ZEE'S REVIEWS

14th Dec 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)

You'd think it would take a lot for a movie to topple The Godfather from its number one spot on the IMDB movie list. In the case of The Dark Knight, I suspect it is mostly hype, and I predict it won't be long before The Godfather comes back swinging.

Despite not being the best movie of all time, The Dark Knight remains a worthy successor to Batman Begins. The return of the Nolans to the directorial helm and the reappearance of the commendable cast are promising signs of its quality. Combine this with a solid script and you are almost all the way there.

But few of us watch a Batman movie for the plot. We watch it for the characters. In this movie, we watch it for Batman, the Dark Knight, and for his nemesis, the Joker. Here they battle for the soul of Harvey Dent, public prosecutor, fearless crusader, and incidentally the new love of Rachel Dawes, for whom Bruce Wayne still carries a torch.

The Joker is determined to ruin Harvey Dent, while Batman is desperate to elevate him to be the hero Gotham needs - a hero who can walk in the light, allowing Bruce Wayne to pass on the mantle of protector of the city and live a normal life with the woman he loves.

This is a movie of reflections and reversals, befitting the minds that came up with Memento and The Prestige. The line between what we are and what we fight is thin, and the Joker is the dark mirror of Batman, a vision of what he could become if the brakes came off, a reminder that often the evil we have to fight lies within ourselves.

Christian Bale cannot be faulted in his performance as Batman. But it is Heath Ledger as the Joker who is absolutely mesmerising; he completely inhabits the character and makes you believe. Aaron Eckhart does an admirable job as Harvey Dent, ostensibly rival to Bruce Wayne but staunch ally to Batman. Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn't get much to do - a shame, since Rachel Dawes is one of the few female characters in the movie - although the little she is given she does well. Still, she remains a catalyst, not an agent, perhaps indicative of the boys' club nature of most superhero comics. At its heart this movie is about the triumvirate of Batman, the Joker, and Harvey Dent.

The pace of the movie is episodic, as Batman and the Joker test each other, like in some drawn-out cat and mouse game, with Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent hapless victims caught in the middle. And yet despite tragedy and darkness, the movie still manages an optimism, a hard-won principled goodness, that is affirming.