There are so many plaudits and good comment for this movie since i wrote some review for this movie a few days ago. Please read here
Here is the story goes…
The Joker (Heath Ledger) strolls into a posh fund-raiser for District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) in the latest Batman big-screen adventure, The Dark Knight. The wingding is hosted by Gotham City’s favourite playboy, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale).
The demented-looking Joker begins to terrorise the bluebloods with his chilling look and brutal physical attacks. He even puts a knife to one person’s mouth. Finally, after he has offered a sober and frosty explanation of why his face is scarred into a permanent smile, The Joker asks in a tone that will send a shiver up your spine: “Why so serious?”
Good question.
The Dark Knight is the darkest Batman movie to date. And this isn’t just slightly darker than the 2005 Batman Begins. This film is leave-the-light-on kind of dark. The serious nature of the movie stems from four factors: an examination of vigilante justice, the masks people wear, the true nature of evil and at what point can personal rights be ignored in favour of community safety?
Seriously. This is a different Batman movie.
The dark tone reflects the 21st century comic-book Batman. Gone are the colourfully bright panels in which Batman and Robin would take on space aliens or bad guys with comical names like Killer Moth and The Rainbow Creature. The new Batman lives in a world where one of his Robins was killed, Batgirl was tortured and left paralysed, and the Caped Crusader’s very existence has been questioned.
All of which is enough to turn anyone serious.
Christopher Nolan, scriptwriter and director of Batman Begins, wanted to make sure he reflected the seriousness of the comic-book character when he stepped back into his dual roles for The Dark Knight.
“What was important for me was the action of the story derived from interesting dilemmas for the character. The central dilemma for Batman is that he is someone driven by very dark impulses,” Nolan says during an interview in June at the Beverly Wilshire. “He is driven by anger and rage. But he attempts to channel that into something positive.
“His central dilemma is: How far can he go using intimidation and violence to achieve good? And I think that is a very human dilemma. It is something society deals with. That is what is going to make this film more exciting and frightening for an audience.”
Even its name suggests the serious tone of The Dark Knight. This is the first Batman movie that does not include the word Batman in the title.
Aaron Eckhart, who gets to play both good and bad as Dent, agrees that The Dark Knight reflects some serious matters that are happening in the real world.
“There are people standing up who are unpopular for the decisions they have made. This is a heavy movie in a lot of ways,” Eckhart says. “The thing that struck me right away was the mirror of our times, the things Chris was tackling. I think people will appreciate this as more than a comic-book movie.”
Nothing sets the serious tone of The Dark Knight more than the purely evil actions of The Joker. The late Ledger’s performance is in stark contrast to Cesar Romero’s comical portrayal of the villain in the camp 60s television series.
The Dark Knight also is dramatically different from previous Batman feature films. The last series of Batman movies, which started with Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and ran through 1997′s Batman and Robin, were a throwback to those more fanciful comic-book times. The Penguin (Danny DeVito) directed a gang of penguins with rockets on their backs in Batman Returns. Arnold Schwarzenegger, before he became governor of California, tried to send Gotham City back to the ice age with a superweapon as the chilly Mr. Freeze.
Neither of those would be considered serious threats in the today’s world.
The Dark Knight‘s script moves the action into the realm of reality. The anarchistic Joker is not to be feared because of his ghoulish makeup or fanciful weapons. He is the worst kind of evil: a terrorist who does horrific things for no reason at all.
Nolan’s serious approach gets played out in scene after scene in which Batman and The Joker collide. As The Joker explains to Batman, “You complete me.” The Joker says it to suggest he is a worthy opponent for Batman. But it also means the pair are a serious balance of good and evil.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, a darling of the independent film circuit, was not even looking for acting work when she was asked to take over the role of Rachel Dawes. (Katie Holmes originated the character in Batman Begins.)
Conversations with Nolan about the serious tone he was taking with the characters and the script convinced her to take the job.
“Although it takes place in Gotham City and fundamentally it is a movie about Batman, Chris wanted us to play everything for truth. The actors he chose for this movie are into realism,” Gyllenhaal says. “This movie is really about something.”
Christian Bale’s theory as to why Nolan was allowed to make an even more serious movie than Batman Begins is that the director no longer had to prove himself.
“The first time people were having faith in Chris’ idea and what he had spoken of what he was going to do. After ‘Batman Begins’ he did not have to convince people. They could see what he meant. So he was given much more the freedom with The Dark Knight to make the movie he wished it to be,” Bale says.
That’s why The Dark Knight is so serious.
Source: The Star online
It was, in this writer’s opinion, the single greatest performance given by an actor in the history of the comic book genre of film. It was also the performance of a lifetime which only adds to the tragedy of his early demise. Heath Ledger’s performance playing “The Joker” will long be remembered and long be talked about. A performance so strong, that it makes us forget he’s not with us anymore. A performance so strong that its presentation overshadowed the shock of his passing. A performance that will be his legacy, and one that will probably earn him an Oscar nomination 6 months or so from now.
or for this movie is it arrives in a blaze of publicity of the most unfortunate kind, caused by the untimely death of Heath Ledger in January 2008 suspected of ‘overdosed’. The star was chosen to play the super-villain the Joker after the director Christopher Nolan admired his “lack of vanity” in Film of Brokeback Mountain, and his total absorption into the role of the gay cowboy. Some speculated, after Ledger’s accidental overdose on prescription pills, that the absorption went too far.
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