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i watched it. my god. just came back from a midnight screening [to which i RAN to buy tickets for when i learned of it] and i'm still stunned by this tour the force - it's a long film, there's much more happening than the trailers show. but despite the lenght it grabbed be by the neck and didn't release until the very end.
these will probably be incoherent thoughts, but i'll avoid spoilers, despite saying that people wanting to see Two-Face will be happy to know he appears for a lot more than we have been led to believe.
it's probably the most grow-up comic book movie i've ever seen. it's not a superhero movie, it's a Cop Drama, you know. emphasys on 'cop' and 'drama'. it's a movie about individual well-being versus society's needs and who you are in this society - how your actions or innaction will affect others and when they do, will it be for better or worse?
you know, i was intrigued by Batman's screen time; at first i thought he could have appeared more. obviously Ledger's Joker owns the movie, but himself, Batman and Harvey Dent share a lot of screen time.
that's because they're players in a game of debate [thesis, antithesis, synthesis] around how society works, the role of the individual, means to ends, ethics. and how you can go from one opposite to another once things change: by action, non-action and chance.
it's probably the most intelectual comic book movie i've ever seen, but not a boring one, don't get me wrong. it's not all talk and exposition: people act their beliefs, so stuff gets blown [a lot], rounds fired, flesh cut, faces punched, bellies kicked, arms bitten, bodies flipped.
i loved the batpod scenes and the long chase sequence - it's the most realistic you can get without becoming BOURNE or killing stuntmen. and in the plot, money is not stolen and people not killed or kidnapped becase it looks cool; everything happens for a reason, all is tied up in the end.
Heath Ledger. he IS the Joker, he's a complete madman - no wonder, as they showed in the trailer, Jim Gordon's crew failed to put an ID on him; he's nobody, he's Legion, he's all our anarchist i-wish-a-bomb-wiped-everybody thoughts, "an agent of Chaos" as he puts at a given moment. he's given some great GREAT lines and in his deep madness seems to be the sanest person around.
he's a heavy part of the discussion and sometimes steals from Dent the moral balance role. he's almost a good force of nature, like a cancer that helps you enjoy life more, stand up and fight - but then it spreads.
the Joker is an Absolute, but he acts just like the Joker, completing rounds, bringing impossible hands together, bringing a new Order through Chaos and forcing a system to change or die, to evolve to something new and... stranger, like DMT to a brain cell.
Heath owns it, he flinches, twiches, licks his lips - his whole body language speaks like someone you can't predict and everybody is shit-scared when he's around: he's the odd element, always. his proper introduction after the now famous bank robbery sequence is superb. he made the theater laugh here and in other scenes, actually.
like you laugh of a headcase you run into a dark street while going home from a party. what scares the most is not he madness, but how he seems to be in control of it. under all the poorly-applied make up, there's millions thoughts a minute, tapped into the thoughtstream\ideaspace of human consciousness.
Ackhart's Harvey Dent is just tragic; it's obviously about his downfall, and i loved how all the plots were well tied and it didn't bore me how they differed from the comics [not that much, actually].
Justice's posterboy is not always the epitome of centered; everybody changes roles, actually. he's taken from being a moral absolute [cops hate him for his work at Internal affairs] and put in the middle of the moral debate - his Two Faces being the incanation of the moral dichotomy everybody is forced to... face.
even Gotham's citizens. almost every talk you had with families, coworkers, friends, cabbies about urban violence after tragic killings that got famous is put in the table. that's why Batman's motives are not left unshaken.
he's doubtful, torn between calling it quits and becoming a monster to catch others worse than him. i was almost hoping the isolation chamber experience that's being refferenced in current comics would make an appearance.
he's almost Dent's moral opposite, but the difference in their methods takens them too much apart. we know Bruce sees in Dent what he could have been, and vice-versa; but both are forced to see they can never be each other, in the worst way possible.
i loved how this reminded of urban 70s films - fun and thought-provoking, with the city and its inhabbitants as main characters; i'm dizzy now at almost 5 in the morning, but my head is still spinning from it.
the dumb action is there at the service of the intrincated plot [there's lots, lots of it, but don't bring you kids along unless they can take the 2 and half hours and you want them to grow up a bit faster], and the few CGI used is as it's supposed to be: almost invisible; i actually didn't know what was CGI here, so that's how it's supposed to be.
i'm going to post this before a screw up and drift even more in my fanboy rant, or hit F5 with my forehead afte dozzing of. i need to watch this again. a couple more times. Nolan and Co. made it. it payed off to have faith in them.
whew. |
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