It’s 3am in Louisville and I’ve just returned from seeing the Dark Knight at a midnight showing. As such, please excuse any ramblings, hyperbole or straight-up ridiculousness. In fact, I can save you some time now and summarize what I know ahead of time will be the subtext to anything I write about the movie I just saw: the Dark Knight makes every other movie in theaters today seem like a waste of my time.
Coming out of the theater after the Dark Knight, I was galvanized in a way that I haven’t been in a long time. I saw it with three friends who I’ll be driving to Chicago with tomorrow, and I know we’ll be talking about it for all of the five hour drive. And that’s actually not saying much about the film, considering that people will no doubt be discussing it decades from now. Everything you’ve read or heard about this movie is true: it’s the Godfather, it’s Heat and it’s something entirely new altogether. The people behind The Dark Knight created a masterpiece. They know it, I know it and millions of people are about to know it too.
When explaining the impact that Heath Ledger’s Joker has on screen, I’m going to start at an unlikely source: Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka. Wilder said that he would take the job as Wonka under the condition that he got to enter the movie by pulling one over on the audience (his limp and cane). When asked why, he responded that “from that point on, no one will know when [he is] lying or telling the truth.” Similarly, the Joker’s first real scene firmly establishes him as an unpredictable madman. I won’t spoil the fun for you, but I will say that his “magic trick” was the first of three times my jaw dropped and a shot which elicited both laughter and chills from the audience I saw it with.
Heath Ledger absolutely, 100% without a doubt owns the screen for two hours. People are saying he should get a nomination for best supporting actor, but I left the movie convinced that he was clearly its star. I’m a big Christian Bale fan (”I have to return some video tapes”), but even he couldn’t match the intensity, the otherworldliness of Ledger’s creation. His scenes in prison and in the hospital are not only hallmark of a fantastic comic adaptation, but the markings of a classic film. At no point was I not focused on Ledger: during other people’s speeches, fight scenes he merely observed or when he was being driven down the street. If the Joker was on the screen, my eyes and thoughts were all on him.
Now, let me backtrack a little bit here. I believe that the most important part of deciding what kind of fan you are of the Batman mythology is seeing where you jumped into his world. For me it was the 1990s TV show Batman: The Animated Series. When I picture how Batman sounds, I hear Kevin Conroy, not Keaton or Clooney; and the Joker’s laugh always belonged to Mark Hamil, not Nicholson. But no matter where you jumped into Batman’s stream, The Dark Knight will be your roaring waterfall. It beats everything to come before it, and it sets an impossibly high standard for everything after it. Is it the best “superhero” movie? You bet. In fact, it just might be one of the greats.
To wrap it up (and I should wrap it up, I leave for Chicago in a few short hours), I’ll chop it all down for you. There is more humanity, art, beauty, adventure and shock in the Dark Knight’s two-plus hours than in anything you’ll see in the art house theaters this year, anything flowing forth from the major studios any time soon and certainly more than anything Michael Bay could do in his lifetime. Take it from me: I’m a few hours away from seeing some of the best bands on the planet perform and all I can think about is getting back home to Kentucky so I can see this movie again in the IMAX.
