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The Dark Knight (慎入)

2009-7-6 18:21:50

前不久英语课讲文体，说到了影评，因为有着对小丑的无限向往，结果就写了这篇《黑暗骑士》的影评，这还是第一次写英文影评呢。当然，要看完需要很大的耐性。

The Dark Knight-No Rules

In the last year, 2008, 14th of July, from America, a dark storm came to the world. The Dark Knight, another batman movie from director Christopher Nolan, with a cast of Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart and more. Because Nolan’s last batman film-Batman Begins-was successful, it gave a new power to this DC COMICS hero, and the great actor Heath Ledger’s death, before this film showed in the cinema, more people paid attention to this film. After it showed, audiences around the world found it deserved its many awards.

Before this film, director Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan had written some good scripts, like The Prestige, Batman Begins, Memento. They had showed they can make stories, good stories, complex stories, like this one, which can catch people’s mind, make us a part of the stories. And Nolan called back Bale for Batman, and found Ledger to take Batman’s most fierce enemy-the Joker which has been played really well by Jack Nicholson in the first batman movie Batman. But whatever, after The Dark Knight, we found Ledger gave another definition of the Joker.

So to know about this film, we of course can’t neglect the Joker. Because, for a superhero movie, it is very important to have a “freak”, against our hero, and this man must be a really bad, like you can’t let a very strong man be the enemy of Superman, nobody can fight Superman, so to deal with Superman, we need to have a man who can use his brain. In fact, all heroes need enemies like this, they should be good at “planning”, like Joker, Joker defeats batman, just because he was get a plan, or maybe he “just does things”, without rules. Every superhero’s enemies will catch their girl, but they just use the girl to contain hero, Joker is different, he doesn’t follow “bad guy” rules, when he catch Rachel, he threw Rachel from the building, and said “very poor choice of words”

Back to the story, someone said “Heath Ledger is the most accomplished Joker!” “Joker as a character accomplished Heath Ledger” or “Nolan produced the most accomplished Joker”

I don’t agree with that, neither of them, I think this film can’t be good like that without any of them, good directing, good acting, and good script. In the all 152 minutes of this film, the audience never get relaxed, the film always have good point to catch you, there is no time for you to have a rest, or you will lost some good parts.

Take an example, the scene where Joker asked Batman to “take off his mask and turn himself in,” or people will die for this. Soon Joker gets all his three targets, and tries to kill them one by one. With the editing by Lee Smith, and original music by Howard and Zimmer, Nolan brings us into a really nervous scene. We looked at people killed by Joker’s plan, and feel absolutely bloody about the Joker, and his perfect plan.

In this film, Nolan gave us a different hero, a dark knight may be doesn’t means a dark knight, may he means dark like a night. Jack Nicholson’s Joker had words every time before he kill others “You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” sometimes, the moonlight at midnight make you shudder. He showed us the charm of dark. Like said by Alfred, “some men just wanna watch the world burn”, Joker is this guy, so he will burn half his money. The Joker just wants to make people reveal their evil. Harvey Dent is the best example, when Joker come into Dent’s room, the only thing Dent wants to do is kill him, he wants to revenge for Rachel, but he changed after Joker’s talking. Why? Because Joker know the word “fair” is so important in Dent’s mind. “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?” “Schemers trying to control their little worlds,” Joker made Dent no longer believed “plan”, “because it’s all part of plan”, they don’t need plan, and Joker said it is “plan” made Harvey Dent become Two-Face. Drop the “plan”, then everything will become chaos, and chaos is fair. He know exactly what Dent care about, is “fair”. To follow the “chaos fair”, Dent become Two-Face.

At the beginning of the film, Nolan showed us a bank robbing. Everyone in that rob team, they kill each other. They said “Boss tell me when the guy was done, I should take him out”, Joker is the “boss”, he know these guys will kill each others, because there will be “one less share”. Joker understands the human’s greed. From this, we can see Joker has his own “worshipper”, just like batman has his “copycats”, may be the Joker has more. Joker never put his point to the normal people, although he tries to make everyone “enjoy” his game unless in the end he abducts a car of people, in the other time, his target is clear, he killed Mob guys, he made Harvey Dent became Two-Face, he drove Batman crazy, made batman begin to do like CIA, begin to eavesdrop on Gotham’s people.

In this film, Joker is always tried to torture the order of Gotham’s hero. Nolan just used Joker’s words to “ask” the white knight of Gotham: “In what situation, will you finally fall down?” like Dent become Two-Face, just want the “fair”!

In the hospital, Joker told Two-Face Dent, “I’m the agent of chaos.” It is true, Joker brings Gotham chaos, by being crazy. Crazy is the most dreadful weapon. He seems he has got a plan already sometime, like he get arrested by Gordon’s plan, he stay in the MCU, used Dent and Dawes as counters, to made Batman and most of cops away, then he use the body bomb to escape, it’s all like he just planed everything, but, in fact, he doesn’t care, he just takes his life and everyone’s life like a game. When he comes to hunt Dent, because Dent turn himself in as batman. When the real batman come to save Dent, there is no surprise in Joker’s face, didn’t he know Dent isn’t batman already? I don’t think so, the only reason he doesn’t care about it, for him, it’s only a game, “I like this job, I like it!” that is what he said when he hunts Dent.

And his action is really like a “freak”, when you’re looking at this film, you will not see Heath Ledger is playing, the guy is real for us. Even it’s real for him, Ledger spent a month in the hotel, stay in his room, read the Batman’s comics, especially the Joker’s part, he made himself into Joker, someone said it’s a reason why Ledger is gone, he can’t get out this character, he can’t free himself from Joker. Nolan said, the scene Joker blow up the Gotham Centre Hospital, it was a real detonation there. So they had to done this scene in one time, they don’t have the second times. When Ledger as the Joker, and walk out of the Hospital, Ledger doesn’t show any nervous in, it is a real detonation behind him! May be at that moment, even Ledger thinks he is the Joker.

At the end, Joker got two ships of people, one is citizens, and another is criminals, a game again. A game which know exactly inside people, citizens are innocent, they should die; what about criminals? “Those men on that boat, they made their choices. They chose to murder and steal.” Yes, it’s true, but if we should give them another choice? They did bad things, but may be they are already awake from sin, they should not die too. And that is Joker’s great doing, people can’t chose which ship should die, which should alive. In fact, the enemies don’t care if they can win, they just want to bring the civilization to the hell. “When the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other,” said by Joker. He is never afraid to die, when Batman throws Joker from the building, he is laughing, like he said when he is locked in MCU “You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are.” For Joker, in his last moment, he is laughing to his death, you can see what crazy means. Like I just said, the enemies don’t care if they can win, so when Joker found there is no fireworks, he is angry because he doesn’t win this “game”, and mostly he lost the chance to make people fall down, these people still stand in white, so he will said “can’t rely on anyone these days. You gotta do everything yourself. Don’t we?”

Joker is the soul of The Dark Knight, but Ledger couldn’t have played so well without a good script. We can still hear his sly laugh, we can see his pale face, dark eyes, scarlet mouth, Joker’s custom suit in Heath’s body, just like Gothic art, stands behind the tunnel of death, looks colder than death. The only answer to the world is “how he got these scars”, he had different answers for different people, but there is only one result. We can’t know what kind of story he will told Batman. Heath Ledger made this story become a fable, it seems like we can see any detail when he speaks in cadence. His acting made us see what we can’t see essentially, clear shooting, expression when he is talking, stir up his hair, and lick the lips. He has no rules.