Recent Movie Report, vol. 6
Jul 29th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 6 Comments |
[ Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | Etc. ]
Surprisingly good. Movies about people living lies really bother me, but I survived this one.
Deals with some good issues regarding what it means to be an excellent person, and whether it would be good to act it even if you weren’t.
Best line (from a philosophical/Aristotelian point of view):
I just gotta learn to do it without the dress.
Amen.
Besides the mid/early-teen kids drinking some strong-smelling alcoholic beverage or other and talking for most of the movie (and the two middle-aged women sitting beside us and doing the same, minus the alcohol) . . . .
I still have a headache, and my sinuses are burned.
I hate alcohol so much.
Anyway, the movie is simultaneously too optimistic and realistically depressing about human nature. (It’s really hard “to believe” when you’re surrounded by reality.)
Best line: When Joker refers to himself and Batman as being like an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force.
Heath Ledger is brilliant.
For TDK, I think “simultaneously too optimistic & realistically depressing abt. human nature” is a good description. Heath was indeed brilliant. I only wish TDK had the breadth of Batman Begins - much of that movie happening outside of Gotham, giving it a breath of life rare in superhero movies & escaping the usual claustrophobia of being stuck in a single location for an entire movie. TDK made one excursion to Hong Kong, which was good. There also wasn’t as much development of Bruce’s character. Excellent movie, tho’.
Excellent points.
And it is an excellent movie.
I’m going to have to disagree about the development of Bruce Wayne. I think that was one of the main points of the movie…lots of character study going on. He had to come to terms with who Batman was/needed to be, and had to mature enough to take on that responsability, even though it seriously sucked and he didn’t want it.
Also, I think it’s worth questioning if it’s actually possible to be too optimistic/depressing about human nature. Humans might be the most depressing, yet surprisingly glorious beings I can think of.
I think I’m with Joanna on this. It takes an awful lot of strength to realize that, much as you’d like to be the hero of the day you’ll take care of people the best if you’re the villain.
I blogged about this a while back, but it’s probably really arrogant to post a link to a blog so I think I’ll summarize myself instead, which is probably slightly less obnoxious:
I think DK shares a recent preoccupation (almost obsession) of suspense and horror films:
humans are animals at their core.
I think it’s actually a deeply cynical film, bordering on a morality play. (Or perhaps an immorality play.) Not so long ago, the horror genre was once in some sense deeply conservative and moralistic. The protagonists succeeeded or failed based on characteristics like bravery and ingenuity.
While Dark Knight clearly isn’t a horror flick it bares some commonalities with the new wave of American horror films like Saw, Hostel, The Mist, The Descent, Cloverfield.
The only “values” that are rewarded are endurance of unimaginable suffering, and allowing ourselves to be dehumanized.
*** Dark Knight Spoiler below***
A few specifics: Harvey Dent is the most idealistic character in the film…and in some sense the whole thing could have been called “The Tragedy of Harvey Dent” (Using the word “tragedy” in the literary/Aristotelean sense)
Batman, an idealist in his own way, is similarly “punished” for his idealism… He ends the film a fugitive.
Gordon, the least idealistic, is rewarded for his realism and becomes the new chief.
For the record, I thought it was an awesome movie, though.