THE DARK KNIGHT

The dilemma of writing a review of Batman at this point lies in actually engaging the film without giving in to hyperbole. Newsweek did it by ending on a note of slight complaint that the film hadn’t been fun enough to really be a Batman movie. Others have simply gushed. Of course on some level everyone is a at least a little right here. There are so many ways to praise this movie that a reviewer can be easily understood if he makes the latter mistake and there’s no doubt that Christopher Nolans new, more realistic direction is going to have some comic book fans scratching their heads.

But ultimately what surfaced for me was the feeling that after all this time Batman has finally had the chance to make his case on the big screen as to why comic book based superhero movies really are capable of being so much more than simple genre films. Of course comics themselves did that long ago and print superheroes as well. From the earliest days of the medium there have been sophisticated examples ranging from Little Nemo to Eisner’s much lauded Spirit. In all of them were undercurrents that caused these examples to find a place in the history of fiction narrative and graphic arts.

And of course Batman is no different. Reduced to a near cartoon character in the 50s he was reborn in the 70s as darker, more angst driven thinker haunted by his parents death and questioning his own motives. It was this Batman that Frank Miller used when he retooled Batman in the 80’s and his graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, along with other Batman titles like Arkham Asylum and The Killing Joke cemented in the public mind an ever darkening picture of a man plagued by inner demons and shadowed by villains who claimed to be his mirror image.

Nolan uses, conscious or not, elements from all these books in conjuring Batman, the Joker and Two-Face for his epic crime thriller sequel. And though this summers crop of comic book heroes have thus far proved themselves admirably as entertainments there isn’t one of them, perhaps not even a summer film period, that touches The Dark Knight for wrestling with big questions. Can Batman truly fight evil without becoming evil himself? Why do we tear our heroes down? Are Two-face or the Joker or, for that matter, Batman himself really distinguishable from one another? How much force should police use, when can they lie with impunity to the general public, to their families? Nolan is obviously aware that his movie will strike such nerves and he is always reminding us of the human face affected by the abstract nature of such stuff.

Any comfortable assumptions you have about such questions are liable to be shattered here and the effect is like watching James Gordon take an axe to the bat signal. This is virtually every bit as epic and complex as Heat, or any of the other modern crime classics it’s been compared to and like those films the emphasis is on performance. An all star cast brings their A game and the special effects department stays out of the way of a story with more twists and turns than The Departed.

Heath Ledgers performance? Simply put one of the great movie villains in the history of crime cinema. He cackles and tics his way through a script that lends the Joker not just an air of the grotesque but of real danger. And it should also be noted that Aaron Eckharts turn as Harvey Dent/Two-Face is refreshingly adult. This is no cartoonishly mugged Jekyll and Hyde parody but a portrait of tragic man who in his own words is the proverbial hero who lived long enough to see himself become a villain.

Even Christian Bale- especially Christian Bale- manages to hold his own, especially in the latter half of the film when Batman is becoming more and more conflicted about what his crusade may be costing the Gotham he holds so dear. In fact as the film plays out the real magic of it is that we actually care more about what becomes of the heroes than the villains and, excepting for the Joker who exemplifies chaos and madness, the villains all have a set of rules they play by as well.

For Chris Nolan to abandon the franchise at this point would be culturally criminal. Is it even possible to do a straight adaptation of Millers The Dark Knight Returns? I can only fantasize that the great trailer I just saw for The Watchmen might inspire Nolan to think there’s life in this franchise yet. Arkham Asylum is almost unfilmable and The Killing Joke would be too repetitive. I don’t have an answer here, except to note that now that we have the power to really bring superheroes to life on the big screen we need to keep using them to ask big questions.