"The Dark Knight" - Above and Beyond

“Batman Begins” made the promise.

“The Dark Knight” keeps it.

Don’t get me wrong, because I can already hear the railings of rabid, frothing fanboys going for my throat for suggesting Christopher Nolan’s first Batman film was not perfect. I’ve already seen these guys over on Rottentomatoes.com, ready to skin any reviewer who doesn’t praise the sequel. And they feel the same way about “Begins” – it is holy, it is untouchable, it is beyond reproach.

Well…mostly. Again, I insist you not get me wrong. I loved the first film. I own the first film. It was the first real Batman movie (and only the second good one up until that time). It was so good that I just couldn’t help spotting the worn parts of its fabric, the little parts that could have been tweaked JUST a little to make it (near) perfect. Most of that involved the forcing of super-hero conventions into a more real-world film. The film wanted, so badly, to bring the Batman mythos into the world we know, to make it live outside the confines of panel-to-panel limitations that most makers of super-hero films refuse to let go of. And in so many ways, it accomplished this. But there were key moments where things didn’t quite work – spots where I felt like someone in the studio was watching and would suddenly get a little frightened at how far Nolan was straying from the formula. Like, at the end of that first brilliant segment in Tibet – the training sequence where Batman truly “begins”, the part that had me, in the theater back then, thinking, “Wait a minute…what IS this? This is a real movie. They’re making a REAL film!”. I can imagine the first showing of those dailies to the studio, and one of the execs saying, “Okay, stop, hold it! What if, right there, Ra’s al Ghul suddenly says, ‘And now…we must DESTROY Gotham City!’?” Wait…what? They had just started building a whole new Bat world, and just as it was spreading its wings, they yanked it back down with a “Bah!” super-villain moment. Okay, to be honest, I think that was less about studio and more about David S. Goyer’s co-scripting on “Begins”. In my head, I imagine Nolan as the one with the vision, and Goyer being there to keep him from going “too far”. That’s what the first film – brilliant as it was – felt like to me…like there was this dream they had of what Batman could be on film, but there was a fear of going all the way with that dream, of trying something so radically different. But they came so, so close, and “Begins” showed us what they could do, what they WOULD do if we would accept it, and allow it.

“The Dark Knight” is now here. And the whispered promise has been shouted from the rooftops.

(Of Chicago, as a matter of fact).

That Nolan’s vision is no longer something to be hidden is evident from the opening shots of the film. We see Gotham City (Chicago…shhh!) in broad daylight. It’s like he was announcing it to the world with this choice of production design – no more hiding, we’re taking a “real” Batman movie out into the world for everyone to see. I noticed this from the first posters and trailers of the film. Who takes a Batman film into the DAYLIGHT? A brave writer/director, that’s who. And from the opening scene, we find this is not all he’s done that takes guts. The super-hero trappings are all but gone. No wacky henchmen, no neon-covered tommy guns. Our villains are very human, and they’re all, large to small, a lot smarter than most movie bad guys get to be, and this makes them so much more dangerous. The safety net is gone, the comfort of the familiar genre four-color hero flick replaced with an unpredictable crime film. So much about this film is so unexpected, and that (listen up, Hollywood) is what keeps audiences on the edge of their seats – NOT bigger and sillier CGI.

“The Dark Knight” is a fully-developed crime epic, never in a rush, never pulling the trigger before the right moment, taking its time to set its own pace, not try to predict the attention span of its summer movie audience. You play by ITS rules, and you thank the film for it by the end. Before the film came out, when I first heard that they’d made it over two-and-a-half hours, I told a friend that I think the tragic death of Heath Ledger may have saved this film from an arbitrary studio cut down to two or less hours. Perhaps that….perhaps just faith in Nolan after the first film. Either way, the perpetually panicky studio rolled the dice on an extra-long “action” flick, and I hope this teaches them a valuable lesson, because, as of this night (Saturday night of its opening weekend), it’s on track to shatter previous box office records. Good reviews and box office dollar CAN go together.

I was all but luxuriating in the pacing. Nolan took time to build each character – main and minor – set the themes, build the relationships, tell the story with respect FOR the story. We’re paying almost ten bucks for movies these days (I think you New Yorkers are paying more than that), and for that kind of money, I expect my money’s worth. I got it tonight, and then some.

Bale is back with his complicated, multi-layered Batman. Gary Oldman is back as the Jim Gordon we’ve always deserved, and in both films has been one of the best parts of the ensemble. Michael Caine again dazzles and gets his moments. Morgan Freeman gets even more to do as Lucius Fox this time around, and again brings more cred to the film just by being in it (and at times serves at the conscience of the film). Maggie Gyllenhaal is a fantastic addition to the cast, replacing the “We think your husband and you are nuts so we don’t want you back next time” Katie Holmes playing Rachel Dawes. I was glad to see they at least kept the same character between both films, instead of the “new love of Bruce’s life this film” formula from the previous installments. Frankly, this film needed a stronger actress. I think Katie did just fine in the first one, but this time around, we really needed someone with more range. We got it in Maggie.

But, as you’ve probably heard by now, the film is really owned by two men – Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger. I managed to stay mostly spoiler-free on this film, so I had no idea what a big part of the film the Harvey Dent character was going to play. What an amazing character, and what a perfect actor to bring him to life. How often do you find a romantic foil for your film’s hero becoming someone you root for? His character’s campaign tagline was “I Believe in Harvey Dent”. I found myself believing, too. But Ledger. I really didn’t want to come out of this doing like everyone else and focusing everything on his performance, which has been starting to look like the thing you MUST do because it’s his last performance, and it would be disrespectful to do otherwise. This is not respect, this is not sympathy hype. He was extraordinary. Never once did I see Heath Ledger on that screen, which is probably the best compliment you can pay an actor. He was the Joker – his OWN Joker, a unique and startling recreation, violent, sickly charming, unintentionally and darkly humorous. He really threw everything he had into that role. I just read the review of a friend of mine who does movie reviews on a local morning radio show, and he said that it now breaks his heart that Ledger will never be able to play the Joker again, because now, no one else should be allowed to. It’s hard for me to disagree with him. This is not a “give him the Oscar because he died” situation. He earned it. And you’re left afterward feeling the unfairness of it all over again, the waste of young talent just starting to blossom.

Nolan created the most believable Gotham City yet, in day and in night, and its citizens come to life along with it. Supporting characters from cops to mobsters are treated with respect and given dignity, and aren’t just there to deliver lines to move the plot along and shine the light on the “real” characters. This Gotham, and this film, breathes. It breathes and hopes and fears and makes you feel a part of it, not like you’re looking at a miniature model with tiny window lights between cuts to soundstages with extras mindlessly roaming it. You are in Gotham City, not in some art designer’s interpretation of a mythical comic book metropolis. There was even some of this is “Begins” to contend with, but Nolan freed himself from that and cast off the shackles of it this time.

Those going into this film expecting a summer movie slugfest may find themselves checking their watches (or their cell phones, the modern wristwatch, as a couple of annoying attention-challenged viewers ahead of me did several times). If you want a “thrill ride”, you need to go see “Crystal Skull” again and get all the Tarzan-swinging and nuclear blasts your heart desires. This film challenges you to trust it and come along with it, to see a story realized in its fullness – and to think. The thrills are there, don’t worry, but Nolan understands what I’ve come to refer to as my Betty Crocker Theory of Filmmaking. You can’t just serve someone a plate of frosting. You have to bake the cake first. And it has to be good cake. The frosting is there to make the cake even better. It is NOT the cake. When you’re served nothing but frosting, it seems to taste good, but in the end you’re left feeling slightly ill and you have a mouth full of cavities. You can’t just have a whole film filled with Act III. You need Act I and Act II to build you up to it, to make Act III worth the wait. Nolan hits all the right notes at the right time, and the result is simply amazing. The super-hero film has finally grown up, and Nolan and company have proved that you don’t have to talk down to your audience. It is possible to make a film based on the fantastical imaginings of comic book lore and still make it for intelligent adults.

“The Dark Knight” is one of those very rare films that prove a sequel can actually exceed its predecessor. And when the first film itself was so above board, this is no small feat. And in a summer of very big films, it has become the clear winner – both and quality and, I have no doubt, in box office numbers. And in a summer of some big disappointments, it grinned at its own hype and waited for us to show up and find that it has lived up to and exceeded it. It is ambitious, it is transcendent, it is a tremendous achievement. It, and Iron Man, have each, in their own way, raised the bar for super-hero movies. I’m reminded of when grunge took over the rock music scene in the early nineties, and suddenly all the stadium-filling hair band acts looked silly in their makeup and spandex. There was just no going back (which is why most of them are playing small venues in Indian casinos now). I hope that this summer marks the evolution of comic films, and that next summer, Watchmen (whose trailer showed before this film) raises it even higher. We should always have expected more. Now, we have little choice. Nolan’s “Dark Knight” is a wakeup call. And the future for these films now looks as bright as the mid-lay Gotham skyline. Comic book movies, too, can finally come out of the shadows and into the light of day.