Constant Viewer: The Dark Knight

Constant Viewer caught the 12:01 showing of The Dark Knight in a theater nearly filled with some five or six hundred fellow dark knight owls, CV’s 13 year old son included. The theater almost certainly would have been filled but for a second showing some 20 minutes later. CV isn’t venturing any guesses about opening records, especially if you adjust for inflation, but The Dark Knight is a lock for this summer’s blockbuster, no mean feat when you consider the current competition.

Let’s get the accolades out of the way up front here. Christopher Nolan continues to astonish as a director, and no little part of CV’s astonishment is in realizing that The Dark Knight is only his eighth directorial credit. Christian Bale has certainly grown in the part since Batman Begins, a fine movie in which, in CV’s opinion, Bale was its weakest element. CV can’t remember when he didn’t like Michael Caine in anything since the original Alfie and can’t, for that matter, remember anything in which Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t an asset, either. Morgan Freeman has one of the most fun lines in the movie in a truely clever scene of attempted extortion and both Gary Oldman’s James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvy Dent manage to impress despite all the stiff competition for attention.

And then there is Heath Ledger. Will his Joker earn the late actor a posthumous Oscar? If the voting were held by, say, Election Day, Ledger’s chances would be excellent. But The Dark Knight is still a summer movie, not a ‘serious’ movie, and the Academy has historically been chary about posthumous awards. Nonetheless, Ledger’s performance is simply breathtaking and, as entertaining as Jack Nicholson’s Joker was in the original Batman, this new Joker has to be considered the gold standard against which both earlier and subsequent super villains must be judged.

Ironically, however, the way Ledger’s presence overpowers everything else in The Dark Knight is, given Ledger’s untimely death, the movie's greatest weakness; for CV couldn’t help but be distracted over and over again by the thought that this bravura performance could never be reprised. Imagine, for example, if Anthony Hopkins had died shortly before the release of The Silence of the Lambs.

Of course, you’re going to go see The Dark Knight no matter what CV says even if your girlfriend drags you to Mamma Mia first. Buy the large popcorn and soda, since you’re going to be there a full 152 minutes after the endless litany of trailers. Well, after all, Nolan is reaching for a movie of epic proportions here. And if he just slightly misses, the audience nonetheless was certainly not bored as the second hour came and went with another half-hour ahead of them. In fact, when the credits finally did roll they applauded. And CV, to his mild surprise, joined in.