A better class of criminal

Earlier this week I finally got around to seeing the new Batman movie. I wanted very much to like it more than I did.

Vermont's very cool Senator Patrick Leahy, a lifelong Batman fan, has a cameo in the movie ("We're not intimidated by thugs!"). Leahy grew up in Montpelier and frequented the Kellogg-Hubbard Library (est. 1895), where I now work. The movie's world premiere, held here in Montpelier, was a benefit for the library. Added to the fact that I really enjoyed Batman Begins, all this made me pretty enthusiastic about The Dark Knight.

But Heath Ledger's performance is by far the best thing about it: the handsome young Australian completely disappears behind the smeared makeup and trademark purple suit. He is the Joker: a terrifying and despicable sociopath, deeply unsettling even to look at. And yet you constantly want him to be on the screen: his scenes are entirely what make this movie worth sitting through. He says he embodies chaos, and he acts accordingly, with confidence and relish. He has all the hesitation of a rattlesnake.

Meanwhile, Batman doesn't know if he's a hero or not, and is so ready to shrug off his mantle that there's no pleasure in watching him wear it. He's conflicted, but not in an interesting way. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is all hair gel and Armani: too suave to evoke sympathy. (Yes, Wayne's self-assurance should foil Batman's self-doubt into something more compelling, but Bale fails to capture this.) As he mopes on the ledge of a skyscraper, you can almost hear him mumbling "But I don'wanna be Batman" like some self-pitying adolescent.

Mind you, I will always have a place in my heart for Christian Bale. I still think of him as Jamie in Empire of the Sun, and he was excellent in The Prestige. But for The Dark Knight, he just shows up and flaunts his cheekbones. When Batman does his silently-disappearing trick, I had the impression that Bale just wandered off the set because he had nothing else to offer.

This is not a comfortable movie to watch: its moral contemplations, especially as orated by the Joker, are just as disquieting as its physical violence. ("These 'civilized' people with their 'rules' - when the chips are down, they'll eat each other.") And the action, by the way, is not especially innovative: Batman only does one cool trick—clotheslining a semitruck—and the fight scenes are claustrophobic and blurry. And anyone with motion sickness or neurological issues should watch out for the sonar-imaging sequences; they're nauseating.

En fin: Heath Ledger is utterly absorbing and completely terrifying. It's too bad his last brilliant performance is lodged in the middle of an otherwise average action movie.