I didn't get a manage to see this on the big screen but recently got a chance to see it in HD in the comfort of my own home, my thoughts follow.
Christopher Nolan?s The Dark Knight is a very hard film to enjoy.
It's also a film with which it is hard not to be impressed, at least in parts. In fact there are parts of The Dark Knight which are as well made as any mainstream movie I?ve ever seen but these rare fragments are held together by a solvent which is not up to the job.
What the film lacks most; the one element that is conspicuous by its absence in almost every scene is subtlety. It's apparent from the very first few lines of dialogue to the very last and the only aspect to escape relatively unscathed is the very notable performance of Heath Ledger.
Whilst the plaudits for Ledgers work in the film have been massively overblown he is by quite some distance the best thing in the film - it's just a shame that this isn't saying quite as much as it should do. There are loud echoes of Kevin Spacey?s 'John Doe' from Seven in what Ledger brings to the role and this reflects that The Joker in The Dark Knight is a far more conventional villain than the last time we saw the character on the big screen. Some may think it irrelevant to compare ?Batman? and ?The Dark Knight? but this is untrue. The films share far more common elements than the names of a few characters and as such refusing a comparison would be small minded.
But I digress...
Whereas Jack Nicholson?s incarnation was an unpredictable lunatic, Ledgers is a far more thoughtful and calculated antagonist. The Joker here has a plan for chaos and if that sounds to you like a contradiction then you?d be absolutely correct and as a result of this and other similar factors the character never quite rounds out properly. It's not a case that there are too many questions leading to vague character but rather that there are too many answers which instead leads to an uninteresting one. But this is a problem that extends to every character in the piece just as it did previously in Batman Begins. In the case of Ledgers character, as with every aspect of every character in both films, nothing is left unexplained - even the fact that our Joker has no real name or previous life is painstakingly laid before us.
This ceaseless alliteration of every nuance of every character and plot point is a massive part of what makes it so hard to enjoy The Dark Knight. Everything takes so much time to explain that the film never has a chance to gain any momentum. There is an ocean of difference between a slow film and a thoughtful one, sadly The Dark Knight falls resoundingly under the former heading.
In addition to laboriously drawn main characters there are an abundance of secondary players who suffer a similar fate; none of them are very interesting but all of which are given exhaustive screen time. There is so much gorging on the unnecessary details that the film gets bogged down by them drags its bloated belly through the dramatic elements until it's time for the next set piece... which brings us to another problem: Christopher Nolan can't direct action.
In Batman Begins the action sequences were so badly constructed that it was actually impossible to grasp what was supposed to be happening. Whilst Nolan?s first trip to Gotham is not the only modern action movie to suffer from this A.D.D. approach to action editing it was arguably the worst offender by virtue of the decision to shoot all the scenes by candlelight.
In The Dark Knight Nolan appears to have been bitten by the over compensation bug. Each action sequence lacks both style and pace, the fights seem to be aiming for the realistic brutality of the kind we saw executed so brilliantly in Casino Royale but they never come close to that viscerality and even worse are the driving sequences, all of which are entirely devoid of any sense of speed or drama.
And so it goes on... the film is exhaustive but fragmented, it's desire to be clever renders it simplistic, it's big set pieces come across as painfully small and it's deep characters are mind numbingly shallow.
Nothing works as it should but despite this there are a few successful moments.
The snatch of Lau from his building in China is so full of great ideas that it overcomes the heavy direction and the pedantic set up.
Another plus point is Gary Oldman who is strong enough to make the often clunky dialogue seem better than it is and he certainly gets better service than fellow old schooler Michael Caine who is lumbered with some 'wise old mentor' lines so painful that they would make Mr Miagi wince.
To return to my earlier point about the similarities between this and Tim Burton?s movie we have to consider how both depict the relationship between Batman and The Joker. The common thread is the notion that The Joker and Batman are as similar as they are different, two sides of the same coin if you?ll permit a sly reference to the otherwise not-worth-mentioning Harvey Dent/Two Face character. But this ambiguous yet symbiotic existence of good and evil was far better delivered back in 1989.
For this conceit to work the two characters need to share a duality but Nolan?s take on the Joker has but the one dimension and his Batman and Bruce Wayne and too far removed from each other to portray any believable schizoid overtones. In comparison to Keaton?s tortured soul and Nicholson?s tortured psyche this conflict is flat and emotionally bereft.
It is worth pointing out, however, that Jack Nicholson was sparring with the talent of Michael Keaton and poor old Heath Ledger gets to show up the personality vacuum that is Christian Bale. Bale delivers a take on Bruce Wayne who is as smug and unlikeable as Keaton?s was self effacing and funny.
Bale fails entirely to bring any of the duality and confliction to the Wayne character and his lack of talent has never been more apparent than it is in the company of Oldman and Ledger.
Much like many of today?s blockbuster movies (I?m put most in mind of 2005?s Mission Impossible III) the level of production of The Dark Knight is often high enough to conceal its faults but it cannot hide the fact the film is lost within itself. It knows not what it is or what it wants to be. It is obsessed with vocalising the uninteresting and providing answers to questions that no-one asked. But most disappointing of all is the realisation that The Dark Knight rehashes several ideas from an almost 20 year old movie and fails to do them any justice at all.
Christopher Nolan?s The Dark Knight is a very hard film to enjoy.
It's also a film with which it is hard not to be impressed, at least in parts. In fact there are parts of The Dark Knight which are as well made as any mainstream movie I?ve ever seen but these rare fragments are held together by a solvent which is not up to the job.
What the film lacks most; the one element that is conspicuous by its absence in almost every scene is subtlety. It's apparent from the very first few lines of dialogue to the very last and the only aspect to escape relatively unscathed is the very notable performance of Heath Ledger.
Whilst the plaudits for Ledgers work in the film have been massively overblown he is by quite some distance the best thing in the film - it's just a shame that this isn't saying quite as much as it should do. There are loud echoes of Kevin Spacey?s 'John Doe' from Seven in what Ledger brings to the role and this reflects that The Joker in The Dark Knight is a far more conventional villain than the last time we saw the character on the big screen. Some may think it irrelevant to compare ?Batman? and ?The Dark Knight? but this is untrue. The films share far more common elements than the names of a few characters and as such refusing a comparison would be small minded.
But I digress...
Whereas Jack Nicholson?s incarnation was an unpredictable lunatic, Ledgers is a far more thoughtful and calculated antagonist. The Joker here has a plan for chaos and if that sounds to you like a contradiction then you?d be absolutely correct and as a result of this and other similar factors the character never quite rounds out properly. It's not a case that there are too many questions leading to vague character but rather that there are too many answers which instead leads to an uninteresting one. But this is a problem that extends to every character in the piece just as it did previously in Batman Begins. In the case of Ledgers character, as with every aspect of every character in both films, nothing is left unexplained - even the fact that our Joker has no real name or previous life is painstakingly laid before us.
This ceaseless alliteration of every nuance of every character and plot point is a massive part of what makes it so hard to enjoy The Dark Knight. Everything takes so much time to explain that the film never has a chance to gain any momentum. There is an ocean of difference between a slow film and a thoughtful one, sadly The Dark Knight falls resoundingly under the former heading.
In addition to laboriously drawn main characters there are an abundance of secondary players who suffer a similar fate; none of them are very interesting but all of which are given exhaustive screen time. There is so much gorging on the unnecessary details that the film gets bogged down by them drags its bloated belly through the dramatic elements until it's time for the next set piece... which brings us to another problem: Christopher Nolan can't direct action.
In Batman Begins the action sequences were so badly constructed that it was actually impossible to grasp what was supposed to be happening. Whilst Nolan?s first trip to Gotham is not the only modern action movie to suffer from this A.D.D. approach to action editing it was arguably the worst offender by virtue of the decision to shoot all the scenes by candlelight.
In The Dark Knight Nolan appears to have been bitten by the over compensation bug. Each action sequence lacks both style and pace, the fights seem to be aiming for the realistic brutality of the kind we saw executed so brilliantly in Casino Royale but they never come close to that viscerality and even worse are the driving sequences, all of which are entirely devoid of any sense of speed or drama.
And so it goes on... the film is exhaustive but fragmented, it's desire to be clever renders it simplistic, it's big set pieces come across as painfully small and it's deep characters are mind numbingly shallow.
Nothing works as it should but despite this there are a few successful moments.
The snatch of Lau from his building in China is so full of great ideas that it overcomes the heavy direction and the pedantic set up.
Another plus point is Gary Oldman who is strong enough to make the often clunky dialogue seem better than it is and he certainly gets better service than fellow old schooler Michael Caine who is lumbered with some 'wise old mentor' lines so painful that they would make Mr Miagi wince.
To return to my earlier point about the similarities between this and Tim Burton?s movie we have to consider how both depict the relationship between Batman and The Joker. The common thread is the notion that The Joker and Batman are as similar as they are different, two sides of the same coin if you?ll permit a sly reference to the otherwise not-worth-mentioning Harvey Dent/Two Face character. But this ambiguous yet symbiotic existence of good and evil was far better delivered back in 1989.
For this conceit to work the two characters need to share a duality but Nolan?s take on the Joker has but the one dimension and his Batman and Bruce Wayne and too far removed from each other to portray any believable schizoid overtones. In comparison to Keaton?s tortured soul and Nicholson?s tortured psyche this conflict is flat and emotionally bereft.
It is worth pointing out, however, that Jack Nicholson was sparring with the talent of Michael Keaton and poor old Heath Ledger gets to show up the personality vacuum that is Christian Bale. Bale delivers a take on Bruce Wayne who is as smug and unlikeable as Keaton?s was self effacing and funny.
Bale fails entirely to bring any of the duality and confliction to the Wayne character and his lack of talent has never been more apparent than it is in the company of Oldman and Ledger.
Much like many of today?s blockbuster movies (I?m put most in mind of 2005?s Mission Impossible III) the level of production of The Dark Knight is often high enough to conceal its faults but it cannot hide the fact the film is lost within itself. It knows not what it is or what it wants to be. It is obsessed with vocalising the uninteresting and providing answers to questions that no-one asked. But most disappointing of all is the realisation that The Dark Knight rehashes several ideas from an almost 20 year old movie and fails to do them any justice at all.
but seriously I agree. Its out on the 8th december and its currently the fourth; do I smell piracy?
