Why is it called "The Dark Knight"?

This movie should be called "The Joker - the rise of the most sinister villain ever seen on film". He is so dark that Batman (Christian Bale) seems a pale shade of grey in comparison! Heath Ledger's Joker is the consummate anarchist, creating chaos just so that he can revel in it, cackling with glee as the morally uptight Batman struggles to prevent disaster after disaster. The Joker casts such a powerful and menacing shadow over The Dark Knight that its easy to overlook the central theme of the movie - how far can a man go up against evil before he either gets tainted by it or loses his humanity in an attempt to persevere?

In The Dark Knight, Nolan's vision of Batman expands into a struggle of man versus vigilante as Bruce Wayne tries to grapple with an alter ego that is increasingly taking over his life. As old flame Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall) puts it, Wayne needs Batman more than Gotham does. At some level, Wayne realises that, which explains his misguided attempts at giving Gotham a legitimate hero. But even as Batman resists the The Joker's temptation to cross the line, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhardt), Batman's candidate for Gotham's hero succumbs to the same. In other words, Dent's humanity makes him cross over to the dark side, even as Batman's own is compromised by his refusal to respond to similar emotions.

A lot of the movie's underlying message gets eclipsed by an electric Heath Ledger, whose interpretation of the Joker is beyond all glowing descriptions. Unlike (a highly overrated) Jack Nicholson's buffoon, this Joker is by no means a cardboard villain. He is the kind of guy who shoves grenades into mouths and rigs up bombs inside stomachs. To top it all, he is totally insane. One of my favourite Joker moments is when he tells Batman, "you make me complete" - a great spin on the cheesy Jerry Maguire dialogue played to extremely interesting effect. Absolutely perfect!

The Dark Knight leaves some dramatic opening cues for the next Batman movie - TwoFace, a grittier (and possible more embittered) Batman, and a potentially more interesting female lead. I'll leave you with my favourite lines from the movie:

"Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know what I am, Harvey? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. I just *do* things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I *hate* plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So when I say that what happened to you and your girlfriend wasn't personal, you know I'm telling the truth!"

Verdict: I want to watch it again, and again!

Rescue Dawn, or, One more reason to love Christian Bale

I was watching Batman Begins for the nth time, when it struck me that I loved Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. After I saw Saving Private Ryan, I told myself, "This will be the last war movie I'll see". For all its critical acclaim, Saving Private Ryan was cheesy, and played to the gallery till the very last note. So when Rescue Dawn came along, I dismissed it as another war movie, or worse still, an ego exercise for a rather intriguing actor. Eating maggots? Ew, I thought! But when I saw Rescue Dawn on the list of in-flight movies on a 5-hour flight, I couldn't resist taking a peek.

Rescue Dawn is no war movie. Yes, it is set in the thick of the Vietnam War, and the protagonist is a US Naval pilot who is shot down and held prisoner. But thats all there is to it. Like Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries), Werner Herzog wisely stays away from political statements (In this case, the machinations of the war in Nam). For instance, Dieter Dangler (Bale) is shot down in Laos (this is based on a true story), where the US is not supposed to have ever been. That the US bombed Laos to the last centimeter so that if one waters the ground there, a bomb tree would grow, is not something Herzog wants to get into. Nor does he portray the Viet Cong as black villains who indulge in horrendous forms of torture.

A lesser director would have added more drama, shown us blisters on sore feet, cut to a painful grimace of the man who is brave in the face of adversity. A lesser actor would have hammed it up, given us soulful stares and ponderous dialogue delivery. Instead, Dangler salvages a single rotting shoe and gives it to his fellow escapee Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) with the glee of a child who has found a stray marble. (Spoiler alert!) A few scenes later, he snatches away the same single shoe from the the dead Martin's foot without so much as a second thought! Bale does eat real maggots (if media reports are to be believed), but its not a big deal in the movie. Nor is it when Bale strips off a snake's head with his teeth (hope at least that was not real!).

Rescue Dawn could have well descended into a weepy, heavy handed picture. Instead Herzog and Bale work to create one of the most beautiful testaments to the human spirit that we have seen. I'd like to watch the Golden Globe nominated "Into the Wild" to see if Sean Penn even comes close! Bale is a class act, even without fancy outfits and terrible weight loss programmes (well, he had to lose some for this role, but not as bad as The Machinist). Note to self: see 3:10 to Yuma soon. Steve Zahn does some good work here as Duane Martin. In some scenes, he almost steals the thunder from under Bale's nose.

Verdict: Great movie. Bale is now at the top of the list along with Gael Garcia Bernal, and therefore earns the tag "amazing"!