Best of Black Sheep: THE DARK KNIGHT

THE DARK KNIGHT
Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine and Maggie Gyllenhaal


Alfred Pennyworth: Some men simply want to watch the world burn.

There can only be one Batman and as I sat amongst a full crowd that was silent in awed anticipation at the crack of the film, it is clear that director, Christopher Nolan’s Batman is that one.  In BATMAN BEGINS, Nolan (whom at the time he attempted to revive the franchise had only directed a handful of indie projects) took an icon and made him human.  Batman, and of course his real life persona, Bruce Wayne, was damaged.  He had fears; he had frustrations; he had to find himself.  What he found, with a little push from Nolan, was a flawed figure, but also a man whose heroism was defined by his humility and relentless pursuit of justice for those incapable of demanding it for themselves.  With the arrival of THE DARK KNIGHT, Nolan has finished with his foundation, and taken to the vertigo-inducing heights on the tallest of Gotham’s buildings to analyze the city and all its inhabitants.  Gliding both gracefully and dauntingly through all of it is the dark knight himself (reprised by third time Nolan collaborator, Christian Bale).  What he sees from his unique view, which becomes our privileged spectacle, is a world of delineating lines and order, that is about to be torn apart by chaos and chance.

Gotham City must be pretty far down the list of safest places to live in America.  Not only does there seem to be nightly violence at the hands of common street thugs, but all the crazies seem to end up setting up shop there too.  Enter the Joker (Heath Ledger).  We know nothing of what made him the homicidal maniac he is, nor does he have any regard for human life.  In fact, he has nothing but disdain for it.  Humanity’s rules may disgust him but they also make it possible for him to predict how people will behave, allowing him the chance to throw them off and laugh at their expense. The Joker is frightening enough in concept but Ledger’s performance is down right terrifying.  As he constantly licks his lips with self-assured cynicism, he cuts to the chase in every scenario.  He has no time for any games, other than the ones he orchestrates himself, and commands control everywhere he goes.  His idea of playing always involves the ultimate consequences and the highest of stakes.  In order to win out, you must reject what you know and become everything you denounce.  Only winners will know the rewards of living both sides of the coin and the Joker is counting on fear to prevail so that he can finally have someone to play with.

Along with his co-screenwriter, brother, Jonathan, Nolan has crafted a dark, twisted dissection of duality and morality that is often shocking, unexpected and intricately detailed.  In every superhero tale, everyone always wants to know the man behind the mask.  The mask itself, the creation of another persona other than the one that sits safely behind it, initiates the duality that permeates the notion of the superhero figure. Batman is the dark knight.  He only comes out at night and no one would suspect the man he is by day might be one and the same.  The Joker’s chaos theory ruptures Batman’s controlled existence and forces him to think in a darker fashion than he has ever had to before.  Thinking that darkly though can leave you stranded in that space and this is what the Joker is counting on.  What makes THE DARK KNIGHT so rich is that almost every character has conflict and questions their actions and motivations.  No answer is the clear right one and deceit seems to play a role in even the most well-intentioned decisions.  The greatest irony is that the darkest character actually has the purest of souls while the would be clown seems to have no soul at all.  This is perhaps what makes them such worthy adversaries and why they both almost seem to enjoy the challenge.

When THE DARK KNIGHT feels like it might be ending, the anxiety mounts because you won’t want it to end.  It has an enormous scope but is somehow still subtle.  It is incredibly complex but yet still simple.  The film itself is steeped in just as much duality as its hero. Nolan never loses control of his duty – to create a Batman film that pleases both the masses and the fans, that encompasses the grandness of a blockbuster with the darkness of the independent spirit, and wows without resorting to cheap tricks.  Once again, Nolan has grounded the sensational on a very firm footing by never allowing Batman to be anything other than a man.  We can then stand on the same level ground as the giant bat and feel a satisfaction that is both real and incredible.

Best Supporting Actor 2008: Results

5. Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road- Shannon gives an intense performance that serves the film the way it wants him to, I only wish his depiction of the mentally instability man could have been a little less obvious display of acting.

4. Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt- Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives an effective performance that succeeds in treading the fine line to keep the mystery of his character intact without making his performance seem lacking.

3. Josh Brolin in Milk- Josh Brolin although has a very limited screen time that realizes the standard politician on the outside as well as the lonely unhappy man on the inside.

2. Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder- Robert Downey Jr. gives a very enjoyable and entertaining performance by portraying a character who is entirely there to be funny by portraying him with the utmost conviction and devotion.

1. Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight- Excellent prediction Eddie. Heath Ledger simply gives an outstanding performance. Ledger never tries for a moment to portray the Joker in a safe fashion. Every risk that he takes with the performance that absolutely succeeds in creating a chilling entertaining and very memorable villain.

Deserving Performances:
Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges
Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading
Gary Oldman in The Dark Knight

Best Supporting Actor 2008: Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger won his Oscar from his second and final nomination for portraying The Joker in The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight details the struggle for the morals and fate of Gotham City between Batman (Christian Bale) and the Joker.

The supporting category more recently has been known as the villains, although one can find villains throughout the category as both nominees, and winners like Walter Brennan, Gig Young, and Gene Hackman was never opposed to rewarding villains in the category. In the years of 07, 08 and 09 though they simply made a habit of it. 08 certainly felt like a villains year though as two of the nominees were undoubted villains, and two of the other nominees could easily been argued as antagonist characters. The winner therefore makes sense to have been the biggest villain of them all.

The Joker has been portrayed several times actually two times previously in live form with Caesar Romero camping it up with his portrayal in the 60's, and Jack Nicholson handling the character in a somewhat similar fashion in 80's Batman film. Ledger with his posthumous Oscar winning performance though although does not reject those previous portrayals he never for a moment tries to just copy these earlier renditions, and makes the Joker of this film something very much of his own creation. He doesn't exactly reject these earlier portrayals, but it clear that Ledger's version of the Joker always belongs to Ledger.

Ledger does this with an extremely risky performance that never tries to play it safe. Ledger's entire performance is on a ledge (no pun intended) the entire time seeming to try something new in every scene he has. A performance like this is all one really a huge chance, since it never for moment feels like standard performance and is a completely different from anything Heath Ledger ever did before in this film. Because of this Ledger's performance does face reactions all around the spectrum really because of this risks since his performance either works for you or it doesn't there really is not a great deal of middle ground.

For me personally all of Ledger's risks he takes with the Joker all pay off completely. The voice he uses with the strange accent works perfectly for the Joker. He both sounds completely insane with it, yet he as well still is commanding and chilling at the same time. His hunched over posture, and his whole bizarre mannerisms all work in favor of making Joker an unforgettable creation. The amazing part of it all though is despite every little thing he does to create this Joker it never for a moment felt like a performance to me. Ledger always simply becomes the Joker from his first scene to his last he is the character, every little mannerism is only more of what the Joker is.

Ledger's Joker is a terrific villain because of how much he does accomplish with the part. He never is one note in the part oddly enough even though the Joker is a character who doesn't change in throughout the course of the film and his only objective is technically to create chaos with what he does. Ledger in each and every scene gives a chilling villain who has a overwhelming presence every time he is on screen. You really cannot help but look at Ledger in this performance. Ledger shows here that the Joker takes almost everything in stride, and almost never ceases to have fun no matter how much evil he is committing with his actions. Ledger shows a great joy in the Joker. His joker simply loves being the Joker there is never a question that he could be anything else.

Ledger never goes about a scene in a single fashion of being just an imposing villain, even though he is always effective with that. What it interesting is his different levels of insanity and his different attitudes depending on who is dealing with. Frankly one can see in Ledger's performance is his differing attitudes to his adversaries. When it is someone he frankly seems to see as a more worthy foe he honestly seems to have more fun with them and takes what seems like a more lighthearted approach. When it is someone though the Joker would have very little respect for someone he sees more of a tool than anything else he treats them with far less respect which means for the Joker not being as funny. In this moments Ledger really makes Joker the most chilling because when he has no respect he is especially swift and cruel with his violence.

What is truly terrific about this performance and it is probably the same element that helped give his fellow most recent villainous winners their wins frankly is their ability to be quite entertaining and funny despite being terrible characters. Ledger probably has even more of it than Bardem and Waltz even though and constatnly adds an energetic dark humor to every scene with the Joker through even the smallest reactions. Ledger could not have been better in the role. He keeps the Joker the enigma quite effectively without seeming like a well realizes the character since nothing is really told about the Joker's the one thing he does tell he contradicts himself. He keeps the Joker as a mystery yet he realizes Joker as a truly insane individual who certainly came from somewhere but it is probably better off not know where he came from.This type of risky performance by Ledger could have easily gone all wrong, but Ledger ever succeeds with his great performance. 

Best Supporting Actor 2008

And the Nominees Were:

Josh Brolin in Milk

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road

Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder

Bane from The Dark Knight Rises

Above is the creepy new picture of Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, which just started principle filming the other day.  More excitingly, the very first image from Christopher Nolan's much anticipated follow-up for his Oscar-winning 2008 The Dark Knight.  Much ado was made regarding the first cryptic image of Heath Ledger's The Joker a few years ago, and Bane's appearance isn't disappointing me right now.  Typical Nolan twist on hardcore comic characters.  Let's hope the rest of the film holds up, shall we?

An improvement over the horrendous imagining of Bane in Batman and Robin, pictured below.

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Belated Birthday of Heath Ledger

April 4^th was Heath Ledger’s birthday.  He would have been 32.  This anniversary serves as a reminder of just how sad his passing was three years ago, and how many more great performances he had in store.  After he stared in the critically-acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, he was hailed as the next Marlon Brando.  Unfortunately, his story took a James Dean-esque twist instead.

I knew and understood the Brando comparison back in 2005, when I was still in high school.  It you watch any Brando film—On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Fugitive Kind, etc.—you see how much he disappeared into a role, how much of his body he committed to the part.  In lieu of making dialog work for him, he made the space in between the lines marks of brilliance.  Brando never hid behind lines; rather he internalized them, making it appear his character would burst if the line wasn’t spoken.  Think of “Stelllllaaaaa!” think of the scene where he opens the bottle of champagne in Streetcar, think of him trying on Eva Marie Saint’s glove in Waterfront.  Brando discovered the small things within a role, and used them to define the part.  Ledger did this too.

Look no further than his two most honored performances, that of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain and The Joker in The Dark Knight.  Rarely do you see a multiple Oscar nominee represented with two such vastly different roles.  But Ledger managed it.  Say what you want about his posthumous success with The Joker, but we all know he deserved the praise and would have won had he been alive.  Look at him in Brokeback.  Minimalism at its finest.  He mumbles through his lines like a man trying to find himself, simply lost.  He’s hiding from himself, so he hides what he says.  Each of his lines in that film is delivered with such a painful hint of self-loathing, and of fear, not of society, but of himself—of the truth.  The final scene where he cradles Jake Gyllenhaal’s bloody shirt is something of pure wonder; an actor so clearly understanding what the character is going though, and delivering on the demanding cathartic moment.  So much in the body, so much character study, so much devotion.

The same can be said for his instant-classic turn as The Joker.  Actors reinvent characters all the time, but never before had it been done to this magnitude.  Sparing some of the ad nauseum details about the role, it was perfect.  Like Brando, he took small things and made them powerful.  For instance, when another actor would have sat quietly in the jail cell, Ledger began applauding—something that wasn’t in the script—and suddenly that’s a memorable scene from the movie.  His slithery devouring of lines is nothing short of genius, even changing throwaway lines into unintended punchlines (“Very poor choice of words” anyone?)

I was already a huge fan of Ledger when he passed, and like most of America, probably more so after seeing The Dark Knight.  Seeing his performance acknowledged with an Academy Award win was my proudest moment as an Oscar fan.  It showed that sometimes, just sometimes, they do award the best performance of the year, regardless of genre.  

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Batman Reboot: When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object

For those of you in the dark, Warner Bros. is now planning a Batman reboot in conjunction with a planned answer to The Avengers Justice League movie.  It won't be helmed by current franchise director Christopher Nolan either, but Nolan will remain on as producer.  The oddest part of this amalgam of superheros poised to save the day in Justice League is that none of the notable characters--Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman--will be a continuation off current projects featuring said characters.  No Wonder Woman from her yet-to-premier NBC show.  No Superman from Zack Snyder's upcoming film.  And most importantly, no Christian Bale as Batman.  That's right, the actor and hero that saved a genre is being rebooted at the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises.

It's the unstoppable force of the studio meeting the immovable object of creative integrity.  It's clear: the studio wants more and Nolan is walking away after film #3.  Can't really blame him, lest he forever be known as the director of Batman.  He's young, can do anything he wants right now in his career, and he have proven he can make his films both bankable at the box office and the Oscars.  Plus, a director returning for the fourth film in a franchise can only be as ill-fated as Indiana Jones 4, right?  Thankfully, WB is keeping Nolan on (or, possibly, Nolan is choosing to stay on) as producer of Justice League and the Batman reboot, which makes us assume he'll still have creative control.  But does he really want creative control outside of the world you created?  Nolan has the chance to close out a trilogy the right way, and not Warner Bros. wants to say "thank you, but no," to the reputation and respect he has injected not only into Batman, but superhero films in general. 

When an unstoppable force
meets an immovable object

Now, I have a slight problem with that.  For starters, The Dark Knight Rises isn't even out yet.  Not only is it not even out, but they haven't even begun principle photography!  Why is Warner Bros. giving up on Nolan's vision of the caped crusader already?  Could Batman be that potential of a cash cow that they think people will pour in to see the character no matter what creative team or actor is on board?  One can attribute the financial success of 2008's The Dark Knight to many things: the high quality of the film, the high-grossing superhero genre, and the recent passing (and brilliant performance) of Heath Ledger.  One of those elements returns, with a second one hopeful for The Dark Knight Rises.

I think what is most notable with the prematurely announced reboot (that is, a reboot before the franchise is even done booting) is that Warner Bros. is doing it less out of greed and more out of necessity.  Why reboot a blockbuster franchise staring an Oscar-winner unless you absolutely have to?  Perhaps the immovable object of creative integrity isn't as immovable as we'd hoped: it's being trampled, in fact.  I'm thinking, momentarily at least (and probably reading too much into this announcement), that Nolan is killing off our watchful protector.  A dead hero means you'll have to reboot.  Maybe I'm just being a little too...serious.

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Screen Actors Guild Awards

The SAG awards results (held on Jan 25th). They give awards only to actors (the award is called The Actor®) - and the word "actress" is prohibited. They also give awards for ensemble acting, and for both film and tv.
Can't you just hear the kids at home: "Hey, mommy won The Actor" - "Wow! Is it Tom Cruise?"

2009 SAG Winners (career totals shown)

Film
Ensemble Cast: Slumdog Millionaire
Lead

Slumdog Millionaire wins Critics Choice Award

Director Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire won the Critic's Choice award as Best Picture, Boyle won director and the film won five awards overall at Thursday nights Critic's Choics awards for 2008 films.

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Best Action Picture: The Dark Knight
Best Comedy Picture: Tropic Thunder
Best Animated Picture: Wall-E
Best

The Dark Knight

There sure is a lot of speechifying in “The Dark Knight.” I don’t think I’ve experienced a movie with this much speech making since John Wayne’s “The Alamo.” (1960). The difference is “The Alamo” is a great movie and “The Dark Knight” is not.

It’s not even a good movie. It has two very good performances and a germ or two of interesting ideas buried under a bloated running time, badly staged action scenes and an insistence by director Christopher Nolan and his screenwriter brother Jonathan to sledge hammer their audience with its central thesis: there is no difference between heroes and villains.

The positives: Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. Brilliant and unsettling. It’s far and away the best thing in the movie, a great performance in a mediocre movie. Just as good is Aaron Eckhart as District Attorney Harvey Dent, who transforms into the villain Two Face. I’m afraid Eckhardt is being overlooked in favor of Ledger and it’s too bad, because Eckhardt has the more difficult role, transforming from crusading D.A. into tragic villain.

Let’s get back to that central thesis, which is repeated several times throughout the film. I can’t remember the exact dialogue (and I have no intention of seeing this film any time soon, if not ever), but it goes something like this: “either you die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.”

That’s pretty grim and nihilistic for a summer blockbuster based on a comic book. Part of me tips the hat to Nolan and Warner Bros. for throwing commercial considerations to the wind and making such a dark movie. Maybe I would have bought it more in any other movie than a Batman movie. I can also appreciate that just because it’s a comic book can’t mean it has to be all bright and sunny, and that dark themes can be explored.

But it’s still a comic book, and you have a character who runs around at night catching criminals while wearing a costume with a cape, and a mask with pointy ears. The contrast between the grimness and the pointy ears is enormous

Matters aren’t helped any by having Christian Bale deliver his Batman lines with a deep and throaty growl. At one point he really digs down to his diaphragm to say his lines and I had to stifle a chuckle lest the Batman fans around me threw me out. All I could think of was Batman smoking too many cigarettes and drinking bad booze at 3 a.m. dive bars. It’s actually quite amusing. I suppose he wanted a voice that would cause fear in the criminal world, but I would think the outfit and the ability to swoop down from out of nowhere would be enough for Gotham City’s underworld denizens.

All the characters pontificate endlessly about the nature of good vs. evil. Other points of discussion: does Batman really bring down the crime rate or cause it to rise due to his presence? Would the Joker have come to Gotham City without Batman there? Did they make each other, would one exist without the other?

I dunno, but I do believe there’s always been good guys and bad guys. Simplistic perhaps, but true. The character’s endless navel gazing here drove me to distraction. Again, I can appreciate where Nolan was coming from, but this is a classic case of the central idea repeated ad nauseum under the assumption that we, the audience, are idiots. Even the criminals talk amongst themselves about the forces of chaos, and what they unleashed with the Joker. We get it, enough already.

This central thesis seems to be bowling over many as a new maturity in comic book movies. But “Conan the Barbarian” (1982) offered the same idea, though only in one speech at the end from the villain Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) to Conan (Ah-nold) where he says to Conan that without your endless quest for revenge against me you would not be who you are. It’s an interesting idea for an action movie, and director/writer John Milius never forgot to also give us sweeping action scenes, comedy and a love story, qualities sorely missing in “The Dark Knight.”

Let’s take another example. One of the movies’ greatest adventure films is “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) with Errol Flynn. As basic a movie can be, forces of good against forces of evil. I can only imagine what the tale would be like if Christopher Nolan got his hands on the material.

Robin Hood: “Am I doing the right thing by taking from the rich to give to the poor? Am I harming myself in the process? Am I bringing evil on Sherwood Forest by trying to do the right thing? I don’t want to fight, I just want to open my soul to Friar Tuck about this.”

Sheriff of Nottingham: “I was just trying to be a good sheriff for the shire, a humble servant to do the King’s bidding. But Robin Hood and his campaign of terror has forced me to burn villages and tax the already burdened people. He made me do it. He’s the real reason there’s chaos in Sherwood Forest.”

No doubt director Michael Curtiz would throw Nolan out on his ear, and good riddance.

What else didn’t I like? The look of the film is disappointing. As someone who works in Chicago it’s cool to see Gotham City represented as Chicago, but that’s all it is – Chicago. I preferred the look that Nolan gave Gotham City in “Batman Begins” (2005) where he took Chicago but digitally tweaked it to give it a more sinister appearance. Remember the Arkham Asylum from that movie? Great stuff. Here, it’s just Chicago.

Nolan really needs to turn his action scenes over to a second unit director. He botched it badly with his first Batman movie and he botches it here again. The fight scenes are too dark and too many close-ups, where you can’t tell what’s happening. Put a professional stuntman in a Batman suit, shoot some medium scenes, and let us watch the action as its unfolding.

What really sinks the movie is the heavily-based synth score. Though the score was co-composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, I would suspect that most of the synth sounds were Zimmer’s. It really cheapens the film. Filmmakers generally use synths when they can’t afford a live orchestra. Zimmer’s heavily synth-based score makes the film sound like a made-for-cable outing. It would have been nice to have a theme too, but that would have be asking too much. There’s a scene where Batman soars in the air (I think in the Hong Kong sequence) and it would have benefited greatly from a theme, but instead the stunt, and scene, just sit there as flat as could be.

It didn’t need a burst of John Williams optimism, because that would have been at odds with the film. But Miklos Rozsa in his great 1940s film noir scores showed how you can use richly textured music to create a sense of doom and hopelessness. Zimmer’s score, I’m afraid, will badly date the film. (The end credits, however, do provide the biggest laugh I’ve had in a movie theater all year: I forget the exact number, but the music credits include something like four conductors and at least eight orchestrators. For this score? The mind boggles.)

Apart from the villains, the performances are nothing to write home about. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are their usual professional selves, and that’s enough. They provide the very, very few moments of levity in the film. They’re both so likeable that I wish they had been given more to do.

Maggie Gyllenhall, as the love interest Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, is an improvement over Katie Holmes from the last movie. It’s still a nothing part, but she gives it her best shot. Holmes is a good actress (catch the wonderful “Pieces of April” (2003) some time) but she was miscast in the first film.

Christian Bale tries his best, but it’s a surprisingly one note performance. His Bruce Wayne isn’t particularly likeable or charismatic and I’ve already written about his Batman voice.

And what was up with the Mayor in this flick? The actor’s name is Nestor Carbonell, unfamiliar to me. But he appears to be wearing eye liner. A friend who went with me says he looks like that, he’s got funky looking eyes. I guess he’s on “Lost.” OK, fine, then don’t cast him. During his scenes I thought I was watching “The Crying Game.”

I loved the make up of Two Face, but its obviously CGI in spots. Would it have been asking too much to use real make up?

The film’s too long and could have gone through a re-write or two, or three. A trip to Hong Kong seems superfluous, and the film’s central point of the Joker causing full blown chaos in Gotham City really doesn’t kick in until the final third. It’s a looong time getting there.

In my mind, Tim Burton honored Batman the best with his two Batman movies. Nothing in “The Dark Knight” beats the final iconic shot of “Batman” (1989) showing Batman on the roof of a building, the Bat Signal in the background, and Danny Elfman majestic theme – yes, theme, – soaring to a wonderful and satisfying coda.

If it wasn’t for Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart, “The Dark Knight” would be an unbearable, pompous bore.

Parts of the above review are in reaction to a loyal reader who wondered how I would include references to John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Michael Curtiz and Miklos Rozsa into a blog about “The Dark Knight.” I hope I have succeeded.

Rating for “The Dark Knight”: Two stars.