the long dark nighttime

Also, saw The Dark Knight yesterday. Still trying to process it. On the one hand, I enjoyed the hell out of it. A big, ambitious, serious comic book movie that chewed over some decently big ideas. Some excellent suspense: each of the Joker's nightmare plots raised the stakes, and each new twist lived up to the expectation. Then there was the Joker himself: I think Ledger knocked him out of the ballpark, as a cinematic character, though I haven't read the comics. I think I even caught of hint of Jack in his delivery, too, though for the most part his lines were delivered in a creepy, realistic, delightful savoring of dialogue that matched his oh-so-flesh-and-blood painted-and-suited-up madman. The character's 'theme,' as it were -- the strange electronic hum that accompanied his various plots -- might have been heavy-handed, but it worked. Brilliantly.

... and yet, perhaps that terrifying hum suggests why I remain ambivalent about the film. Yes, the leitmotif was off-kilter and terrifying: a hipster banshee's wail for a topsy-turvy, recognizably modern city. But it felt like the punch of a collapsing boxer, because the rest of the movie seemed at times distant, unreal. This was a nightmare show seen through a glass, comfortably. For all the Joker's plotting, the city collapses in the background; I never quite felt drawn into the claustrophobia of a truly great thriller. Nor, for all the much-vaunted murders, did I ever feel a true sense of loss, much less pathos -- not because the plot wouldn't have supported it, but because Nolan's directing never built up any characters in such a way. The death of the judge? Of the Commissioner? Of the vigilante Batman? They were told, never shown. Dawes' demise was a little too sudden, I think, and somehow lacked the tragic sense of an innocent life cut short by cruelty. The final scene could have gone down that dark path, but I think the scriptwriters were correct that the film couldn't bear the death of Gordon's kid.

Too, unlike, say, Hannibal Lecter, this Joker, for all his pitch-perfect shambling, drawling, and giggling, never quite looms out of the dark night with quite the primeval horror of that scene in the ambulance towards the end of "Silence of the Lambs".

In part, I think the blame lies with the director. The action sequences were badly edited, it's true, but the rest of the movie could probably have stood some cleaning up and restructuring. Is that the end of analysis? No, but it's all I've got at this point. I hope to see this again, perhaps to enjoy it in IMAX.

Keith Uhlich's and Stephanie Zecharek's critiques say a lot more about the editing than I ever can, though I think Uhlich underestimates this film by far too much.