OY! So, Darion and I made our way out to a midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight last night/this morning which, after it was all said and done, had me in bed around 4AM this morning. After the long afternoon/evening/night I had last night (long story short, my VW arrived, it’s a done deal, I take possession this afternoon) I’m pretty wiped right now … but a movie like The Dark Knight needs immediate exposition (as I’m sure the many of you who also saw it last night can attest) so I’m gonna go ahead an post my thoughts on the movie now:

As you can imagine, I really enjoyed the film and you can read my spoilery thoughts and observations after the cut but I have to make clear before I get into the film itself that all the talk that we are hearing about Heath Ledger‘s performance in the film is absolutely right on target — the man gives a stunning performance, hand’s down. Whether or not it’s Oscar worthy is another question but he absolutely becomes the psychotic villain of the darkest Batman lore — this movie is NOT TO BE MISSED. After the jump, read the rest of my review …

I have to state, for the record, that I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect from this film. Even without Heath Ledger‘s sad, untimely death, I don’t think I would’ve been prepared for the gritty, dark tone of The Dark Knight (which has a morbid tone to it, especially when you see Heath Ledger on screen as the psychotic Joker). Director Christopher Nolan really took the movie as dark as he could for a PG-13 film … I can’t even imagine what the movie would look like had they gone for an R rating. I must confess, tho, that the movie isn’t without its flaws but on the whole, it’s a pretty spectacular masterpiece in the comic book movie genre:

The only negative thing I have to say about the film is that the movie, overall, is really disjointed and not very cohesive. Now, it occurred to me that the disjointedness is intentional so that the viewer can be drawn into utterly insane world of Gotham City but it does make for a somewhat unruly viewing experience. Because the segments in the film are so sectionalized (the Joker part, the Harvey Dent part, the finale), I wasn’t allowed to get totally sucked into the film … I was aware that I was watching a movie. The Joker character is finally realized in movieform for the way he’s always been — an utterly insane psychopath who, for the most part, just “does” rather than necessarily plans and accomplishes (tho, the Joker‘s plans do tend to always work out to his specifications, we’re supposed to assume things just keep working out in his insane favor). Never before has the Joker been portrayed as a bonafide psycho in film (in the comics, he’s even more insane but on screen the best we’ve been given was Jack Nicholson, who played up more of the campiness of the character rather than his psychoticness). He’s got yellow, nasty teeth … his face isn’t chemically altered to look freakish … he’s just a completely insane man with no name, no fingerprints, no history (I think it’s brilliant that the Joker has no origin story in this film — he just is — the fact that his facial scars are never explained make them all the more creepy) that is ruled by his utter madness. He’s a villain you can really fear because he could really exist (think Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer but with more flair). Harvey Dent (Two-Face) features in this film much more than I anticipated he would … Aaron Eckhart plays him to a tee, I think. He’s a good-looking, noble character who suffers a great loss (the death of a character and the only real surprise for me in the film) and ends up turning into the very monster he’s built a career on battling. Christopher Nolan tailors the Batman myth to his specifications and makes the characters more real, more believable. I love that the Gotham City in the film is a real city and not an epic, unbelievable monolith of the future — again, it makes everything you see in the movie seem more real. The one thing I always hated about the previous Batman films, including the amazing Tim Burton ones, was that Gotham City never looked real. The viewer could never imagine that city really existing. In Nolan‘s world, Gotham City is as real as Chicago, IL (where the movie was filmed) and you can more easily believe that you could be terrorized by a madman like the Joker. In the end, The Dark Knight becomes a bit of a morality play … the citizens of Gotham are given an impossible choice (either kill others or allow them to kill you) and instead of opting to save their own lives and kill, they choose to save their fellow man and not become killers. Now, to be honest, I would have a hard time buying that scenario really happening in the real world so I really didn’t believe that it could happen in the world of Gotham City. Like all hero stories, the good guy has to win in the end — in this instance, the good guy is “mankind”. I can accept that.

Now the only part of the movie that I wasn’t entirely sure about — AND HERE COMES A SPOILER YOU SHOULD AVOID IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE AND WILL ONLY MAKES SENSE TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE SEEN THE FILM — was the choice that Batman made when the Joker revealed to him that both Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent were strapped to explosives on opposite sides of the city and he could only save one of them. At first, I assumed that the Joker merely tricked him into thinking he was saving Rachel (the love of his life) and ended up leading him to Harvey (who he saved but not entirely) but then it occurred to me that maybe Batman actually chose to save Harvey (Gotham’s much needed public White Knight) over Rachel (since Batman always chooses the right thing over the thing that would make him happy). Didn’t it occur to Batman that the Joker might be lying about the addresses? I can see both scenarios but I’m still not totally clear on this point. Again, the disjointedness of the film made this part a bit confusing for me.

BUT, I have to say, The Dark Knight is an absolute tour de force. Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger, especially, raise the bar on comic book films and set an all new benchmark. It’s not Iron Man (a totally solid, totally fun almost perfect comic book film), it’s not even Batman Returns (which I contend was the darkest, dirtiest Batman film) … it’s something more gritty and, well, real and substantive. I’ve heard the movie described as the Godfather II of comic book films and I tend to agree. I don’t have faith that the Motion Picture Academy will feel the same way, nor do I believe that the deserving folks attached to this movie will be honored for their magnificent performances (as much as Ledger became Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain — for which he was nominated for an Academy Award — he becomes the Joker in The Dark Knight) … but I do contend that this movie will live on as a film to be respected and admired. Too much hyperbole? Mebbe … but those are my $0.02.