I saw Dark Knight with Heath Ledger's Joker when it first aired at the flicks in 2009. I re-watched it this week on DVD. I must say after my initial excitement I was left disappointed the second time round. Despite Ledger's brilliantly maniacal and ultimately tragic Joker rendition, I found the rest of the film tediously convoluted, bloated and overlong. It just wasn't comics. Batman's voice sounds like a Rottweiler growling through a letterbox and the whole Two Face/Rachel/Mob thing just got in the way and if ditched could have halved the film's inflated length. They should have tossed for it!
Christopher Nolan's film is supposedly iconoclastic but If I wanted to see a gritty crime thriller then I might as well have watched The Departed or Get Carter. I understand that it's not 1989 anymore and Tim Burton/ Micheal Keaton's original gothic comic vision belongs back then and we have grown cynical but this most recent effort is unduly realistic, everyday and stripped of any imagination. If nothing around the comic characters is itself comical then they will inevitably appear ridiculous like clowns in masks. The Joker is a comic character and not a real-life terrorist.
As for it's review's at the time I can't believe it's been ranked the 15th greatest film in history. I surmise, that like Brandon Lee's The Crow, the Dark Knight's legendary status has more to do with Heath Ledger's untimely and tragic death in real life than any mould-breaking by the film.
What do you think?
What a fascinating review, Woodsy! I haven't seen the film, but I get what you're saying. I suspect I might think just the same.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly taken by your view that realism might have been part of the problem. I remember some years ago going to the cinema to see the version of Frankenstein which had Helena Bonham Carter in it. The book is an important one to me - not a favourite, just important. When I left the cinema I was bitterly disappointed. Why? The film had struck me as very realistic, but utterly soulless. And I had wondered at the time if the realism had been bought at the expense of that missing soul.