THAT MOMENT : The thing about chaos

The Dark Knight (2008)

When all is said and done, it seems that more will be said than done. That + we just love anniversaries 'round here. 10 years ago Christopher Nolan raised the bar just about out of reach for all other action movies, comic book movies, and (almost) himself with 2008's The Dark Knight. The movie managed to explore a whole new dimension within a terrain that had been fairly well-mapped many times over - giving it a stylish, true-crime makeover, turning the extravagant characters and landscape we already knew and loved so well into 'realistic' and 'believable.' Mission accomplished, though one can't help but ask, "Why so serious?"

 

The reasonable (and probably repetitive) observation I made in my review of The Dark Knight Rises was just that: while everyone was making comparisons to Heat and The Departed, people started to ignore the surrealistic edge of a guy in a batsuit pursuing a sociopath in clown makeup. Though then again, this is why the movie was and is so ferociously successful: it already prevails as a highly competent urban crime caper even without any of the batshit craziness. All the oddball characteristics punctuate the dark, stoic tone, as if to ask the audience... "Why so serious?"

There's a lot going on in this scene - so much so that it took however many subsequent viewings to get past the expository stuff and absorb what was really going on here. It is a pivotal scene; what transpires determines just about everything that happens in the rest of the story (Part 3 included). Though with a little bit of distance, it's a standalone monument of everything the Batman mythology holds sacred: two heavyweights of the rogues gallery meet face to face (to face) for the first time, and it's set up and played out like a DC fanboy's fantasy. In a game-changing movie, it blissfuly rides the wave of refreshing stereotypes: the Joker, fully disguised in retro nurse garb, snickers and taunts a chronically conflicted Harvey 'Two-Face' Dent, filling his head with the gospel of fire and anarchy. Armed with a nickel plated snub nose and his lucky coin, Harvey leaves the Joker's (and his own) fate to chance.
It's a stirring dialogue scene with hypnotic performances - so much so that the outrageous makeup and visual fx end up taking a backseat.
Not since Burton's Penguin and Catwoman have two villains paired so well.
The scene is pristine, but it would've been fun to see more.

- Paul