One of the blog commenters can't seem to separate why Slumdog won from why The Dark Knight was not nominated. In response, I found myself explaining my TDK issues – which are not nearly as severe as he constantly claims – in yet another way… so I thought I would share…
I have never said Dark Knight is flimsy.
It is I who said that it should have been a longer piece and would be better as one.
The problem with Dark Knight - though it is certainly a beautifully made and strong film - is that it didn't achieve its own ambitions... not MY ambitions for it... ITS ambitions.
The balance of Harvey Dent/Two-Face and The Joker is simply not achieved. The reason I think that is the case is that they didn't have the time to develop the more complex ideas of Two-Face in 2:40.
The opera of The Dark Knight is that chaos is unleashed by the absolute insanity of The Joker... it is fought by the absolute austerity of The Batman... and Two-Face ends up in between, a character of gray only because he swings between the two extremes.
Unfortunately, in the film what we get is Harvey Dent and then Two-Face as a pawn and victim, not as a character that changes the balance in a real way. The hour that was not in what should have been a 2 part saga was the hour about Dent/Two-Face embodying, even in his craziness, what a District Attorney is, not pure justice, but a compromiser, working the system, lying when expedient, and trying to enforce the law, even if it means breaking the law. That is what, in the construct that The Nolans set up, is so fascinating about that character... and which they barely scratched the surface of in a limited time frame.
Jim Gordon is also a part of that ambiguity, as are the bad guys. Gordon is willing to bend the rules for Batman, but he has lines he will not cross. And the same is true of the mob guys, who want to do their bad deeds, but are uncomfortable with the extreme lack of any restraint shown by The Joker. And in that are, The Nolans did a pretty complete job. Likewise, they got about as much out of The Joker – who does so many things in a harder, more real version of the Nicholson Joker of the Burton film – as there was to get.
But the reason the film is not fully realized is in the incompletion of Two-Face (and tangentially, by the fact that his drama over the loss of Rachel seems overstated and not in line with their relationship), which I would argue could have been fulfilled with more time.
If you think that makes me a Bat-basher or someone who would cal the film “flimsy,” so be it. That kind of narrow thinking is unfortunate and inaccurate, but everyone is entitled to their opinion, just as I am entitled to disregard it when it seems irrational.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/02/return_to_the_d.html