Cinema Update

Review of The Dark Knight

By: Raymond Valinoti, Jr.

There are many good reasons to see the new Batman film The Dark Knight- Christopher Nolan’s riveting, action-paced direction, Lee Smith’s intense yet smooth editing of suspenseful moments, and James Newton and Hans Zimmer’s uncomplicated yet majestic musical score are among them. But for me the most important reason is Heath Ledger’s astonishing take on the clownish looking fiend the Joker. Sauntering across the screen in a jittery yet controlled manner, constantly darting his eyes and compulsively licking his lips, Ledger epitomizes pure psychosis. This Joker doesn’t care about money or power; he terrorizes people for the sheer fun of it, cackling all the while.

What’s even more frightening about Ledger’s Joker is that for all his lunacy, he possesses an acute shrewdness. This is particularly evident in his manner of speech. Unlike Jack Nicholson, who bombastically declaimed his lines as the villain in the 1989 film Batman, Ledger delivers his dialogue in a deceptively quiet tone with an underlying menace. The Joker may not have any rational motive for his crimes, but he knows how to execute them.

How can Batman (Christian Bale, reprising the role of the masked superhero in this sequel to Batman Begins) stop such a clever lunatic with the capability to plunge the fictional city of Gotham into complete chaos? Will he have to sink to the Joker’s level, torturing people for information and ignoring laws like due process? To the filmmakers’ credit, they do not provide the viewers with any easy answers. Indeed, the issues remain unresolved right to the very end. The filmmakers allow the audience to decide.

The Dark Knight also benefits from other outstanding performances. Bale is appropriately menacing as Batman, grimly determined to discourage criminals from breaking the law by installing fear into their hearts. With a jet black uniform lacking the tacky adornments that made the hero look foolish in Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (1997) and with a hoarse whisper made more foreboding by bass-heavy microphone equipment, Bale’s Batman is quite an arresting figure. As his playboy alter ego Bruce Wayne, Bale affects an empty-headed nonchalance when he’s in public, spilling out his concerns and anxieties to his confidantes who know his secret crimefighting identity.

Aaron Eckhart is dashing and charismatic as the idealistic district attorney Harvey Dent, determined to clean Gotham of all corruption and vice. For anyone reading this review who is unfamiliar with the original Batman comic book, I won’t spill the beans on what tragedy befalls Dent. But I can assure all readers that when it does happen, Eckhart simultaneously conveys chills and pathos. Gary Oldman as Police Commissioner James Gordon, Michael Caine as Wayne’s faithful butler Alfred, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, a CEO at Wayne’s corporation, effectively reprise their roles from the previous Batman film.

But the most haunting impression in The Dark Knight is Ledger’s performance, not only because of its demonic vitality, but because we know the young actor died of a drug overdose before the film was released. It’s a colossal shame that this genuinely gifted performer destroyed himself before he could fulfill his potential. If there is any consolation, it is that his remarkable work, particularly in The Dark Knight, has been preserved on film for posterity. Playing at Clearview’s Beacon Hill Cinema 5, this movie is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.

Raymond Valinoti, Jr. is a resident of Berkeley Heights, NJ. He has a Master’s in Library Science from Rutgers University and is a freelance researcher. His articles on film have been published in the magazines Midnight Marquee and Films of the Golden Age. He can be reached at raymondva@comcast.net