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Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight |
Caped fear and the man behind dark knight life
THE DARK KINGHT
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Certificate 12a
EXHAUSTING yet exhilarating; tiring but triumphant – the new Batman film, directed by Christopher Nolan, is a giant mash of colour and sound, an assault on the senses that will leave you aching for a quiet lie-down. Sit in a dark room after sitting through the Dark Knight.
Please, Mr Nolan, now you have done two Batman movies, can you go and make a low-key thriller like your masterpiece Momento?
As I stepped out of the cinema, I was worn out. There is just so much to look at. And at well over two and a half hours, it takes a fair chunk of the day and a lot of your concentration.
So, Christopher, when you are sifting through the pile of scripts on your desk, wondering where to go next, something with crashes, bangs, wallops, a story you can pull together and leave nothing untied in, say, the length of time it takes to watch a football match, that’d do me, thanks.
Despite such gripes, Nolan is a hot cookie who, in the first instalment, Batman Begins, redefined the superhero comic book genre. It was dark and scary, and turned what had been a screwball series into a proper film for serious movie lovers.
Christopher grew up in Highgate, went to Highgate boys’ school, and then studied English Literature at University College London in Bloomsbury. He had started making movies as a child using his father Brendan’s Super-8 camera and his Star Wars toys – Brendan still lives in Highgate (Christopher is based in Los Angeles) and is a key member of the Highgate Society.
“I was inspired by two films I saw when I was a kid,” Christopher revealed this week. “The very first Star Wars film was a wonderful, grand-scale Hollywood epic. Then there was also 2001, which was re-released just after Star Wars. I thought it was the most incredible spectacle.”
He joined UCL’s film club and made the festival hit Tarantella. It was his way into the industry, and a route that has been trodden by his brother Jonathan, who also worked on Batman.
Some of the sequences in this summer’s blockbuster show the immense talent of Nolan. He has often been considered a dialogue director, a master story-teller, but with a big budget he has stretched his canvas and given the viewer plenty to gawp at.
In one scene, following a superb car chase through the crowded streets of Gotham, Batman flips a truck on its head. They really did this, in the middle of the night, in downtown Chicago.
Other moments will give you a horrible sense of vertigo: Batman arrives in Hong Kong to capture a crime lord. He scoops up the baddie and, using some top secret military technology, is hoisted upwards from somewhere around the 40th storey of a swanky office block. It will turn your stomach.
“Every stage of making an enormous film like this presents its own challenges, but it has its own rewards,” says Christopher. “It is very exciting to travel the world and zoom around in helicopters and race the Batmobile around the streets of Chicago.”
Batman has always been about gadgets. It’s part of the fun of directing the film, admits Christopher.
It’s no longer just the Batmobile that helps beat the Gotham traffic – now he has the Batpod, too.
With little more than the basic concept in mind, Christopher retreated into what he calls his “design headquarters – aka my garage” to work out what this Batty moped would look like. He tinkered with bits and bobs lying around, and came up with a design,
“Let’s just go for it,” thought Christopher. “Let’s build it full size.”
So he did.
Christian Bale is suave as the Caped Crusader, and has a super cast backing him up, including the late Heath Ledger as The Joker.
He grimaces, pulls tics, and makes the most of his facial scars.
An aside: much of the violence inflicted by The Joker involves blades. It is unsettling, in the current climate, to see the swish of a knife in such a setting.
This should essentially be something children can enjoy, but Batman is far too dark and far too violent. It deserves an 18 certificate and is aimed at big kids. It is not as clever as it pretends to be, and lacks the odd humour of Christopher Nolan’s first outing in Batman Begins. However, it works as a straight-up action movie. |
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