“The ‘Unforgiven’ of superhero movies”

You know how Batman, when he takes a brutal hit, you see him stagger, stuggle to stay upright as he falters unsteady on his feet? The pain is palpable, and you feel the same bone-cracking hurt that he does. He might even go down, and you worry for a second, OMG, Is he alright? Why won’t he rise up? Even though you know in your soul that he’ll ultimately prevail — because he’s the damn Batman! — there’s still that transitory vulnerability that makes him the superhero who wins our empathy and makes us care, right? That’s what happened yesterday, when Scarecrow and Joker took on the guise of Denby and Edelstein (Denstein? aha, Denstein = Dent! Don’t you get it!?). They knocked him down to a 72 with a one-two sucker-punch, but our boy is back on feet this morning. Rise and shine to the 2nd wave of raves, The Dark Knight has climbed into the balmy 80’s again.

Scott Foundas, The Village Voice (metacritic score: 100)

By now, of course, you know that the Joker is played by Heath Ledger in the last role he completed before his death, this past January, at the age of 28. And it is perhaps the best compliment one can pay to this gifted young actor to say that his performance here would have cemented his legend even if he’d lived to see the film’s release… Ledger seems to make the film grow larger whenever he’s onscreen…

In making the transition from low-budget independent films to studio tentpole projects, Nolan (who co- authored The Dark Knight with his brother, Jonathan), has sacrificed none of his abiding obsessions. Like the amnesiac amateur detective who occupied the central role in Nolan’s M√∂bius-strip sophomore feature, Memento, the Bruce Wayne of Dark Knight is increasingly gripped by an existential crisis, wondering whether he is the hero or the villain of his own story.

Joe Neumaier, NY DailyNews (metacritic score: 100)

The ax-grinding, soul-churning, thought-provoking sequel to 2005’s “Batman Begins” dives down and dirty into the unholy mess a society sinks to when fear is its driving force… Without sacrificing thrills, it finds sober excitement inside the ticking time bombs people can become. It’s the “Unforgiven” of superhero movies.

And no Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Bury him; he’s dead. Ledger’s take on this iconic creature is mesmerizing. With his stooped gait, darting tongue and a flat Midwestern sneerrrrr in his voice, he creeps in doing a danse macabre and gives the movie the jitters.

No joke: For Ledger, it’s the role of a lifetime in the movie of the summer.

Negative reviews after the cut. oh wait, there aren’t any of those. So instead you’ll find a gloriously raw mediation by MaryAnn Johanson, the Flick Filosopher.

It’s wrong that Ledger’s death lends this even more significance than we might have seen otherwise, or at least that his death makes it impossible to separate that terrible fact from the terror-full character he plays here. Because this Joker, in Ledger’s hands, is like a monster sprung full-grown from our collective id, a beast easy to despise because he is so recognizably us, the awful side of us, not necessarily as individuals but as a puppet of all of us, fueled by the mutual societal self-destructiveness — as evidenced by the ongoing collapse of our economies, of our environment, of our inability to stop ourselves going over a cultural cliff — that some of us rage against it to seemingly no effect.

I hate that I have to think that Ledger’s own, in retrospective, clear urge to self-destruct had anything to do with how powerfully he brings to life this gollum of our apparent urge for species-cide. But the possibility seems inescapable. And yet, if it’s true, then the Joker is even more damning an indictment of us all than anyone could have planned for.

This is the kind of shit that The Dark Knight has me thinking. Miserable, depressing shit that makes me want to crawl into bed for a week and not even peek out from beneath the covers. But, of course, I’m a miserable, depressed creature of our modern cultural environment, so I cannot help but see Dark Knight as brilliant, genius even, a wonderful, wretched encapsulation of everything that’s fucked up about the world, and a few very tiny things that might be hopeful about it.

But that’s not all; there’s more. That’s not even half of it. So go. Go! — Go wallow in our collective mournful misery.