A few days after watching the Dark Knight I gathered my thoughts. Normally I try to rate a movie right after I leave the cinema, but this time was different.
Nolan's vision of Batman left me stunned. Not Because it was extremely original (Because it was not for someone who read through all the important Batman Graphic Novels), but because Nolan treated DC's character like no other director before him. He went for depressive realism as the backlight for the movie's plot --- there is a scar on each soul. There are no heroes, no monsters, no innocent bystanders. There are humWhy...so...serious?an beings and every, each one of them has a flaw. A flaw so important, it prevents them from being average, ordinary, ...happy.
In a peculiar, subtle way, Nolan suggests that Batman, the Joker, Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, even poor Alfred (with his pastime war stories), are all sociopaths. The one thing that separates them, is the "how", that allows them to exist in a dark and nasty reality.
Batman's has his surpressed anger, his need for vengeance, that he keeps in check only through following a rigorristic set of moral rules. The Joker could be Derrida's buddy - he deconstructs Gotham's network of societal correlations with methodical flare --- only to achieve pure anarchy (if you want this a little more "in your face' - read "Arkham Asylum"). Dent believes in black and white so much, that injustice makes him turn to blind chance as the only judge.
When you strip the "Knight" of FX, the chases, the booms and the bangs (which all are very entertaining I assure you) all thats left, are human beings trying to cope with a mean world, resembling the one from Rodriguez' "Sin City". However, Nolan knew, that what separates Batman from the "Sin Cities", the "100 Bullets" and the "powers" (all VERY neo-noir) are the gritty, down to earth characters.
If you read through "The Long Halloween", "The Killing Joke" or "Batman: Year One" comics you see people - no superheroes, no supervillains, but damaged, wounded, scarred human beings. Bale and Ledger (especially Ledger) both hit bullseye with their interpretation of Batman and Joker. Ledger probably nails a perfect 10 with his display distancing even Jack Nicholson.
Old Jacko's Joker was great - crazy, funny and never-boring, but because of Tim Burton's interpretation - one-dimensional. Ledger shows Joker as the ultimate psychopath - not a mastermind of crime. His Joker has no class, no manners, no masks (sic!). He, simply put, never pretends - he believes every word of his contradicting "smile" stories, because in a way, he lived through them all. He is Musil's "Man without qualities" who, in madness and anarchy, found the meaning of life.
Somehow, "the Dark Knight" seems a movie much closer to "L.A. Confidential" than any superhero flick. Maybe, because there is no black and white, and there are no winners and losers... In the end - everybody hurts.
The Dark Knight --- 8+/10 (two or three to many pompous tirades and oh my god who left the-Batbike-180degree-turn-on-the-wall-stunt in the movie had to be drunk-dead or an idiot).
