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CINEMA SEEN - "The Joker Is The Whole Card." By William Margold “You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a villain.” That's a really cool line from THE DARK KNIGHT---ranking right up there with “When the legend becomes fact...print the legend” (from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”) and “And so El Cid rode out of history into legend” (from “El Cid”). And I wish I could simply say that “'The Dark Knight'” should have ended while it was still good rather than hanging around so long that it became bad”---but it was never really all that good in the first place. And therein is the most disappointing result from having already seen, or perhaps, I should say, “suffered through” at a press screening last week---THE DARK KNIGHT---is that I am now deprived of taking at least one friend to see the film. Indeed...it has long been one of my supreme pleasures to pick up a buddy in my legendary Bearmobile, gleefully watch him stuff himself full of a good meal that is sprawled in front him at either The Original Pantry, or Pann's, or Paco's Tacos (I don't dine where the portions are petite), and then watch him (from the corner of my eye) revel in the sights and sounds of a film that I have already admired so much that I want to share my film watching experience with him. But---with the exception of some admirably androgynous scene masticating nuances by the late Heath Ledger as The Joker---I am now faced with discussing a motion picture that I wouldn't want to ever see again...even through the eyes of one of my enemies. Cold on the heels of his 2005 stunningly crafted, painfully insightful to the fact that being a superhero means having an awful lot of dinners for one---“Batman Begins”---director/writer Christopher Nolan is seemingly content here to serve up a dim witted stew of discontent that numbs the senses with lots of slam bang stunts, and bludgeons the sensibilities with a yawn inducing stream of soulless platitudes (with the exception of the one that ignited this column) delivered by a lamentably catatonic cast including Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman, all of whom were in “Begins.” Bale, in particular, who brought so much internal conflict to his first turn as Gotham's City Caped Crusader (as well as pretty playboy Bruce Wayne), here decides to grumble and grouse through his performance in such an uninspired manner, that I would strongly consider not following him out of a burning restaurant. Caine and Freeman (as Bale's confidants) have been reduced to caricatures...and are simply kept in the picture to utter a homily here or emit a ho-hum there. And Oldman, as Batman's primary police department contact, who was so beautifully bewildered in “Begins”--- appears completely befuddled (and closer to bored) this time around. Ineffectually replacing Katie Holmes as Bale's ill-fated love interest is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who gets together with new cast member Aaron Eckhart, who is equally ill-fated, as his character of a super slick DA evolves into the grotesque but sadly only one one-dimensional Two-Face. So it's up to Heath Ledger to paradoxically save what's left of the depressing day...and the even more despairing night. And whenever he is on the screen---although it's difficult not to think about the fact that he is no longer with us---he minces, flits, and lip-smacks about with such a demonic glee, that when movie award season comes around, his name will most certainly be among the best supporting actor contenders...and not just out of sympathy. But when a film relies too heavily on only one character to make everything else happen, it's virtually impossible not to be anxious and restless during the parts of the film when that character is not on the screen. And such the tragic cinematic fate of The Joker---so achingly embodied by Ledger. In make-up that appears to have been applied by accident, and spitting out a litany of antisocial sentiments like so many lethal sunflower seed shells, Heath creates every memory worth a damn in a motion picture that I would otherwise very much like to forget end NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, July 24, 2008 issue. |