MY MOVIE SHELF: The Dark Knight

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 297  Days to go: 283

Movie #80: The Dark Knight

Funny story:  Somehow I’ve lost Batman Begins. I know for a fact I used to have it, because my husband and I had this big discussion about whether it and The Dark Knight should be shelved in their respective alphabetical locations — separated from one another — or if they should be shelved together. (Obviously, the correct answer is alphabetically and apart. If they wanted them together they should’ve named them accordingly. I am not a crackpot.) Anyway, so I insisted they be separated, but I never realized until just recently that Batman Begins was missing because, until I’d come up to The Dark Knight, I’d completely forgotten it existed. No disrespect to Katie Holmes.

I also never got around to buying The Dark Knight Rises, despite my undying love for Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (I AM NOT A CRACKPOT), because … reasons, probably. (You might say this would’ve been easily ascertained upon my next post, but since blu-rays are in an entirely different section of my shelving for sizing conformity, that’s not necessarily the case. After all, I still own the first two Toy Story movies from the DVD set I bought ages ago, but Toy Story 3 I have on blu-ray. Sadly, I can’t just upgrade all my old DVDs to blu-ray and be done with it, though it is in my Top 5 list of things to do once I win the Powerball. But I digress.)

Fortunately, it matters not that I lack Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises, because The Dark Knight is indisputably the best movie of the three. Batman Begins has all kinds of setup and mythology work to do with zen master / criminal Liam Neeson, plus there’s the whole problem of silly Katie Holmes being completely out of her element. (No disrespect to Katie Holmes.) The Dark Knight Rises has Bane with an even goofier voice than Batman’s, plus Marion Cotillard’s distracting forehead mole. (She’s lovely, really, and great in the film, but it drives me nuts.) The Dark Knight, on the other hand, has Maggie Gyllenhaal taking over the character of Rachel Dawes from goofy Katie Holmes, flat-out refusing to be part of Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) revolving door of women, instead choosing to give her heart to the upstanding Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Harvey Dent being charismatic and clever until he becomes terrifyingly broken and angry and insane, and Heath Ledger as The Joker, blowing all our minds.

Gyllenhaal is a strong presence, and she holds her ground well against Bale’s multiple identities and Harvey’s charming arrogance. She also portrays Rachel as a powerful prosecutor and a woman with more courage and resolve than anyone else in the film. Eckhart, meanwhile, is solid in his role as Dent — a decisive man with both a purpose and a playful side — but it’s his transformation into Two-Face that is mesmerizing, and not just for the unbelievable effects work they did on him. Ledger, though, is a force of nature.

There have been plenty of thinkpieces about the seeming abandon with which Ledger inhabits his role, and I agree with all of them on his brilliant and riveting performance. It’s so far beyond what anyone expected he was capable of, I think, that it worsens the pain of his untimely death even more.

The Joker is a menacing madman, sure, but what I find most fascinating is his genius and calculating nature. The Joker doesn’t just go around wreaking havoc — there’s a method to his madness. This is possibly best evidenced (if most subtly so) by the way he always makes up a new story for how he got his scars, knowing that people will be curious but  also knowing it should be a sufficiently crazy story to ensure people of his insanity — as if he’s not actually crazy at all. He kills at will, but not randomly. He murders his disciples as he sees fit, to further his cause and to cut any and all ties to himself. He kills others as a means to an end, attempting to provoke or evade his enemies. He goes after Rachel and Harvey to corrupt the seemingly incorruptible — to make a point, to send a message, not just for kicks.  And he manipulates people to kill innocents to underline that same message, that people are inherently selfish and will always act in their own interests over those of the greater good. Indeed, the movie gets a fair amount of side-eye about its use of invasive surveillance for “the good of the people,” but the part I find most fascinating is the stand-off between the two ferries, in which neither group of hostages chooses to sacrifice the other in order to save themselves. In that one moment, writer-director brothers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (the latter performing all the directing duties, but collaborating on the script) are saying The Joker is wrong, and that people do have it in them to be noble and to do what is right. Amid all the bleakness that can be found in these films, that’s an incredibly positive and powerful statement to me. Have faith in people, because most of them are worth it.

The Dark Knight is also pretty spectacular because of the supremely badass way the Batcycle evolved out of the busted up Batmobile and then managed to do all sorts of switching, changing maneuvers like a boss. It’s without a doubt my favorite gadget in a pretty fantastically gadget-heavy flick. There’s also the matter of Alfred (Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) being both supportive co-conspirators and sort of snidely disapproving fathers to Bruce’s schemes. They provide an amusing and centered perspective that counters the overwhelming self-seriousness of everyone else (no-joke policy or no, this movie actually has several remarks played for laughs). (Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon is also something of a co-conspirator, despite not knowing Batman’s true identity, but he’s a much more solemn and determined one.) And huge props are due to the set designers, who gave the Joker a semi-truck for a particularly exciting car chase scene. The truck’s trailer says “LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE,” and there’s a spray-painted S at the beginning, so it says “SLAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE.” That’s some straight-up genius work right there, and if more Oscar voters had noticed it, maybe it would’ve won that prize.

All in all, I’m pretty satisfied that if I had to own only one of these Nolan-helmed Batman flicks, it would be this one. The performances and story are at their strongest, the stakes are their highest, and Bruce still doesn’t get the girl, but not for the reason he thinks. (No disrespect to Katie Holmes.)

MY MOVIE SHELF: Brokeback Mountain

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #41: Brokeback Mountain

I spend every second of this movie heartbroken. Every single one. I’m not sure it was possible to go into Brokeback Mountain not knowing it was about “gay cowboys” — it was all anybody was talking about in late 2005 – early 2006 — so I knew the second Heath Ledger (as Ennis Del Mar) gets out of that truck in the opening scene and the chyron says “1963,” this was going to be a tale of sorrow and sacrifice, of longing and denial and secrets.

These two boys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), being 18 or 19 when they first meet, fall deeply, irrevocably in love that summer up on Brokeback Mountain. And it’s not just Jack’s doing, even though he’s clearly the more experienced one, the one more aware of and comfortable with who he is, the instigator of their first sexual encounter. Ennis, a young man never given to strong words or strong feelings, is overcome with passion for Jack. And when that passion is released, he can’t escape it. He lets it wash over him all those weeks they’re up there alone together. He’s intimate and loving and open emotionally in ways he’ll never be with anyone else. He’s filled with anger and frustration that this can’t last, that he has to go back to that other life, and when they part he’s racked with sobs so violent they drop him to the ground, choking for air.

The heartbreak only grows from there. Alma (Michelle Williams), so clearly in love with her husband in the beginning, is soon scared by his angry outbursts. She feels rejected by his desire to make love to her from behind. More and more she feels like she can’t understand him, and she’s devastated and broken when she discovers the truth. She’s not even able to live in denial over it, either, because Ennis’s lies and excuses are thin and unsubstantiated. She doesn’t deserve this life, this man who will never love her or long for her the way he does Jack, and yet this is the life she has.

Jack’s wife Lureen (Anne Hathaway) lives a life of purpose and privilege, but her dissatisfaction and unhappiness play out on screen in the tragedy of her hair and makeup over the years — ever more processed, ever more garish, ever more false.

And Jack himself is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. He dreams big. He wants to leave Lureen and go live with Ennis in a cabin on the Twist family ranch. He wants to build a life with Ennis, the life he needs. But Ennis is too practical and too scared to ever consider it, to ever understand just how much love Jack has for him and how much Jack believes their love could conquer all. Instead all they get are twenty years of stolen moments and cherished memories amid lives of pained resignation and emptiness.

It was eight and a half years ago when Brokeback Mountain came out. Only eight and a half years, and yet so much has changed. Back then it was a VERY big deal to tell the love story of two men in a major motion picture. It was “shocking” and “brave” of A-list, heartthrob actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal to take the lead roles. It was even more shocking that there would be scenes of them kissing and having sex. I mean, back in December 2005, of two of today’s most prominent gay actors — George Takei and Neil Patrick Harris — only Takei was out, and only recently at that. (Harris wouldn’t come out until nearly a year later.)

The previous year, in 2004, eleven states had voters approve constitutional bans on same-sex marriages. Today, several of those bans have been overturned, DOMA is a thing of the past, and same-sex marriage is legal in nineteen states and counting. Today, public figures come out as gay in offhand remarks, or in Instagram photos, or as an afterthought. Today there are shows that not only prominently feature gay couples, gay adoption, and gay marriage, but HBO’s Looking, for one, deals openly with gay sex. I’m not saying homosexuality is a completely accepted facet of our culture yet, there is much still to accomplish and many areas where homophobia and bigotry are still sadly prevalent. But when I think of the changes that have happened over just these eight and a half years, or the massive cultural shift in attitudes toward homosexuality from the early ’90s, when I was in high school, to today, I am filled with glorious hope and optimism that the world is changing, and changing for the better. There will always be heartbreak, but I look ahead with the knowledge that one day there will be less.