The biggest movie hit this summer screens in English
This summer’s top film sensation, The Dark Knight, has finally arrived in Kyiv. So, the local viewers will now get a chance to appraise the film and see if it’s really worth all the accolades it has been receiving on top of the record-breaking box office receipts. The film is currently rated in third place for all-time favorite movies at imdb.com, which makes you wonder what was so incredibly good in the film that it deserves to be listed with the classics. Perhaps, there is nothing more than the sudden death of Heath Ledger, the actor who plays the infamous villain Joker, that attracted the audiences to the theaters?
One way or another, the latter had something to do with it, and it’s also clear that it’s not Batman himself (played by Christian Bale) everyone is interested in – this time all eyes are focused on his arch-enemy, the Joker.
Long before Hollywood film director Christopher Nolan (Insomnia, The Prestige) laid his hands on it, the Batman character had gone through multiple interpretations. He appeared first as a comic book character in 1939, and was soon taken over by enthusiastic movie makers who took advantage of the lasting saga of his exploits and misfortunes.
Starting in a gloomy fantasy world created by Tim Burton in his Batman movie, and reducing to completely ridiculous in Batman & Robin, the movies have gone through a cast of superstars like Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Kim Basinger, Jack Nicholson, Danny Devito, Christopher Walken, Jim Carrey, and Nicole Kidman.
In his attempt to give the character a second birth, director Christopher Nolan digressed from Burton’s films with their fairy-tale settings, black humor and carnival villains, and released Batman Begins in 2005, creating a much darker, gloomier image of the mysterious superhero, telling his story from the very beginning.
It all began when eight-year-old Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) witnessed the murder of his parents and started to feel guilty for their deaths. The boy ends up under the influence of a mysterious instructor called Ducard, who urges him to become a ninja in the League of Shadows. However, Wayne returns to his native Gotham City, takes the name of Batman and starts cracking down on crime and corruption.
As in previous interpretations, the superhero is surrounded by friends – policeman Jim Gordon (played by Gary Oldman) and Alfred the butler (Michael Caine), and foes – Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). To disguise his superhero identity, Bruce Wayne hides under the mask of a multi-billionaire playboy and philanthropist.
Unlike an average stereotypical superhero, Batman doesn’t have any superpowers and relies on his knowledge in science, and tactics, as well as his martial arts, detective skills and pure physical abilities.
The Dark Knight, Nolan’s newly released sequel to Batman Begins, features new villains, namely the fabulous Joker, and Two-Face played by Aaron Eckhart. The role of Batman’s childhood friend and lover Rachel Dawes was given to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who replaced Katie Holmes from the previous movie. Like all Batman films, The Dark Knight has gathered an all-star cast.
But the tensest emotions, of course, rage around Joker – one of the last roles played by Heath Ledger, who was found dead last January in his New York apartment. Critics say that the role of Joker evoked the deepest of Ledger’s acting abilities and that he can be called a worthy rival to Jack Nicholson, who starred as Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman.
While working on the character, the designers were rumored to have drawn inspiration from such countercultural pop musicians as Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Rotten. Indeed, Ledger’s villain is scary and even disgusting – he certainly makes viewers cringe. And all the scarier he appears if you remember that the actor passed away before the movie was released, and the details of his death still remain controversial. Many Dark Knight posters feature Joker as the central figure of the film (which he certainly is), and display spooky images of the actor in horrible make-up, making him appear rather ghoulish.
Butterfly Ultramarine (1A Urytskoho, 206-0350). From Aug. 14
In English with Ukrainian subtitles
