Holy Heart Failure, Batman!!

Vini, Vidi, Vici. I came to the Blythe All-Star Cinema to watch the Batman: Dark Knight, saw the Dark Knight, but didn’t conquer it – rather, the Dark Knight conquered me. For that matter the whole audience was in a state of “shock and awe” once the ending credits started rolling. There was no applause, standing ovations or other public display of approval. One does not applaud The Lord’s Prayer or Lincoln’s actual Gettysburg Address. That cheapens things.

Rather, the audience and I simply stumbled out into the afternoon sunshine like gaggle of zombies, trying to recapture the magic and wonder and detail of everything that passed before our collective eyes for the past two and a half hours. After a brief reverie, I looked at my son who accompanied me and said, “We gotta do that again!”. The only other movie I can compare this experience to was in 1977 when I waited four hours in the front of the line at the movie theater in Alexandria, Minn. to be the first to see “Star Wars”. When I left, it was like a paradigm shift. My world view had changed. Movies were starting to see science fiction and comics from the way they should be portrayed – from the point of view of my imagination. About time.

Since when does a movie’s opening become news? Well, since the darn thing took in a record $64,000,000 in it’s first 24 hours and lives up to the “hype” that Heath Ledger deserves a posthumous Oscar, best Movie in decades, best based on a comic ever, and a masterpiece of cinematography. It’s all true and even more so. It simply leaves you longing for more. The entire country as is on its feet and in line to see this show and the people of the City of Blythe are no different. It has been a packed house every showing.

Larry Bynon, Manager, informed me that everyone that has exited the movie in the last day left with saying that they will, indeed be seeing it again. If so, this show has got “legs,” as they say in the industry. It’s the kind of blockbuster that keeps people coming back again and again – extending its release for weeks or even months.

It’s all about the Joker.

Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker is what makes this movie so alluring. He comes on with no origin story, an obvious paranoid schizophrenic with a bent for anarchy. He burns a pile of money to show that he is not committing his crime spree for a crass profit motive. He is the antithesis of the other psychotic in the picture – Batman. Joker cannot kill the Batman late in the show because, as the Joker states, “You complete me…”

Ledger’s version of the Joker (aka Jack Napier) is the spookiest yet. Jack Nicholson vamped his way through the character in the Micheal Keaton “Batman” and made a memorable scoundrel of himself. Cesar Romero portrayed him as a maniacal clown in the television show. The closest anyone has come to portraying Joker as well as Ledger was in brief film directed by Sandy Colorra with Andrew Koenig for the San Diego Comic-Con five years ago. For those who have YouTube capability, please watch this link for an 8 minute film that portrays the second-best Joker.

The character of the Joker was, in truth, invented by one of the great literary giants of the 19th century. Victor Hugo, of Les Miserables fame, wrote a book entitled The Man Who laughs in 1869. It was about a child who was orphaned and his face was mutilated into a frozen sardonic smile with the aid of a hunting knife. The book was later made into a silent movie starring Conrad Viedt. Watch the this clip from the 1922 film and note the similarities:

Remember that Bob Kane, the creating artist, wrote his first Batman story for Detective Comics #27 in May of 1939 – 17 years after this movie came out. Kane also had other models for Batman as well. Zorro was a big influence in creating modern-day caped/masked crusader and the Shadow was plagiarized for his ability to invoke fear in them minds of all criminals.

This writer cannot begin to go into detail about how Ledger places everything on the line for this role and acted his heart out without spoiling the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But just for the heck of it – if you haven’t seen it as of this writing – watch for how he can make a pencil “disappear”, blow up a hospital wincing down the street in a nurses uniform, play “chicken” with an oncoming bat-cycle, and inveigle two boatloads of passengers into blowing up each other. One cannot describe it in words. It has to be seen.

Therefore: Don’t wait to see it on DVD! You lose far too much in scope and depth of the cinematography. I didn’t even mention the “White Knight” – Harvey Dent aka “Two-Face.” Superlative job as well. However, this is not a “Batman” movie akin to all the others. This is a crime story in which Batman has a role. Once you have seen it, come back to this article; watch this clip from the very first “Batman” movie and think of how far this character has come.