filmfun

 My boyfriend was lucky enough to attend the July 18^th midnight showing of The Dark Knight and then see it for a second time the next day. All the while he was telling me over and over again how amazing it was and how it was even better than his high expectations. With all this hype from him, never mind the media, I was a little afraid that the film wouldn’t meet my very high expectations – but boy was I wrong, it was even better!

What I love about Christopher Nolan’s take with his Batman films, Batman Begins and the The Dark Knight, is the way he brings so much depth to the characters and the story, he includes metaphors and complex lessons. This is very different than all the other typical super hero films out there such as Spider Man, X-Men, Superman and Iron Man. Those films serve their purpose as fun super hero films but they all fail to be great films as The Dark Knight has achieved. I’ve heard people say that this film deserves Academy Award status and I would have to agree, because this film should not be seen as just another fun super hero film.

I really appreciated the message Nolan was trying to send in this film, dealing with the fine line between heroes and villains. In the film the Harvey Dent says to Batman “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” and this sums up the theme of the film. We see this message most clear through Batman’s personal struggle and then Harvey Dent’s transformation.

Performances:

Heath Ledger as the Joker. I’m sure if you haven’t seen his performance you must have heard all the praise. People are even saying he should be nominated for an Academy Award. His character is so dark and demented and Ledger makes it absolutely believable. We never see a soft side to the Joker but we do learn his past and what caused him to go crazy and become the freak that his today. We feel sorry for his sad life but he is always dedicated to his plan to “Introduce a little anarchy… Upset the established order…” that way “everyone loses their minds!” He even compares himself to a dog chasing cars, he just does it and if he ever caught the car he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, so his desire to wreak havoc will never be satisfied, rather it is just endless tasks to keep himself busy. He doesn’t care about dying, this is why he eggs Batman to beat him up and to even push him over the edge of a building. He tells Batman to stop saving him, because he believes “whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger” and this strangeness gives him his power. This is a difficult character to pull off so completely as Ledger has done, it’s a character so far from any sane human can imagine being, therefore Ledger definitely deserves the Academy Award nomination and even the win.

Gary Oldman as Lt. James Gordon. Oldman is always good at whatever he does and he never fails to bring something extra to his characters and this one was not an exception. I was really glad Nolan allowed us to see more of this character and his relationship with Batman than there was in the first film, and also with the addition of his relationship with Harvey Dent. He acted like a father figure to these two men in which he tried to inspire their good doing in order to create the needed hero for Gotham City. There is more depth and emotion to Nolan and Oldman’s version of Gordon unlike the Pat Hingle version in Tim Burton’s series of Batman films in which he is played as frumpy and very one dimensional.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two Face. Another acknowledgeable performance. This is the one prime character in which we are allowed to witness his complete arc in the film. We trust him and love him as all of Gotham’s civilians. He is the only man who can stand his ground keeping his role as the hero and leaving Batman in second place as the outlaw superhero. But then within this same film we witness his transformation into Two Face, a villain, in which we understand this transformation as caused by losing the one he loved and we accept him as a villain, because just as Harvey Dent said earlier in the film, if a hero lives long enough he becomes the villain.

I understand now why my boyfriend is going to see this film for his third time today at an Imax theater because I can’t wait to see it again, not even long enough to wait for the eventual DVD release. There is a lot that happens with each character and the entire story that on one viewing there has to be at least a few things that you didn’t catch or could have missed. This is nothing negative against the movie, it’s actually a compliment to how good of a storyteller Nolan is to provide us with so much in one film. So I don’t just recommend seeing this The Dark Knight, I recommend seeing it at least twice. I am sure this is what many people have done by evidence of the outstanding box office numbers this film has received.

-Shavon Keller