First of all, I must admit that I was awaiting the premier of Batman: The Dark Knight with equal amounts of anticipation and trepidation. That's fan geekiness to the extreme, I know, but I've been a Batman fan for a long, LONG time (since the 1960s in fact). Batman and the Joker are both on the short list of fictional characters that I adore. In decades of reading comics, I've seen many brilliant takes on both characters, but I've never seen a live action depiction of the Joker done well. I loathed Jack Nicholson's performance. So when Chris Nolan announced that he was taking on the Joker for his second Batman film, and then that he'd cast Heath Ledger, I was so anxious that they get it right that I was actually worried about seeing this film. I needn't have feared. Everything you've heard about Heath Ledger's performance, all the hype, all the talk about it be an Oscar-worthy, legendary performance... it's all true, and then some. Ledger vanishes into the role. He becomes the Joker. It's more than just the fact that his face is covered in makeup (apparently of Ledger's own design, IIRC). Everything about Ledger is altered to bring the character to life: his stance, his walk, his voice (where in the hell did he come up with that particularly perfect voice?), his expressions and mannerisms, that horrifying laugh...it was all spot on perfect. (I was particularly disturbed by the way that his tongue would dart out at the oddest times to lick at the corners of his torn mouth. It was practically reptilian and wonderfully offputting.) This was exactly the character as I've always imagined him to be. It was spooky.

The Dark Knight is a gritty crime drama that just coincidentally happens to feature comic book characters as the lead characters. Gone is any trace of the beautifully grosteque artiface of Tim Burton's Gotham City, or the art deco inspired landscape of Chris Nolan's first Batman movie. There is nothing otherwordly about this Gothan City. This film is set firmly in the real world, and that is just one of the many reasons why it is so jaw-droppingly effective. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but suffice it to say that it is a believable, complex crime story involving mob money, international crime syndicates, corrupt cops and a city full of jaded, frightened, normal people who just want the violence to stop so that they can carry on their petty, normal lives. Or perhaps I should say that it is a complex crime story that just happens to have been uprooted out of the typical crime genre and plunked down into the middle of a horror movie because there is a monster in Gotham City. A human monster: Heath Ledger's Joker. There is no rhyme or reason to what he does, but none of it is random. He's a force of nature, chaos embodied. He's brilliant and charming but profoundly insane and wholly evil. This isn't a villain that anyone can figure out or ever sympathize with. He's not 'misunderstood.' He doesn't secretly just need a cuddle and a sympathetic ear to make him all better. The Joker exists solely to fuck things up in the worst possible way. By setting the story in a realistic cityscape instead of a more graphically inspired gothic landscape, Chris Nolan reinforces the dread and devastation that this human monster leaves in his wake.

All of the performances were wonderful. I've read some reviews which criticized Aaron Eckhart's performance as Harvey Dent as being blandly handsome but I disagree. The comicbook Harvey Dent was a handsome, crusading attorney with huge aspirations and media-star good looks (but an unfortunate streak of anger and dangerously high expectations). I thought that the script, and Eckhart, portrayed the character very well. Thankfully, Maggie Gyllenhaal replaced Katie Holmes in the minor, but crucial role of Rachel Dawes. Holmes is very pretty but she is a lightweight actress who could not have pulled off the maturity required here. Needless to say, both Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were perfect, but the other standout performance in this movie belongs to Gary Oldman who is amazing, no, AMAZING here as Jim Gordon. If Heath Ledger hadn't delivered such a mesmerizing avalanche of a performance, everybody would have been talking about Gary Oldman in this movie. As for Christian Bale he builds on his performance from the first movie and delivers here a Batman who is becoming increasingly removed from his 'real' life as Bruce Wayne. Much as Bruce Wayne would like to hang up his bat suit and cowl and simply be a normal guy. Alas, when suddenly faced by his Jungian shadow in the form of the psychopathic Joker, Wayne finds himself on the opposite trajectory. Bale is fantastic at portraying Batman pushed to his limits. His portrayal of Bruce Wayne seems a bit stiff and flat, but that is purposeful, because in this movie we see 'Bruce Wayne' become more and more of a false construct, an afterthought. In order to stop the Joker, the Batman must push himself to his own dark limits. The further he moves into the night, the more ephemeral the shiny, happy life of Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire becomes. Even though the Batman will always ultimately 'win' his battles simply because he never, never stops fighting evil, (as the Joker notes, the Batman is the unmoveable object), you just know that there will never ever be a truly happy ending for Bruce Wayne the man. Bale, like everyone else in the movie, is overwhelmed by Ledger's performance, but he does a fine job with this tragic role nonetheless.

I almost wish that Nolan would stop here and never make another Batman film. I'm not sure that he could top this one. I guess we'll see.