Enormous bats and shadows

Finally I got around to going to see The Dark Knight more than a month after it opened to all the acclaim and hype about Heath Ledger's performance. Eh. There was no rush. I wanted to wait for the IMAX version to come to D.C.

The IMAX theater at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is a great venue for blockbuster films, if only because the crowds are much better behaved than the ones at standard movie theaters. We get to sit in comfortable, high-backed chairs in steeply banked stadium seating facing an enormous 66' x 90' curved screen. In anticipation of an IMAX release, the director of Dark Knight actually shot some of the footage with special IMAX cameras. All I can say is that if you are the least bit acrophobic, put on your seat belt!

This movie was absolutely full of major stars. Christian Bale is Batman and Heath Ledger is the Joker, but the list doesn't end there. Morgan Freeman is the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Michael Caine is butler Alfred, Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon, Aaron Eckhart is DA Harvey Dent, Maggie Gyllenhaal is Rachel Dawes, Eric Robert is gangster Sal Maroni, Anthony Michael Hall is a TV anchorman, Nestor Carbonell is the mayor, soap opera actor William Fichtner is the bank manager, and even other celebrities make cameo appearances such as WWF wrestler Tommy "Tiny" Lister and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy.

Ledger acquitted himself well, and, given the sentimentality of the Academy, will probably get the best actor Oscar. It was odd, though; I had no sense that it was him up there on that screen. What with all the makeup and the weird voice he was using, plus the rather psychopathic role he played, I never really saw a glimpse of Ledger the person, not even in the way he moved.

The movie itself is entertaining and gripping. It's long—two and a half hours—but the time flew by and I never found myself checking my watch to see if it was over yet. The editing and cinematography are excellent. All of the technological tools and gadgets and toys Batman has are intriguing, though their use and some of the plot elements do stretch the limits of credibility. While special effects and makeup were great, my one big criticism was their decision to make Harvey Dent's Two Face makeup too comical and comic book, though I understand the director thought realism was too frightening. I'd have preferred the fright, since that would have helped to fill out Dent's character and explain his descent into criminal madness.

I'm not sure if it was the script or the acting, but I didn't feel much empathy for Christian Bale's Batman. I did not see Batman Returns, the immediately previous movie in the Batman franchise, so I can't compare his performances. His "Batman whisper" was almost comical to me. I also found Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance to be rather wooden. The script left me a bit dissatisfied, too, because we had no clue who the Joker was, where he came from, or how he got the skills and technological expertise he had to be able to pull off all his heists.

On a higher level, though, I found the overall movie disturbing for its underlying message. I haven't seen any of the Batman movies since Michael Keaton's first portrayal in 1989 (I can't remember if I saw Batman Returns in 1992 or not), so I'm not sure where things have been going. I remember watching Batman on television as a child, though, and the one thing I remember about Adam West's Batman is that he was always admonishing Robin about respect for the law.

Now we have a Batman who feels the ends justify the means, no matter the cost, no matter the laws broken, no matter the rights violated, no matter the property damage, no matter the lives lost. If Gotham City has a problem, Batman just throws more money and technology at the problem until the problem is solved, and heaven help the innocent citizen or police officer who happens to get in the way. Batman is a wealthy bully who gets what he wants by might and money, not by right. This is not the sort of message that we should be teaching our children. This is the very attitude that is causing us Americans so many problems on the world stage right now, too.

Perhaps we should not expect movies to inculcate morals and values in our children anymore like they used to do. People today claim to want gritty reality, not happy idealism. We must, though, be aware of what we show on screen and what those movies teach so that we can have a dialogue as a family, if not as a society, as to the ethos of fantasy. Doing any less will lead us into a generation of amorality.