The Dark Knight
Cut because I like to kick small puppies and eat tiny kittens, but spoilers make me sad inside.
I liked this a lot the first time I saw it, and then because of a series of wacky hijinks, I went to see it again. So now I still like it, only not so much. That’s what happens when you spend too much time alone with a movie: even though you know it’s pretty, you start noticing stupid little things that shouldn’t matter. Like the fact that Christian Bale’s nose is really creepy. Or the fact that if Lau really had been left alive on top of that burning pile of money, then the Joker’s dialog in that scene ought to have been interrupted by his howls of pain.
Or maybe he would have passed out from smoke inhalation before that. I don’t know-maybe I’m not giving Nolan enough credit.
So, after two viewings, what did I think? I will break it down into a numbered list, for my convenience (not yours).
1.) Dude, Rachel Dawes totally kicked it. I didn’t see that one coming, although I probably should have. After the Joker stabbed someone in the eye with a pencil, I should have realized all bets were off.
2.) Dude, Rachel Dawes was a total mistake to begin with. I mean, in the last movie she was woefully miscast: I certainly never believed that Katie Holmes could smack Bruce Wayne in the face, and let’s be honest–neither did you. In this movie, Dawes was played by an actress who is actually believably tough, but the character still went nowhere for me. Why not? Because I’m familiar enough with the Batman franchise to know that Rachel Dawes wasn’t part of it until Batman Begins. I know she doesn’t wind up being a villain I actually care about, and even before they blew her sky-high in this film, I knew she wasn’t going to end up with Bruce Wayne. She doesn’t fit anywhere into the mythology of Batman, and she’s not really an interesting character in her own right; she’s supposed to serve as Bruce’s moral compass, so she’s less of a person and more of a symbol. The writers tried to disguise that by making her “gutsy” or whatnot, but…it doesn’t really work. In short, she was a boring waste of my time. RIP, Mrs. Dent. RIP.
3.) The period mixing got on my nerves. The original comics began in 1939 (thanks, Wikipedia!), and a lot of the plotting and style of the film reflects that. Rachel’s suits, in particular, are very mid-twentieth century; hell, even the way Maggie Gyllenhaal swishes her butt is very forties crime drama. And the whole mob setup? St. Valentine’s Day Massacre all the way (yes, I know that was in the twenties, but these things live on in the popular imagination for some time). Even the whole idea of the mob being this huge threat to Gotham was very pre-WWII, honestly. I mean, my father’s people have continued to be heavily involved in organized crime, but the Mafia’s heyday as a major force in the American psyche is long over. Nowadays, when we talk about the Italian mob, we’re usually referring to The Godfather or The Sopranos; we’re not exactly breathless to see what Al Capone or his ilk will do next. So having this very Italian-style crime family doing their money laundering through a sophisticated Hong Kong businessman just seems…well, it’s a little weird. I mean, I know intellectually that it’s just as much of an anachronism to have the characters using cell phones or computers, but…I feel like those are issues of style, not structure. You can update the costuming and the setting and I’ll just be like, “Hey, that looks kind of neat,” but if you try to put a forties-era mob in the context of a global economy (and therefore global crime), it just feels…wrong. The pieces don’t fit. Forties mob warfare war about “owning” a city; global bank fraud is…well, it’s fucking global. The two, they don’t mesh so well. One makes money by building up barriers and squeezing cash out of the people trapped inside; the other makes money by tearing barriers down and moving money where it’s not “supposed” to go. Kind of diametrically opposed, frankly. And I know that this movie is supposed to be about the rules of the game changing, but that’s not really how they present the money laundering. Lau says he’s the mob’s only option now, but no one ever insinuates that they’ve never used him before. The implication is that they’ve never entrusted all of their money to him before, not that they’ve never entrusted any. Batman has made him their only option-but he’s always been an option. And frankly, that kind of bothers me.
4.) Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch-so what did I actually like about this movie? Plenty, and it starts with a J. Oh, Joker: from the second you blew away every other member of your bank-robbing crew just…just cause, you had my cold, black little heart. I love you for killing indiscriminately. I love you for lying to Batman about where Rachel was. I love you for looking and acting like you wandered out of an Irish street gang. I love you for wearing a nurse’s outfit with absolutely no self-consciousness. I especially love you for sticking your head out the window like a drooly, psychotic puppy when you escaped from the police station. Most of all, though, I love you for getting Batman down on the ground and then wailing on him like a five-year-old with a tire-iron. Other villains might like, pull a ninja move on his ass, but not you! And I love you for that. In conclusion, I love you, I love, I love you, and I really wish Heath Ledger weren’t dead so that I could watch you wreak havoc again.
Recommended for: If you like superhero movies or crime dramas or Maggie Gyllenhaal’s butt, you will like this.
