THX1378 wrote:Didn't Roger Ebert give the film a 2 star review for the film and not slam it like most critics did? I mean there are going to be people that are going to hate this film for some reason or another. There are always people out there that have some reason to hate even an almost perfect film. Look at Wall*E, no matter how perfect that film is in my mind, there are 2 critics that still didn't like it.
Of the new films I've watched this year, Speed Racer is the closest to being perfect (though Australia hasn't exactly been showered with amazing films), and look at how that was received. Taste is subjective.
Speaking of which, I'm not crazy about this film.
Antoine Doinel wrote:David Edelstein
defendshis review. While he says that his negative review is not a ploy for attention, you kind of have to wonder why he chooses to respond to fans this time around, especially, as he notes, he endured nine years of fanboy hatred while writing for
Salon.
Have you seen the film? Had you when you wrote this post? As someone who has, a lot of what Edelstein says rings true, so I find the assumption that by posting a lukewarm reaction he must be trying to get attention and bring hits (Edelstein and the New Yorker? Does anyone seriously believe that?!) stupid and even offensive. The film
must be perfect and
everyone must love it, and if they claim they don't it's just a ploy for attention. Right. In suggesting this, before watching the film no less, you come off as the fanboy figure Edelstein mentions who is bound to love the film no matter what because he's emotionally invested in loving it already. So why did Edelstein post the reply? I'd say that the explanation he provided in the article, coupled with all the death-threats he's no doubt received by now, are sufficient explanation without anyone having to turn to a narrow point-of-view focused around silencing critical discourse.
Binker wrote:I'll probably love this movie, but I'm skeptical about the supposed moral and psychological complexity.
You have reason to be.
There's very little beyond the simplistic in here. That's fine in itself. I love a narrative driven by basic goals and psychology but elevated into something great by its focus and presentation. It's not fine in The Dark Knight, however, since the film is so transparently striving to be viewed as a work of 'complexity' and 'depth'. At precisely the right moments, the characters are struck by a screenwriter's flash of inspiration and proceed to articulate the themes to the audience in clunky portentous dialogue that is self-conscious enough to pull you right out of the narrative. This is at its worst at the very end, where an extremely out of place monologue emerges from the mouth of a decent, suffering character that all too succinctly explains who Batman is, why we need him and how self-sacrifice means that he must suffer personally to maintain order in a chaotic world. It's all so neat,
cinema du Sparknotes. Remember all the 'fear' stuff in Batman Begins? The Dark Knight has a much more elegant screenplay, but we're looking at something similar, just much better hidden. Ultimately, the way that potentially interesting, but fundamentally simple ideas are treated with this kind of self-seriousness adds up to a work that feels at once brutal, oppressive and empty.
This is not to say it isn't entertaining or interesting. About an hour into the film the Joker's plans begin to come into effect and the descent the film takes into anarchic chaos is horrifyingly unpredictable. There's a looming sense of dread that is heightened by our knowledge of the fate of some of these characters that makes this incredibly tense at points. The violence is harsh but not uncompromised; this is PG-13 brutality, all quick cuts and bloodless attacks. Still, it's frightening enough in itself.
For a moment, this film seems to keep up this scary sense of chaos ruling, where your hopes and expectations are crushed by unforeseen horror. The problem is, the film soon sinks into well worn territory. For the Joker's vision of pure anarchy to feel as disturbing as you can tell it was intended to be, the film would have to dive deeper into unexplored parts of the abyss than we are prepared for. Nolan doesn't give us this, but rather cliches. For a guy who talks so much about breaking the familiar rules of the game, the Joker sure sticks pretty close to them, and by the time the film is wrapping up I was feeling a little sick of this game and its familiar rhythms.
The Joker's tricks are mainly those we all know already: bombs triggered by mobile phones, planting mafia moles in the police department, and for a grand moral quandary:
Binker wrote:"Save your girlfriend or 30 civilians, Batman, your choice!111"s
One of these.
Beyond being tired, the major problem isn't so much these plot elements in themselves, but rather the film's approach to itself and its belief it's presenting something more fresh or important than it is. The same can be said of Batman's confronting of the darkness within himself as the Joker attempts to force him to break his 'one rule', blunted by the scripts' heavy-handed approach.
For a 152 minute film, these ideas are also remarkably underdeveloped. Harvey Dent's character arc is a great example.
I can buy that he felt he had to kill the mob bosses and corrupt police responsible for what happened, but he turned into a villain far too quickly. Why is it that he would be insistent on killing Gordon's son or Batman but not the cop responsible for helping the Joker to set up his plan anyway? Oh, right, because he was overcome by the darkness within him and surrendered to it, while Batman kept fighting on... But it doesn't play well at all and it's executed without any depth or grace. So much for psychological complexity.
The final comment the film seems to be working toward about the necessity of symbols to inspire people and the difficulty of maintaining hope in the face of knowledge of the darkness of the world
is complex and interesting but ultimately it's not carried off well enough to carry the emotional force it should, much like the rest of The Dark Knight.
It's not really highly visually interesting, being far more script and narrative driven, which I find odd for a story like Batman which so obviously concerns itself with larger than life characters who are in essence symbols.
Nolan still isn't much of an action director, though the technique has clearly improved since Begins. Here, rather than cut a lot to confuse us, he mainly keeps the camera in one place and shakes it around to confuse us.
Sarcasm aside, so little can be gleaned from the under-lit action scenes that they can only be interesting from a narrative point of view, never entertaining through the merits of their own construction and choreography. They are at least definitely preferable to the idiot chaos of Begins.
The music is also an improvement; throbbing, urgent, poignant, violent. In tune with the intense emotions the Nolans were going for.
The Imax photography is indeed very large and very impressive, but it has its drawbacks. While it at times gives the action an an all enveloping grandeur, it also doesn't allow one to appreciate frame composition. To be honest, it also gave me a bit of a headache, though it's hard to determine whether this came as a result of the picture, the loudness of the sound, or both. Nobody else seems to have felt this though, so maybe I'm alone, which is pretty much how I feel about my opinion of the film right now.
Walter Chaw wrote:am I going too far to say that this might be the best American film since fellow sequel The Godfather Part II? Rolling that around on my tongue, I have to say it feels right.
As much as I believe in the subjectivity of quality, I cannot believe anyone could think this is the best American production in thirty-five years. When I read that I was speechless. I'm not sure which is more flabbergasting: that he thinks this, or that he believes the film to be perfect, which I wouldn't say of
any film, let alone one as obviously imperfect as this. I think that in imperfections art arises, but that's just my opinion, and to Walter Chaw it probably makes me a sack of shit.
domino harvey wrote:Walter Chaw's website is just AICN with fewer all-cap posts.
Pretty much. You can find as much insight from some of the AICN writers as from Chaw. His pieces make a lot of assertions but rarely ever crack the surface of the work under review, instead settling for a lot of name calling ('retarded' this, 'pathetic' that) and hyperbole. AICN is a great point of comparison for the hasty enthusiasm with which he labels something a 'fucking masterpiece' or his reductive approach to opinion, in which you are either with him or against him and if you're against him you're a scumbag. It's also worth noting that if something takes a pessimistic outlook he's sure to enjoy it, even if he doesn't seem to see anything else of worth in it.
Another thought: After another viewing, Batman Begins is a lot better than I remembered it . Its (sometimes somewhat forced) sense of fun saves it from being bad in the same way that this films' pursuit of ideas does. This is definitely the superior film overall, however. All of that film's weaknesses seem to have been taken into account in the creation of The Dark Knight.
(As if that means anything anymore.) I guess that Godfather II comparison was not necessarily unwarranted.