Dark Knight Come on Television Again
"Batman" isn't a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is a haunted picture that leaps across its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care well-nigh. That's because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a bottom degree "Iron Human being," redefine the possibilities of the "comic-volume film."
"The Dark Knight" is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is adept, yes, The Joker is evil, yeah. But Batman poses a more than complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham Metropolis are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He'south a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.
The key performance in the motion-picture show is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he go the outset posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent archetype "The Man Who Laughs" (1928). His clown'south makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his male parent exacted on him when he was a child. In one diabolical scheme virtually the terminate of the picture, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are diddled up themselves. Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Commune Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to brand impossible ethical decisions. By the cease, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.
Because these actors and others are and so powerful, and because the movie does non allow its spectacular special furnishings to upstage the humans, we're surprised how deeply the drama affects us. Eckhart does an especially good job as Harvey Paring, whose character is transformed past a horrible fate into a bitter monster. It is customary in a comic book motion-picture show to maintain a sure knowing distance from the action, to view everything through a sophisticated screen. "The Night Knight" slips around those defenses and engages u.s..
Yes, the special effects are extraordinary. They focus on the expected explosions and catastrophes, and have some superb, elaborate chase scenes. The movie was shot on location in Chicago, but information technology avoids such familiar landmarks as Marina City, the Wrigley Edifice or the skyline. Chicagoans volition recognize many places, notably La Salle Street and Lower Wacker Drive, but director Nolan is not making a travelogue. He presents the city every bit a wilderness of skyscrapers, and a key sequence is set in the nonetheless-uncompleted Trump Belfry. Through these heights, the Batman moves at the end of strong wires, or sometimes actually flies, using his greatcoat equally a parasail.
The plot involves naught more or less than the Joker'due south attempts to humiliate the forces for skillful and expose Batman' hush-hush identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud. He includes Gordon and Dent on his target list, and contrives cruel tricks to play with the fact that Bruce Wayne once loved, and Harvey Dent now loves, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The tricks are more cruel than he realizes, because the Joker doesn't know Batman'due south identity. Heath Ledger has a good bargain of dialogue in the motion-picture show, and a lot of information technology isn't the usual jabs and jests we're familiar with: Information technology'southward psychologically more complex, outlining the dilemmas he has constructed, and explaining his reasons for them. The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who first worked together on "Memento") has more depth and verse than we might have expected.
Two of the supporting characters are crucial to the action, and are played effortlessly by the neat actors Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Freeman, as the scientific genius Lucius Flim-flam, is in charge of Bruce Wayne'southward underground headquarters, and makes an ethical objection to a method of eavesdropping on all of the citizens of Gotham City. His stand has current political implicstions. Caine is the faithful butler Alfred, who understands Wayne better than anybody, and makes a decision virtually a crucial letter of the alphabet.
Nolan too directed the previous, and excellent, "Batman Begins" (2005), which went into greater detail than ever before about Bruce Wayne's origins and the reasons for his compulsions. At present it is the Joker's turn, although his past is handled entirely with dialogue, not flashbacks. In that location are no references to Batman'southward childhood, but nosotros certainly recall it, and we realize that this conflict is between two adults who were twisted by childhood cruelty — ane compensating by trying to do good, the other by trying to do evil. Perhaps they instinctively understand that themselves.
Something primal seems to exist happening in the upper realms of the comic-volume moving-picture show. "Spider-Man II" (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional picture based on comic-book heroes. A pic like the new "Hellboy II" allows its managing director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now "Iron Man" and fifty-fifty more and then "The Night Knight" move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman fable, with its origins in film noir, is the near fruitful one for exploration.
In his 2 Batman movies, Nolan has freed the character to exist a canvas for a broader scope of human being emotion. For Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubled man, allow there be no doubt, and if ever in exile from his heroic function, it would not surprise me what he finds himself capable of doing.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Dominicus-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
At present playing
Moving picture Credits
The Nighttime Knight (2008)
152 minutes
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Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-dark-knight-2008
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