Christopher Nolan (2008)

Multiply depressing.  The story is bleak; the carnage is humourlessly orchestrated and very protracted; the film marks the last appearance of Heath Ledger[1] – and his performance as the Joker may become what he’s best remembered for.   It’s evidently taken as read that mayhem in comic book-based material is, by definition, harmless – the film has a 12A certificate (the Odeon website warns of no more than ‘mild violence and sustained threat’) and the audience I was part of audibly approved of the most spectacular fights and ravishing explosions (notably the Gotham City hospital complex).  But what are you supposed to make of the unreality when most of the cast seem to have been encouraged to give glumly realistic performances (and oblige)?   It’s hard to translate these characters into death-defying creatures of fantasy, who’ll live to fight another day whatever the visual evidence here.  (Batman and the Joker are the only exceptions – and the fact of Heath Ledger’s death is made more distressing by that irony.)    It may be axiomatic that in this kind of film the director is more interested in the technology than he is in the actors but – because of the disjuncture between the drabness of the people and the authority of the special effects that, in every way, dominate them – this has its own dehumanising effect.

The Batman material obviously taps into persisting psychic fears in order to retain its grip on the imagination:  if New York and other metropolitan audiences have become a bit less concerned about ‘cleaning up’ their city it’s probably only because this anxiety has been overtaken, by either a vaguer unease of things getting out of control environmentally or the dread of invasive terrorism.   (When Bruce Wayne is puzzled as to why a criminal can’t be bought, his butler-adviser Alfred Pennyworth tells him – in one of the best lines in the script – that ‘some men just want to see things burn’.   This refers to the Joker but it rings a bell with the feelings some people have that Islamist terrorists are effectively anarchists – because their religious-political demands seem out of the question to a Western sensibility.)  In order to eclipse your awareness of the fears on which the material feeds and to enjoy what’s on the screen, the components of a Batman film need to be (especially at this stage – this is the sixth film since the first Tim Burton one in 1989) more engaging than most of them are here.  The screenplay, by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, is serviceable but strenuous – and wordy in laying out the moral dilemmas of a vigilante trying to defeat a villain.  The score, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, is used for obvious ominous effect and often played so loud that it drowns out the actors’ words.  The visuals (the cinematographer is Wally Pfister, the production designer Nathan Crowley), although sometimes beautiful, are impregnated with gloom.

The Joker’s make-up, however, is truly extraordinary – a ravaged Pagliacci with a gash of a mouth out of Francis Bacon – and Heath Ledger repeatedly takes you by surprise in revealing the whites of his eyes from out of the blue shadows they dwell in.  It’s no surprise that this actor gives a dazzling performance.  It is startling, given his previous work on screen, that he gives this kind of dazzling performance – especially in the early scenes, in which he builds up a breathtaking momentum and poise in vivifying the comic book dimension of the Joker – at the same time as he creates a frightening, believable psychotic.   (As time goes on, his performance seems to become more of a turn – but this may be simply because its initial impact is so great.)   This is a powerful example of how a mask can give a performer greater emotional and physical freedom and originality.

The same process seems to be at work, in a smaller way, later in the film, when the crusading DA of Gotham City, is burned and horribly disfigured.  Until then, Aaron Eckhart is competent but blurred in the role – losing the left-hand side of his face (the remains of which also evoke Bacon) sharpens up his acting remarkably.    Compared with both these two, Christian Bale, reprising his lead role from Batman Begins, is vacuous:  his Bruce Wayne is a disagreeable, wanly sarcastic presence – with no connection to (or even a striking disconnection from) his alter ego.    Gary Oldman, as a police lieutenant, appears to think he can play a decent man effectively by making himself look dreary then relying on his interior strength as an actor to transform the dreariness – a plan that is bound to fail dismally.   As the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Morgan Freeman – who has the luminous humanity, as well as the natural authority, that Oldman completely lacks – is relaxed and polished and, once again, manages to command respect without pomposity.  Michael Caine is adequate but rather monotonous as Pennyworth – although you do sense an increasing discomfort in him that his partner in the master-servant double act is such a negative.  When Caine gets the chance to hug Maggie Gyllenhaal – she plays the DA’s partner, who is also Wayne’s ex – his sense of relief is palpable.  Gyllenhaal is really good (and it’s perhaps no coincidence that Ledger is especially riveting in his encounter with her):  she gives off a slight sense of indifference to what she’s doing but her instincts and humour see her through.  If more of the performances were pitched at this level, The Dark Knight would be a much less unpleasant experience.

30 July 2008

[1]  Not quite – see The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.