Filling in for Sharon Wheeler
I've always been the kind of person to shy away from whatever the new biggest, enormous craze of the time happens to be. I don't own a copy of "Thriller." I don't watch "American Idol." In the Seventies, I never went to a disco. In the Sixties, I confess, I was a Beatles fan. But hey, they were the Beatles.
Suffice it to say, until this week, I had not seen "The Dark Knight." It just smacked of way too much hype and of all the wrong kind--a superhero movie that was being discussed as a work of great art?
But I teach screenwriting at a college on occasion, and my students were after me: "This is the real deal," one of them said. "It's the best movie of the year. You can't teach screenwriting if you don't want to see this movie."
So okay. What with the new ability to upload movies onto my TiVo box direct from Amazon, and Amazon's willingness to show me The Dark Knight for less than $2, I took a slow work day and sat down to see what all the hype was about.
See, for me, Batman was Adam West. When I was of a very impressionable age, the TV version of Batman debuted, and it was more fun than a barrel of very silly Monkees. Sure, it was stupid--it was intentionally stupid--but that was the point. It was campy. Hell, it was the Sixties--to NOT be campy would have been a crime! But when you're not yet 10 years old, and this paunchy guy shows up on TV with all his neato gizmos and a sidekick who's supposed to be just a few years older than you (but was actually pushing 30 on a good day), who deals with all the villains and the death machines and a weekly cliffhanger, well, that makes an impression.
West's Batman seemed stoned most of the time. He was a vigilante seemingly because he had nothing better to do, and because he liked playing with any gadget he could put the word "bat" in front of. Much like George Reeves (who played Superman roughly a decade earlier), he had a laid-back, almost amused quality on camera, and winked to the camera so often Sarah Palin was probably taking notes.
In one episode, Batman is forced to hold a conversation with Bruce Wayne, and West's performance, awkward and hurried, is hilarious. His voice is exactly the same for both "characters" he's playing. The people listening in (and that was the point of the scene) would never have been able to tell which one was supposed to be speaking.
Now, the idea of a dark version of Batman seemed logical. Times, in case you haven't noticed, have changed since 1967, and the silly version of Batman wouldn't be workable anymore. In these days when comic books are called "Graphic Novels," and become the basis of most movies, way too much respect is being paid to this form, so superhero movies would naturally become art films. It makes sense.
I saw "Batman Begins" a few years ago when my son was going through his most serious Batman phase, and wasn't especially impressed. That movie, though, was liked and not loved by most critics and didn't achieve the kind of heightened status that The Dark Knight managed with the same basic team: Christopher Nolan directing and co-writing with his brother, and Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader.
So I sat down to see why this movie was being considered for a Best Picture nomination, why Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker was better than Jack Nicholson's, and what made this movie the toast of the highbrows this year.
I'm still wondering.
Yeah, this Batman is darker than the others. Yes, it has a sheen of realism on it (although the crazy gadgets and car are still way over the top). Sure, there's a tragic quality to it.
But you know what? It also goes on about a half hour too long, it is approximately 40 percent more pretentious than it needs to be, and the appearances of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, the only two actors in the cast with a sense of humor, are much too brief.
Bale, as Batman and Bruce Wayne, at least modulates his voice. He modulates it to the point that when Batman is talking, you can barely hear him, and when Wayne is talking, you're too bored to care. There's so much going on in this movie that it's hard to remember Batman is supposed to be the main character, and about 20 minutes into the film, you understand why his name isn't in the title. He's an extra in his own movie.
Heath Ledger's farewell performance as the Joker is, I'll say now, head and shoulders above Cesar Romero's. (For one thing, Romero insisted they apply the white makeup over his quite-visible mustache.) It's probably more affecting than Nicholson's. But a powerhouse performance that deserves the Oscar he's (almost certainly) going to receive posthumously? I must have missed that part.
By the time this marathon film is about halfway through, the Joker has stopped being a fearsome sociopathic genius and has become that annoying guy at the party who thinks he's funny and won't shut up. You dread his appearances on the screen because you just don't have the energy to smile and nod at him anymore, and wish he'd just go away.
The movie leaves him hanging by his foot from a building. He's still talking.
Sorry, but while I didn't hate "The Dark Knight," I'm still in the dark (no pun intended) about why it's a great achievement in film.
Personally, I sort of miss Adam West.
