The Best Film Ever Made?

“The Dark Knight” is regarded by many as the best film EVER made. It’s No.1 on imdb’s list already. But can any film ever be THAT Good? Well, of course, some film has to be the best film ever made, and that’s a notoriously contested opinion. It’s not the best film ever made. But damn, “The Dark Knight” is the Cinematic Eight Wonder Of The World. It’s intelligent, moral, clever, and unafraid to go into the dark places, because that is what the story demands to make it true. And the versimilitude, the emotional truth of this story, is utterly convincing. This is a film made in a real world, which just happens to have a Batman in it.

What “The Dark Knight” is, is the best comic book / superhero / graphic novel adaptation since “Superman II”. It’s a film you will be watching in 20,30, 50, 100 years time and still relishing every second of it.

There have been undoubtedly, great films since 1980 that harvest the imagination of the pen-and-ink age. There’s also been absolute stinkers, callous and cynical, mercenary attempts to rape money from tweenagers such as the absurdly cheap “Superman IV”, the risible and moronic “Fantastic Four”, and the absolute spaghetti dross of “Daredevil”, and lattery the celluloid rape that was “Alien Vs Predator 2 : Requiem For The Lost Art Of Making A Film That Doesn’t Fucking Suck” - films that could be improved only by making them two hours shorter and existing only in our imaginations.



“The Dark Knight”, meanwhile is that rarest of films. In the age where film is marketed only as product and units, where artistry and thought is trampled over by a hasty and blatant attempt to squeeze money from people, where we are left in an age of the risible bait-and-switch (so much so, the director of two Batman movies publically apologises for making films that were nothing more, and nothing less than, adverts for toy franchises from Burger manufacturers), “The Dark Knight” is a film that isn’t afraid to show that not only does it have brains, it isn’t terrified of thinking. This Bankrupt culture, a vapid organism that is the artistic equivalent of a cell in a petri dish, is killing the cinematic art form and needs to be put to rest. “The Dark Knight” is the funeral ceremony.

If nothing else, see this film to send a clear and direct message to Hollywood : we’re tired of your moronic, insipid bullshit. Stop treating us like children.

Christopher Nolan - one of the best film-makers of the modern age, the most exciting talent to hit the screen since Fincher and Aronofsky- finally steps into the place vacated by the sadly lost Kubrick. “The Dark Knight” is, on one level, a complicated, epic crime film about the battle between morality and safety, about living in the void between compromise and conflict, and is about the moral ambiguity. In order to defeat a monster, you must become a monster. This film is clearly something that could only exist, could only be made, NOW, in the post 9/11 world.

If nothing else, perhaps the one positive thing about 9/11 is that it finally shoved a rocket up the ass of culture. After decades of increasing irrelevance and pomp, where “Batman” became a dayglo cartoon designed to sell burgers, 9/11 finally made the culture of art artistic again instead of mere smoke-and mirrors, bread-and-circuses to keep you happy between mouthfuls of popcorn.

I’ve made it six paragraphs without mentioning Heath Ledger. For me, Ledger’s Joker is the defining version of this character. In fact, very possibly, the most evil character ever to grace the screen. Unlike Nicholson’s hollow, playful Joker, Ledger demonstrates an immense world of possibility that he will sadly never fulfill with an untimely death. If he had lived…. This Joker would’ve become the benchmark as future films would’ve seen him move beyond this mere first chapter. The Oscar is almost definitely Ledgers as a posthumous nod to his performance, and to all that he could’ve been.



Ultimately, Ledger’s Joker is powerful because Nolan realises that less is so much more. Here Joker is an utterly random creation, with no backstory, no explanation, and this makes him more powerful. You don’t know what he’s thinking, what he’s going to do next, wether he will charm you or kill you, and what his motives are. Indeed Ledger plays The Joker as someone who doesn’t even understand himself. “I’m like a dog chasing a car.. If I ever caught I don’t know what I’d do!” … drunk on the possibility, motivated by things he can’t even understand, Ledger’s Joker is a satanic ADHD man-child, bequeathed with a perverted genius and a penchant for complex plans that expose people for who they really are. In “The Dark Knight” - and what a title that is, so perfect for this film - The Joker exists for two main reasons, to unveil the raw morality of the masses for the desperate and bankrupt creatures they are when they are threatened, and to play with the numbing breadth of possibilities. The moral dilemma between what is morally right and fair, and what offers the temporary nipple of security is played out again and again and again. And so often, too often, the ’normal’, the ordinary, are shown wanting, weak, and flawed. It is our human weakness, our frailty, that gives The Joker his power.

Aside from Ledger’s performance, “The Dark Knight” benefits from a powerful ensemble cast, each strong enough to carry the film on their own - names such Michael Caine, given what is clearly a elegiac role, a redemptive final stroke of dignity after years in straight-to-DVD dross, and Morgan Freeman, steps into his own as a dignified Q-style character. After all, what has never really been addressed before in this genre, but is finally at least acknowledge here is that Batman has an infrastructure of technicians and science geeks creating for him his wonderful toys. And there’s a brilliant dry humour in the way that Gotham seems to have several Batmen ; and how this issue is addressed.

Christian Bale carries his role, as indeed does the whole cast, with a convincing gravitas. This really isn’t a Batman film, as such. It’s a dark crime epic that has a Batman character in it. Other, recent ‘reboots’ of the genre - Superman Returns, The Incredible Hulk - really should NEVER have been necessary. Because this is how it’s done, to treat the audience with the respect and dignity they deserve.

This is a film of glorious moments, of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them fragments of genius that become more than the sum of their parts. There’s a grotesque disappearing-pencil trick. There’s a wonderful, ever changing monologue. There’s the enormous mystery of The Joker himself, which would consume lesser talents entire careers but are overlooked by virtue of the fact that the most important thing about all this is the story itself. The film, and everyone in it, every second on screen, exists to propel the story. Nothing is wasted. There’s no extraneous monologue, no dull moment where The Bad Guy Explains To The Good Guy. The Bad Guy isn’t interested in that bullshit. He’s interested in manipulating everyone and everything around him to serve his own ends, and is utterly ruthless in achieving it. Think of The Joker as a grand architect, and everyone else - even Batman - being mere pawns shuffled around a chessboard., resisting his will, but ultimately so predictable. It’s the knowledge that our human impulses are so drearily telegraphed that makes the Joker so powerful. He knows what we think, and is prepared to use our virtue as a weapon against us, as indeed all true evil does.



That’s not to say that “The Dark Knight” is perfect, for it isn’t. But goddamn, it’s close. Unlike so many modern films, with the impossible phsyics of cheap CGI that pull us out of the moment and dazzling, tiring camera moves that flatten excitement into mere ennui, “The Dark Knight” looks and feels real : as if a camera were placed there and that precise event actually happened. As it did in the now-lost golden age of Harryhausen and Dykstra and Stan Winston and Rob Bottin. “The Dark Knight” keeps youy utterly in that most perfect of cinematic states : the suspension of disbelief.

I’ve purposely not detailed the plot of this film to ensure that those of you who haven’t yet seen it - and there are some - do not see this films mysteries revealed. Maggie Gylenhall and Aaron Eckhart feature prominently in roles that would, in lesser films, be worthy of a motion picture in themselves. Here, they are merely integral and important flavours, vital to the plots progression, but feeling - as all the characters do - natural and real and human, never false or shoehorned in. The texture this film weaves is dense, and rich, and dark. “The Dark Knight” is the best comic book film since 1980, a powerful, intelligent text that faces the moral dilemma’s of the times, the dark stuff of dressing as a Bat to fight crime and the cost and spiritual toll this takes, and is a vast, brilliant epic of vision and courage in an imperfect world. It is absolutely 100% recommended.

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