The Dark Knight is easily the best superhero movie ever made, surpassing even the original Superman. It manages to walk the tightrope of having a weightiness of tone and purpose without falling into the ridiculousness often found in comic book movies that take themselves too seriously- and very few summer blockbusters are as serious (or profound) as this one.
I believe that with this picture Christopher Nolan is asking a question regarding the nature of goodness. There is no doubt that the Joker (the late Heath Ledger) is evil, but is the Batman (Christian Bale) really heroic? Or is the real hero D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckert) who uses the law to capture the bad guys, in the open, and who is also capable of carrying on normal relationships with other people?
The fact that the Joker is evil does not mean that he is a one-note character. There has been a lot of talk about Ledger getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance here, all of which is certainly deserved. It is instructive to compare Ledger’s performances to Jack Nicholson’s in Tim Burton’s 1989 version. There is a key difference- Nicholson was great, but it was a movie star performance. He was essentially playing his own persona as the Joker. Here Ledger creates a psychologically realistic portrait of what the Joker must be in real life, were he to really exist. He’s funny, but you laugh in spite of yourself, because the character is genuinely menacing and unnevering. You laughed along with Nicholson, but there is no cutesiness here, only a psychopath. It is a truly brilliant performance.
The same psychology can also be applied to Bale’s Batman. It is a portrait of total obsession. He does so much good as his Batman persona that he is unable to be good, or much of anything else, as Bruce Wayne. In the end, I feel that this movie’s Batman is truly altruistic and heroic, but others who saw the movie with me disagreed. But the title is accurate- Batman is always one step away from turning a need to help others into revenge to help himself.
Aaron Eckert has never been one my favorite actors, but by the end of this film his Harvey Dent grows on you, and the tragedy that occurs (Batman fans will know what it is) becomes truly devastating. The rest of the cast, which includes big named like Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine, are also great. The one weak character in the film is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes. I felt that this character was poorly conceived in the first movie, when she was played by Katie Holmes, and the same is true here. Gyllenhaal is given even less to do, with less convincing motivation and she has hard time making the character real, or at times even interesting.
But the one underwritten character is the only real flaw in what is clearly the best film of the year so far. Some may complain that the movie is not much fun, but this is a serious film, essentially an epic drama. There were many ways for The Dark Knight to fail, but it avoided all of them, and instead is a great work of cinematic art.
The Dark Knight (2008)