My All Time Favorite Movies: The Dark Knight

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



THE DARK KNIGHT

It is impossible for me to have an all time favorites movie list and not have a superhero movie on it. As a kid who grew up reading comic books, and loving movies, the marriage of superheroes and cinema just makes perfect sense. There are a handful of excellent superhero movies (the Avengers might end up on this list some day), but I decided to go with the one that I feel made the most out of the film medium. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is the apex of superhero cinema because it is not a typical superhero movie. In a weird way, it is not Batman's story at all. The Dark Knight is a classic battle of good vs. evil, but it constantly blurs the line between good and evil. It blurs to the point where the hero must become the villain to maintain order. Hell, it even makes us wonder who the true hero is? Is Batman really our hero, or is it Harvey Dent? Batman is the superhero of course, but as a vigilante, is he really a hero? In a movie chalk full of great quotes, the most telling quote is from Dent when he says "You either die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." We spend this whole movie waiting for the inevitable transformation of Harvey Dent into Two-Face, but Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is so noble, is so much the good guy, we start to wonder how in the world he will ever turn into this villain. Well, Nolan's film has an ace up its sleeve (you thought I was going to say Joker didn't you?) That ace is Heath Ledger's Joker.

With The Joker, Heath Ledger created a new iconic version of an already iconic character. Do you have any idea how difficult it must have been to recreate a character who has been iconic in so many ways? Well, Ledger was clearly up to the task. Maniacal, energetic and scary beyond belief, Ledger's Joker completes the trifecta of best villains with Darth Vader and Voldemort. What makes The Joker so scary, beyond the painted face and the scars, is his desire for nothing but pure chaos. That is what makes Nolan's film so perfect for our time. A villain who wants nothing but to create chaos has to be the scariest kind of villain. He wants nothing. He just wants to watch the world burn. Has there ever been a villain who had no real desire for world domination or something tangible? In a post 9/11 world, is there anything scarier than a motiveless villain and has anyone encapsulated that idea better than Heath Ledger as the Joker? Every scene he is in bristles with manic energy. He is completely riveting and we hang on every word out of his mouth. The ultimate tragedy of Ledger himself makes the role even more frightening because it is impossible to separate the two, but, even on its own, his Joker is one of my favorite performances ever. There are depths to the insanity that create a full flushed out character, something superhero villain almost always lack.

However, beyond just the story aspects, the film is a technical masterpiece. It is paced perfectly, so the story builds without feeling rushed, but when you feel like something needs to happen, something definitely does happen. Every single action scene is perfectly placed, perfectly shot and perfectly executed. How awesome is that bank robbery that opens the film? How much does it set off a movie that is going to be full of action, but also be this incredibly intense heist film? The Dark Knight manages to perfectly blend the superhero genre with the heist film and a detective film all while being a great superhero movie. In my opinion, Batman has never been the most interesting of superheroes. His villains are worlds more interesting, but Nolan's vision of Batman as a character and as a symbol really worked for me. We have Harvey Dent, the white knight hero, who stands for truth, justice and believes in the legal system and we have our dark knight, Batman, who believes in doing whatever he has to do to get justice. The movie never blatantly makes the symbolic nature of these characters in an eye rolling way and that is a testament to the grace of Nolan's film making abilities. Batman is the hero Gotham deserves and in essence, the hero we deserve.

The Dark Knight is a perfect movie for our current world. It plays on fears of the unknown, it taps into the idea that our phones can be used against us by our Government and it gives us a hero who is not exactly upstanding. it works in the grey area of our current world. Eckhart, Ledger and Bale make this crazy triangle of both good and evil. Eckhart is really the focal point of the film and by making Batman a supporting character, Nolan builds up the idea that Batman is merely a symbol, something he brings to a stark conclusion in the final film of the trilogy. Ledger stands heads and shoulders above most of the world with his performance, and the movie looks gorgeous. The cinematography is pitch perfect, and every single scene builds to this wonderful climatic crescendo. The screenplay is full of great quotes and each character is given a chance to grow and show depth. When you round out a cast with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman, it makes it easy to have characters who matter and that is what is important. The Dark Knight makes us care about the stakes by making them high for every character. it presents Batman with a true challenge, because The Joker has absolutely nothing to lose. Nolan never loses sight of what truly matters in this film and thematically grounds it with terms we understand and in a world that is our world. He plays on our fears and gives us both the hero wish we had and the hero we actually have. It is not an easy feat to have a movie with two heroes and two villains and have one person be both the hero and villain, but Nolan executes it to perfection.