One Year Later

Wait'll they get a load of me!

This week marked the one-year anniversary of the release of The Dark Knight. It is a minor holiday, I know, but I took the opportunity to take a much-needed break from studying to watch the film again and maybe even finish the review I started 12 months ago. So, without further ado…

The Dark Knight is very nearly a masterpiece of action movies. From the tense opening scene, the movie sustains a frantic pace that never allows you to return to a comfortable seated position. It is unequivocally the best Batman movie to date. It is also one of the cleverest and most socially relevant movies I have seen in years. It does, however, suffer from a small but undeniable flaw—namely, that the protagonist is a grown man dressed in a latex body suit and cape, a persona that ultimately comes across as puzzling and silly in contrast to the dark realism of the rest of the cast.

By now you have all heard about Heath Ledger's epic final act. I, for one, am hesitant to heap praise upon actors when I usually find the writers and directors more deserving. My skepticism was only heightened by the inevitable emotional impact of the sudden death of this young and talented actor. Indeed, it was impossible to ignore the fact that I was witnessing the last role that Ledger would ever play, one that he never got to see completed. But for once the hype machine got it right. I admit he is amazing. Some credit, of course, must go to the writers for their thorough reimagining of The Joker—he is not so much a Villain, with all the clichéd cartoonish mannerisms and awful macabre jokes, as he is a terrorist, something wicked that will gladly die for his cause, whatever it may be—but the script is only words. It is Ledger, with a fascinating mix of facial tics and a deadly reedy voice that gives the movie what it really needs—something to be afraid of. Convincing as a lunatic, his confrontations with his co-stars are truly frightening. Knives out, he stalks from victim to victim with the cool and malice of a cat playing with its food. He broke the mold with his performance. And herein lies the problem. His nemesis, some weirdo in a rubber suit, can hardly return the favor.

A lot of the blame goes to Christian Bale. Peering out at us from behind a pointy hat and copious amounts of eye shadow, he does little more than rasp and glower in a way that is neither threatening, nor in step with the tone of the movie.

But the root of the problem, if I may call it such a thing, is with the genre of superheroes movies. To say that Christopher Nolan (director of Memento, Batman Begins, and co-writer of The Dark Knight) has outdone himself doesn't quite cover it. He has outdone Batman. The script is deadlier, and the plot is darker than a superhero movie should go. There is no humor or camp or even vanity to relieve you. There is not even a real love story. The Dark Knight is, for all the world, a horror movie. To the detriment of the film, Batman the character, trapped in an older, cartoonier iteration, never made the transformation. Traipsing through the shadowy sets in a cumbersome costume, he is the last vestige, the lone anchor to the childish PG versions of superheroes, complete with all the invincibility and morality they possess, so that you never really feel that failure is a possibility, the result of which is almost disappointing in the face of The Joker’s astonishing and skillful schemes. (Not to say that I was rooting for The Joker, but one has to admire his guile.)

Alas, the filmmakers seemed to understand Batman’s limitations as well. In one of the best scenes, a brutal roughing up of The Joker by our hero in the confines of a police interrogation cell, Batman attempts to extract information regarding the whereabouts of kidnap victims. After a few failed attempts, the beatings becoming more vicious, the questions peaking at a reverberating and hoarse shout, Ledger's Joker lets out a drunken and mirthful laugh. “There is nothing that you can threaten me with!” he says, and it is as though all of Batman’s strength has been completely sucked out of the room.

As I mentioned earlier, the thing that makes The Joker so good and so scary is that he is not an ordinary bad guy, rather he resembles something closer to just ordinary. He doesn’t waste his time waging war specifically against the protagonist, a force of nature that would surely defeat him in combat. Nor does he rely on stealing state-of-the-art weaponry to execute his master plan. He doesn’t have any special powers, or skills, or even a vendetta. His plans have a thrown-together feel that are equal parts brilliant and simple. Perhaps most convincingly, he employs everyday technology—video, cell phones, broadcast television, and the viral way in which these conduits can find their audience instantly—in order to involve a terrorized public. Indeed, his plans began to resemble the deadly punch line of a reality game show gone awry, the contestants foregoing all decency and humanity in order to survive, their grinning host morbidly delightedly watching it happen.

In keeping with this, it is ultimately not Batman that gets the better of The Joker—it is us, his would-be victims and our (apparently) unshakable goodness in the face of death that deal the harshest blow. Personally, I found the eventual outcome unlikely, or at least debatable, but to end it otherwise might have been too depressing and irreconcilable. After all, it was the single moment of hope in an otherwise unrelenting tale of mayhem and misery. It was the only hint at a happy ending amidst a bounty of tragedy, both on and off the screen.