Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

For the sake of brevity, I’ll start by outlining the handful couple of things I didn’t like about The Dark Knight. One, Christian Bale’s raspy Batman Voice drives me completely insane. It destroys Bale’s ability to imbue the costume with any emotion and makes him sound as if he’s constantly on the verge of coughing up his own larynx. Two, Bale apparently spent months in martial arts training, but as with almost all American films, the hand-to-hand combat is cut up too close and too fast for that effort to be appreciated. Three, there is no three.¹

The Dark Knight is one of the best movies I have ever seen, period. There’s no need to qualify it, to restrict that superlative to the comic book category, but I think it’s fair to say that in regards to the genre, The Dark Knight has changed everything. The bar has been raised unfathomably high. Ever since X-Men rescued us from the unwatchable Schumacher Batman sequels, every superhero movie has tried to emulate Bryan Singer’s take on the genre: respectful, slightly mature, and undeniably sleek. The Dark Knight breaks away from this and stomps into uncharted territory. It eschews Singer’s polish and instead maintains a sharper edge. It makes Iron Man look like a Saturday morning cartoon, and you have to wonder if the reviews would have been so positive if Iron Man had premiered after The Dark Knight.

With Ledger’s dark, daring portrayal of the Joker as its lens, The Dark Knight can offer a truly great examination of good, evil, and social justice. Heath Ledger’s Joker is a nonstop nightmare. He is a terrorist, anarchist, and sociopath who wins again and again because he recognizes that the world is chaos, and he knows how to manipulate that madness. This is the Joker presented in his most gritty, most believable form. Where Jack Nicholson was a caricature of suave, Ledger taps the charisma of Charles Manson. No poison-spitting flowers, no laughing gas, no razor-sharp playing cards. This Joker needs nothing but gasoline, dynamite, and human nature to play his games. He is completely horrifying and completely believable.

Which brings me, at last, to the real point of today’s post. Does Heath Ledger deserve an Oscar? I think the answer is yes. His performance in this movie is brilliant. Cliches like “scene stealing” do not do it justice. When he’s on screen, you can’t tear your eyes off him, and when he’s off screen, everyone’s still thinking about him.

Now, as far as Oscar odds go, he’s got a few marks against him. For one, he’s dead. There have only been seven posthumous Oscar nominations in the history of the awards, not all of them winners. If you want an eerily direct comparison, check out James Dean, who was nominated posthumously—twice, no less, for Giant and East of Eden—and lost on both counts. Secondly, this is a superhero movie, and they never seem to grab awards beyond the technical categories.² However, Ledger also has a few things in his favor. He was well-liked in the industry and was quite clearly a rising star, taken before his time. His performance in The Dark Knight is undeniably brilliant, at least as riveting as Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and about ten times as frightening. Lastly, there was his performance in Brokeback Mountain. He lost the Oscar to Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, but Ledger’s performance was certainly Oscar-worthy. A lot of people were angry about Brokeback Mountain’s loss of the Best Picture award to Crash, and this may be the Academy’s opportunity to make amends. It’s all politics anyway, right?

To close, I’d like to excerpt the New Yorker‘s surprisingly negative review. David Denby says, “The narrative isn’t shaped coherently to bring out contrasts and build toward a satisfying climax.” Huh? Seriously, Dave, were you watching the same movie that I was? It’s all about contrast. The Joker’s anarchy versus Batman’s code of honor, love versus duty, Harvey Dent’s knight in shining armor image versus Batman’s Dark Knight, petty criminals versus real, destructive evil, chaos versus order. It’s all there, and it’s all done beautifully.

1. Although, as a 2.5, I can’t believe this movie is rated PG-13. Arbitrary. ∧
2. I’m not counting The Lord of the Rings because that’s “high fantasy,” and moreover, it is typically placed in the great cannon of mainstream modern literature, unlike most comic books, unfortunately. ∧