Watching the world burn

You've seen it, I've seen it (twice), everyone has seen it. Is there really anything I can say about Dark Knight that hasn't been seen or observed a hundred thousand times before in the last month or so? I doubt it. It's just too late, sorry, no full review. Here's just a couple of personal highlights from me. We're riding my ego here like the Bat-pod. Which leads me to-

• The Bat-Pod-I don't know how it happened that I never found out ahead of time that the Bat-Pod actually was the coolest escape-pod in the history of anything that comes from the destroyed Bat-Tank. I was trying to engage the film in a non-fanboy way until BAM Batman slid under the truck, capsized it like an AT-AT and then did that bad-ass vertical 360. SO COOL!

• Anyone else get a pseudo-Obama vibe from Harvey Dent? A public figure everyone is pinning there hopes and dreams on? Anyone?
• Congratulations Aaron Eckhart, welcome to being an honest to god movie star. You've met Mr. Downey I assume?
• Heath Ledger is of course awesome. Same goes for the opening heist and the amazing magic trick. My favorite Joker moment is in the interrogation room when he turns the tables on EVERYONE! Nolan continually had the Joker be at his strongest when you'd think he was at his weakest.
• And may I just say bravo for making the Joker's schemes being honest to goodness moral quandaries (a quandary Jack Donaghy!) with no simple solutions. After years of crappy movie super-villain plots it was great to see how threatening (and genuinely frightening) a good villain can be.
• As great Ledger is (and he's pretty damn great) my favorite character in the film (and favorite performance to boot) is Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon. His return was a triumphant moment for both my audiences. He gets put through the ringer, but just like Michael Caine was in the first film he serves as the moral center when everything goes to pot. His desperation at the prospect of losing Dent is heart-breaking and both his moments with his son are perfect. I'll admit to getting a little nerd-teary when he gets promoted, a moment that gets perfectly punctuated by the Joker's creepy-ass applause (a moment I've since heard was improvised on set).
• Man I wish they could go back and CGI replace Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal in Batman Begins.
• Neither the trip to Japan nor the almost secret identity reveal felt superfluous to me as the both show Batman as a detective (something that had been lacking in every single Batman film up to this point). It's a facet of the character that was a pleasure to see.
• I am a little bummed that the wanna-be Batman thread never gets picked up again. It had a lot of potential. It would've nicely echoed the idea of Batman as a malleable symbol.
  
• OK I'll admit it, Christian Bale's Batman voice sounds like GOB Bluth. "Michael I'm onto you"
• Having his legs broken by Batman is my favorite Eric Roberts moment, no strike that, favorite Roberts family moment, in any film ever.
• For all it's grimness I think the film has a pretty damn inspiring ending. "The Joker cannot win." He's not saying it hypothetically, he's stating it as a fact. Batman, moreso than any other superhero, is driven by his ceaseless determination. He will not quit. It's what made the whole "I can retire now and leave this all to Harvey Dent" sub-plot kind of wishy-washy and forgettable for me.
• Bat-Manuel is the mayor of Gotham city? Who says Christopher Nolan has no sense of humor?
• I don't think it's reasonable to compare this movie to The Godfather or it's sequel. I will say though that its ok to call it "Heat with costumes."
• I like the fact that people are responding to this film not for it's action but for it's deeper discussion of justice, it's questions of circumstances defining morality and how institutions can be compromised. I still don't think it's an excuse to not bother checking out independent or foreign films. Which begs the question, anyone want to go see Baghead?
  
• It's my favorite movie of the year so far (just beating out Wall-E) but let's keep things in perspective folks, the year ain't over yet, not by a long shot.
• Is the Joker this year's Daniel Plainview? People sure do seem to respond to him. My friend Amir over at collegehumor gives one of HIS finest performance yet in tribute here.

Heath Ledger 1979-2008

Where to even begin. I’m shocked. Like many of you, upon hearing the news I was sure I misheard or misread or it was just an urban legend that was getting out of hand. But no it is unfortunately true. I certainly didn’t know Heath Ledger but I had seen a good chunk of his work and a huge admirer of the man as a performer. He was well on his way to becoming one of the finest actors of his generation and for him to be taken like this, two years into fatherhood no less, is an absolute tragedy.

Ledger first came to my attention, as he did to a large chunk of his young American audience was as the brooding bad boy with a heart-of-gold, Patrick Verona, in the way wittier then it has any right to be 10 Things I Hate About You. In this Taming of the Shrew set in high school, Ledger played the Pertruchio analogue who was hired to woo the bitchy Julia Stiles. For the first chunk of the film I assumed Ledger was just a pretty boy hired for his looks. Oh ho, ho, never judge a book by their cover kids. Then this scene happened:

And that was the moment I fell in man-love with Heath Ledger. Oh man you can’t even begin to know how bad I wanted to bust this move on my high school crush. The scene is brilliant, he sings well enough to come off sincerely, but sings badly enough to make it genuinely cute and funny. It’s the first time the character smiles in the film too and when Heath Ledger smiles, well, damn.

I missed Ledger’s short lived Fox series Roar, but I’ve heard it was a solid enough sword and sorcery effort. But come on, it was a genre show on Fox and Ledger was bound for bigger and better things anyway (as was co-star Vera Farmiga).

Though he’s not in the movie for very long, Ledger made an impression as the idealistic Gabriel Martin, whose death inspires daddy Mel Gibson to fight the British in the lackluster The Patriot. What came next though was a horse of a different color.
A Knight’s Tale was and remains an incredibly fun movie. As William Thatcher, a humble stable boy who bucks the medieval caste system to become a knight with the help of probably the most fun group of sidekicks ever assembled (Mark Addy, Alan Tudyk and the brilliant Paul Bettany). Ledger is charming, stalwart and very easy to root for in this incredibly solid leading man role. While the film was not a huge success in theaters it has found a much beloved place in many DVD collections and cable airings.

There are many who dug Monster’s Ball and I am admittedly not one of them. Though lord knows there’s a lot of thorough and powerful emoting going on in the film and Ledger gives as good as he gets.

The Four Feathers, Ned Kelly and The Order put Ledger in a bad place career –wise for a while but I can certainly understand his signing onto any of the films. In the wake of Gladiator, Lord of the Rings and other epics one would figure that doing a big military story would do the trick. It didn’t. As for The Order it brings back a lot of the same creative team as A Knights’s Tale so it makes sense that Ledger would jump at the chance to have that kind of fun again.

Then came 2005. Ledger wisely ascribed Terry Gilliam as the reason for his career resurgence and he’s not wrong. Gilliam casting Ledger as Jacob Grimm in The Brothers Grimm showed audience he could do a lot more then play the handsome, dashing ample lead. Jacob is a bit of an odd-ball and geek, playing a fine counterpoint to the more roguish Will played by Matt Damon. The movie may not have been among Gilliam’s best but you’d be hard pressed to fault Ledger or Damon for that. Ledger gave a spectacular Val Kilmer impression in Lords of Dogtown. The fictional retelling of Dogtown and Z–Boys was a lot of fun and Ledger is a huge contributor to that. Of course what Ledger will ultimately be known for is his multi-award nominated work as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.

In his most layered performance to date Ledger gave the film it’s dark, mournful heart. Ennis is as laconic as they come and Ledger calls upon all his physicality to suggest volumes about Ennis’ inner-most desires and fears. Ledger has one wonderful intense moment after another. The moment where he defends hid family fiercely and then is framed separately from his family backed by fireworks is certainly one of the most gorgeous shots in Ang Lee’s filmography. Let’s not forget the film’s final moment where clutching his lover Jack Twist’s denim jacket barely spits out “Jack, I swear…” You’d have to be made of stone not to shed a tear at that scene. It was also on this film that Ledger met future lover Michelle Williams. On an additional note, I’m really pleased to see that after a year and a half of being a punchline, the film has really held up well, which is great considering it sadly now stands as one of the brightest spots on Ledger’s resume.
Ledger’s leading follow-up, the light and breezy Casanova, is sweet but forgettable. Besides, we already knew Ledger could swash-buckle well at this point.

This year’s I’m Not There brought back the Brokeback quality Ledger, playing Dylan, the artist whose family life is in turmoil. Acting against the luminous Charlotte Gainsbourg, Ledger portrayed the most human and vulnerable of the Dylan’s on display. Since there was so much going on in the film I look forward to revisiting it and giving Ledger’s section a closer look as it hits that fine line between drama and melodrama.

Ledger has one film completely in the can, his post-work is all finished and now all we can do is wait. The film of course, is the hotly anticipated Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight. Ledger plays the Joker and the advance word is incredibly strong. It appears from the limited footage we’ve seen that Ledger was skewing closer to the comics then Nicholson’s portrayal and I’m really excited to see Ledger play a genuinely worthy opponent to the caped crusader and play it damn scary.
It’s also a grim joke that Ledger was filming another Gilliam film, the fascinating sounding The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Gilliam has had catastrophes halt his films before but nothing like this. While the completion of a film is nothing in the face of a human life, given the choice between no new Gilliam film and an alive Heath Ledger I wouldn’t think twice, it’s still a bummer.

More bleak is to think of the career Ledger was on his way to having. A leading man not afraid to make unconventional, daring choices. Never you mind the fact the man was a father. A tragic, tragic loss.

My prayers and wishes go out to Mr. Ledger’s family and friends.

Like a Complete Unknown

I'm glad I took a day or two to process I'm Not There, Todd Haynes new film inspired by the life and words of Bob Dylan. Its a wonderful film, innovative and intriguing but at the same time extraordinarily dense. I certainly can't universally recommend it, most people's appreciation of the film will go hand-in-hand with their appreciation of Dylan. If you're at all inclined towards Dylan I would strongly encourage seeing this film. Being able to put the films' scenes, character and history in context will certainly help and to that end I would endorse renting Scorsese's excellent Dylan documentary No Direction Home and reading this or this. If even the mere thought of doing a bit of leg work before seeing a film is anathema to you maybe I'm Not There is not for you.

This caveat out of the way, lets get to some particulars. Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Safe) has taken the standard Hollywood biopic, planted about twenty ons of TNT at its base and exploded it like Wile E. Coyote. Using the conceit of having six different actors play analogues of Dylan at different periods in his life, Haynes begins to capture a portrait of a notoriously difficult personage to know. The characters themselves are all struggling with identity in their own way in some small part. People like to label certain artists as constantly re-inventing themselves, but after watching this film one would be hard pressed to label an artist who has more successfully metamorphisized time and again than Dylan. He's been the folk-protest figurehead, the cowboy, the man out of time, the family man, the minister and perhaps most notably the rebel who balks at scrutiny of his art, life and work. Haynes shows off these figures at random, flashing back and forth their stories running parallel to each other occasionally inersecting in subtle ways.

Having seen Todd Solondz Palindromes, I was a bit concerned as to how this multiple actors playing one character would work out. In the Solondz film it seemed distasteful and gimmicky (just one of a litany of problems I have with the film). Haynes, however, makes it work in such a way as to really illustrate how complex his subject is and how silly the typical Hollywood biopic is. People are never just one distinct personality their entire lives. We inevitably change and evolve; the person we are at ten is not the person we are at twenty, thirty and so on. Even though the age and style of the actors so radically shift the basic characteristics of the Dylan persona exist through the throughline of each different character.

With six actors playing Dylan in addition to the myriad of supporting players there's a lt of acting to consider here. The clear stand-out is Cate Blanchett who in addition to perfectly aping Dylan at the time he was most contrary to the press as he transitioned from folk-message songs into electric guitar based rock, never once gives away her gender. She also has the most fun sparring partner, Bruce Greenwood the closest thing this film has to a villain, and co-star (David Cross as Allen Ginsberg-genius). Still, all the other analogues make an impression. Christian Bale works as the protester turned preacher is appropriately somber, Ledger as the actor and family man whose marriage is falling apart (opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg), an unusually gritty Richard Gere as a rebel cowboy, Marcus Carl Franklin as a boy trying to be a part of world long gone and Ben Whishaw as a confrontational artist each get a chance to shine.

In addition to the various actors, Haynes changes his style numerous times. He apes the work of a Fellini dream sequence, a Peckinpah Western, a Lester Beatles musical, a domestic drama and others, he even consciously copies whole scenes from Dylan documentaries; Don't Look Back and the aforementioned No Direction Home. Contrasting these styles evokes a variety of feelings and creates an odd synthesis that gives the viewer a keen idea of the type of man Dylan was and the man he became. There's so much material here (references to Dylan lyrics, album cover art and famous quotes are scattered throughout, but its never as overstated as in Across the Universe) that it could days to pour over it all. I look forward to revisitng the film and sussing through it (might I reccomend a pop-up fact feature on the DVD for references).