Dark Knight(No Spoilers Please)
Dark Dark Dark. This was the darkest of the big superhero movies this summer. It was also the most poignant. The performances were outstanding, and the story was well written.
Batman Begins was clearly a cut above the previous reinvention of Batman in movies, but in a way it was abstracted a bit from those movies in the 90's because it had two villains that had never appeared in the previous movies. With Dark Knight, the comparison can me made directly starting with good-old-Joker.
I actually expected not to like Joker because of how disorderly he appeared in the teaser trailers. I kind of liked Jack Nicholson's rendition of a clean cut Joker with combed hair. See also a fine deviation of what I usually identify as a "good" Joker: [link] .
However, I loved the Joker after all. He was cunning, intelligent, philosophically deep, and chillingly unbalanced. It was a perfect performance by Heath Ledger. After seeing his performance, I am starting to wonder whether the role may have pushed him over the top. It makes me feel... not well. I certainly hope the role did not contribute to his death. And if it is ever proven that the role did push him too far, I hope we as a society will not encourage such roles in the future, lest we go the way of the Romans.
I had tried to limit my exposure to trailers and spoilers as the film drew nearer over the last few weeks, so I was a relatively clean slate. The film was long and almost episodic. When I thought everything was pretty much tied up, the film was actually only about half over. And I was delighted that it kept going, and this alone made it worth the effort.
If you are into the Bat, and if you are prepared to deal with some dark themes, I say go see it. There is some gore/suggestion of gore, but there is hardly even a suggestion of sex and the language is relatively clean. Nevertheless, I do not recommend the film for children of any age (or even adults if they are not prepared for intense, chilling darkness).
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Your thoughts about the role of the Joker and its possible toll on the actor are intriguing and worth looking into. Taking on another personna of any kind for an extended period of time has to be wearing on an actor/actress. And I would think that immersing yourself in something dark and disturbing for so long would have to have some effect, -- even if it was only needing respite from the tension and possible dreams brought on by it with the use of sleep aids.
The lives of actors are already full of drama both on and off-screen, driven by their profession and the lifestyle it entails. Alcohol and drug abuse, frequent divorces, multiple partners, ... how much of it is brought on by the fantasy lives they don to entertain us? It's worth thinking about.
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"My kids don't think I'm older than dirt, but they do think mine were the first footprints in it." -Me
Still, I really enjoyed that movie. It gave you a sense of Batman as a hero with a martyr complex. As a man who is so driven he cannot stop but who is essentially alone. Thus, in his drive to stop evil he is willing to destroy himself and become evil to stop it. You really see why Batman's relationships go nowhere. Anybody willing to do that to himself will shut anybody else out of his heart. There are glimmers of hope in the film but it is the darkest film I've seen since Requiem for a Dream.
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -Oscar Wilde
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -Oscar Wilde
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