprawling web of mindgames and drama that suffuses it with a very real, psychological sense of danger. I was skeptical about this due to Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's first superhero film, which I thought was awkward, unconvincing and more than a little pretentious. But The Dark Knight totally blows me away. It's confident, controlled, methodical in its execution, and it is by far the best superhero movie I've ever seen.
Scratch that. Unlike its predecessors, this isn't a superhero movie. It's an actual film.
Dominique Cimafranca
In fact, "The Dark Knight" can largely be said to be The Joker's movie.
The Joker is the motive force throughout the entire film, from beginning to end. Everyone is merely responding to his machinations, The Batman included. And it isn't some simple grab for money or power he's after. It's anarchy, total and complete anarchy. That's what makes him so scary.
This Joker owes its visual roots to its cartoon counterpart in the latest "Batman" cartoon. In execution, though, with the smeared on makeup and greasy unkempt hair, it's pure terrifying genius. The late Heath Ledger really makes it his own, down to the mannerisms -- the licking of the lips, the toss of the hair, the buffoonish shrug, the maniacal laugh....
As I said, this is really The Joker's movie, and it all boils down to his motivations. It's not just physical chaos he's after, it's a moral and spiritual one as well. The choices he imposes -- nay, inflicts -- on Batman and the whole of Gotham is what makes the movie so gripping. And it works because he's a genius whose complex evil plots go off with Rube Golberg-uesque perfection. Kudos to writer David Goyer and director Chris Nolan for writing such a great character.
RJ Malayang
The Joker is, in his own words, chaos. He is a force without goals, without direction; and it is precisely this sort of energy that forces things to change. "I don't have a plan; I just...DO THINGS," the Joker claims. And that's exactly how chaos works, from the trappings of the individual mind to the collision of galaxies. Order is an illusion; and it is an illusion that draws its power from the chaos it proposes to subdue. But (and this is Buddhist), neither can exist without the other. There is no destroying The Joker. He is spawned from the dreams of men and women who seek to order and control; and he crawls out of their minds and corrupts the dreams order with the nightmare reality of anarchy. He forces you to admit that order in the universe is an illusion, a choice of perspective; the real energy that drives us is chaos.
The power of a story is in how much of our potentially infinite (by which I mean, inconcievably diverse) experience it encapsulates within the finite text, located in a position of space and time. For me, the new Batman film explores things both common and individuated. It strikes with force at multiple levels, drawing upon a myriad of contexts. This is not a movie that I enjoy for the usual reasons I enjoy a movie: fun, awesomeness, movie-craft. It is the sort of story that's made me do something that for a while now, movies have failed to do: its made me think.
Quotes:
Bruce Wayne: I knew the mob wouldn't go down without a fight. But this is different. They crossed the line.
Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir. You hammered them. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand. Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Harvey Dent: You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Alfred Pennyworth: Know your limits, Master Wayne. Bruce Wayne: Batman has no limits.
The Joker: Introduce a little anarchy... Upset the established order... Well then everyone loses their minds!
The Joker: I'm a dog chasing cars. I don't have plans. I just do things. I'm not a schemer.
Batman: Why do you want to kill me? The Joker: I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you?
Last words:
To prepare for his role as the Joker, Heath Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's psychology, posture and voice (the last one he found most difficult to do). He started a diary, in which he wrote the Joker's thoughts and feelings to guide himself during his performance. He was also given Alan Moore's comic "Batman: The Killing Joke" and "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" to read. Ledger also took inspiration from A Clockwork Orange (1971)'s Alex and Sid Vicious.
This is the first Batman movie without the word "Batman" in the title.
Tickets for midnight screenings sold out so many weeks in advance that thousands of theaters across the US began to open 3 AM and 6 AM showings to accommodate moviegoers.
In an interview, when asked, "Why Heath Ledger as the Joker?" Christopher Nolan said, "Because he's fearless."
*quotes and trivia from imdb.com
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