Brilliantly Dark
Matthew d'Ancona 12:04pm
The Spectator's own Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland, and I spent yesterday evening at the BFI Imax near Waterloo watching a preview of The Dark Knight. Very rarely is it genuinely true to say that a movie is astonishing. But no other word will do justice to this film.
To describe The Dark Knight as the latest in the (famously uneven) Batman franchise simply does not explain what this film aspires to be and to do. If the splendid Iron Man was a pitch perfect blend of high camp and high tech - the superhero flick at its best - this is something altogether different. Christopher Nolan uses every technique available to him in the modern cinematic palette to make this a relentless assault on the senses - and one that is overwhelming in the Imax format. Christian Bale as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred and Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon are all excellently cast.
But it is not the CGI or the top-of-the-range cast that makes this film what it is. Spookily, disconcertingly, and quite magnificently, this is Heath Ledger's film. His performance as The Joker so totally dwarves Jack Nicholson's in the first Batman film (1989) that the comparison seems absurd almost instantly. One is quickly aware that one is watching one of the great screen portrayals of psychosis ever: up there with Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter and Nosferatu. The emotional colours in which Ledger paints are uncompromisingly grim and his brushstrokes are both flawless and vicious. It is a performance of almost unbearable power and perfection. It makes horribly symmetrical sense that it was Ledger's last pas de deux with his art before his death.
Bale is a good foil but this film is not a dialogue. It is a dazzling exploration of madness and badness in which form and content are fused beautifully: it confirms Nolan's status as the most exciting director of his generation.
It is a rare moment indeed that the Wiki Man and I are lost for words but last night, we most definitely were. Go see - if you dare.
Previous
Paul B
July 19th, 2008 1:28pm Report this commentThanks Matt, cannot wait.
Craig Strachan
July 19th, 2008 9:08pm Report this comment"Great potrayals of psychosis"?
Norman Bates, check.
Hannibal Lecter, check.
But Nosferatu? He's not psychotic. He's an honest-to-badness vampire. A supernatural creature of the night. His behavior isn't psychotic. It's healthy and normal, for a vampire.
Frank Pulley
July 20th, 2008 11:01am Report this commentIf the above hyperbole is you lost for words, God help us all when you find your thesaurus again.
Kevin
July 20th, 2008 10:27pm Report this commentI saw Jon Stewart on the U.S. "Daily Show" the other night, expressing his enthusiasm for superhero comics as "object lessons in morality". He subsequently toned down his enthusiasm when his interviewee - one of the actresses in the current "Batman" film - failed to share it.
I am not mocking Stewart - I thought "Spiderman 2" was rollickingly good fun, and I appreciated the first two series of the "Smallville" Superman T.V. adaptation as a good example for children (an example that was later to be turned upside down).
The reason superheroes are so popular, I think, is because the storylines have preserved a tradition that has disappeared from virtually every other movie genre - that of a man's having to do "what a man's gotta do".
That philosophy lay behind the golden age of the Western, the patriotic war movie - it even underlay, in a darker context, the dramatic tension in films noirs such as "Detective Story" and "Cape Fear".
But, as the heroes of "Gunfight at the OK Corral" gave way to the anti-heroes of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", as "The Great Escape" gave way to "The Dirty Dozen", and as the studio production code in general gave way to "Bonnie and Clyde", so we were eventually left with having to watch "men" in tights and underwear-as-overwear as the only sure way to satisfy the desire to see the bad guys get what's coming to them.
Back to top