It's been three years now since Batman Begins was released and to say that anticipation for The Dark Knight was high would be an understatement. I cannot remember a film other than The Phantom Menace for which anticipation has been so high.
Fortunately this film delivers on most of that expectation and is, in my opinion, the best Batman film to date.
Spoilers follow
When Tim Burton returned to the Batman franchise to shoot Batman Returns, he imposed a darker style on the film than in his first effort. Nolan follows the same path, albeit to more acclaim, as he shows us a world threatened by anarchism and the breakdown of order.
This world is less stylised than the Gotham of previous films - this feels much more like a modern, Western city. The banks look real, the buildings look real and as a result the violence that hits this city feels more immediate and disturbing.
Opposite Christian Bale's Batman is the excellent Heath Ledger who deserves the critical acclaim his performance received. I am not ready to say that he wipes the floor with Bale's more subtle and mannered portrayal of Wayne/Batman but you find yourself on the edge of your seat whenever he appears on screen.
This Joker is unhinged and anarchistic. He toys with that audience as much as he does with Batman, feeding us conflicting stories of his origin and what he wants. By the end we know that all he desires is chaos and to shake our confidence in our neighbours. He wants to twist those characters around him and manipulate them emotionally.
He succeeds in doing this with the vulnerable Dent, Gotham's new district attorney whose biggest flaw is believing his own hype. The Joker, in one of the movie's best scenes, convinces him in the power of chaos and turns him into a loose, unpredictable weapon.
What I loved about that scene is that the Joker gives Dent power. All through the movie there is this recurring pattern of the Joker urging people to kill him, almost as if he wants to be put out of his misery. He is not a criminal - Eric Roberts' mafia boss and their ilk are clearly flagged up as the criminals. No, this Joker is simply unhinged and psychopathic.
There were several scenes that I found myself closing my eyes during, unsure about just how brutal they were going to be. I wanted to watch but found this Joker so complete a characterisation that I found myself feeling uneasy.
Aaron Eckhart's Two Face conversely is a character whose story is raced through far too quickly for us to appreciate him. To call him the second villain on the piece is misleading. He is no more, nor no less than the Joker's weapon. The bomb he has planted that is about to go off (incidentally, I love that when he is turning Dent into that weapon he is wearing an "I believe in Harvey Dent" sticker).
His make-up is effective, albeit slightly too ridiculous to be genuinely scary. If I have nightmares about the way a character looks tonight it will not be him but rather the Joker in my mind. We see his change and I felt I understood it but I wished that we could have spent longer with him.
These final portions of the film feel rushed and a dramatic change of pace. Eckhart's performance does not have the manic energy of Ledger's and the result is that suddenly the adrenaline falls away. The Joker is in custody, we know we shall not see him again in the movie, and the people on the boats are now safe. The danger we have been building up to has passed and that which remains feels smaller and disconnected from the emotional drive of the film.
I disagree with critics who think that Two Face should have been in the next movie instead of tacked onto the end here. That would require a very different characterisation and a decidedly different journey. This character is motivated by a very personal hunt for revenge. This character is not capable of playing at master criminal (which never felt all that realistic in Batman Forever anyway) - it would not be true to the journey that Nolan has begun in this film.
Nolan uses the Dent storyline to reinforce the question that Batman keeps asking himself throughout this movie - "am I a force for good or evil in the end?", "have things become worse because of me?". The answer Nolan hints at is that Batman is needed because ultimately all are corruptable. He wants to give up the fight, hand his mantle onto Dent - an elected figure - but even as a human we see that Dent does not match up to his perfect picture he has painted.
Yet the messages of this film seem confused. It displays fears about the use of surveillance technology and even has Lucius say "no, I think this is wrong" - yet Lucius is prepared to utilise the very systems he criticised moments before "just this one time". It talks about the dangers of handing power to just one individual and yet suggests that no one but Wayne/Batman is capable of holding this degree of power without becoming a monster.
I was left feeling that Gotham had been made more "real" to make a political point and yet I was unsure at the end what the point was. Perhaps that makes it a success - I am sure that there will be many people leaving the film debating what its message actually is. In some ways I prefer a movie that asks difficult questions of us without presenting us with set or easy answers.
I look forward to seeing where the franchise heads next and I hope that Nolan and Bale stick around. I am a little uncertain how they can top this - after all, the villains left are decidedly second tier (Mr Freeze has been suggested but would bring back unfortunate memories of Batman and Robin) - but I think this movie demonstrates that a film can be complex and thought-provoking and yet still be a massive box office draw. It feels to me to be so much closer to the spirit of the comic books than anything that has come before it.
And to think - I haven't even had space here to talk about Jim Gordon, Alfred, the Batbike, Rachel Dawes or the more subtle humour used throughout this effort... I'm sure however that this is a movie that will be talked about for some time to come - particularly when we get to Oscar season.