Last Monday, I finally left the ranks of the eight people or so in the whole city that have not yet seen The Dark Knight. I’m normally not a comic book kind of guy, but what with all the hype, hysteria, and never-ending water cooler discussions about the movie, plus my own inherent curiosity about how good Heath Ledger’s last film performance was, I just had to bite the bullet and go. Plus, I did see the original Batman with Michael Keaton, and the super-campy one with the codpieces and the plastic nipples with George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell, and truth be told, enjoyed both of them; and I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, so this movie couldn’t be all bad. And it wasn’t (although I felt it could have ended at least forty minutes earlier than it did). Two days later, I managed to catch one of the last screenings of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960s classic, Contempt (Le Mepris), during its limited revival at the Music Box Theater. Many film scholars consider Contempt as an aberration in the Godard oeuvre - it is his one foray into commercial cinema, with a narrative that is somewhat more accessible than his other masterpieces. While The Dark Knight is absolutely not at the cinematic level of Contempt, one of the pinnacles of world cinema, I couldn’t help but be struck by the similarity between Nolan’s and Godard’s ambitions and achievement. The Dark Knight takes the comic book genre and the generic Hollywood blockbuster and both adhered to, and refreshed and re-imagined, their conventions: amidst the multitude of breathtaking, blazing, action movie set pieces is a reflective tale of the inherent fallibility of human nature and the near-impossibility of categorizing who is a hero and who is a villain, who is virtuous and who is weak-willed. Contempt, on the other hand, also takes the conventions of 1960s Cinemascope, “international co-productions”, which it can be initially lumped with, such as panoramic, bright-hued views of Capri, characters who speak in English, Italian, and French, and abundant female pulchritude (in this case Brigitte Bardot’s) and wrapped a compelling story of various levels of breakdowns (marital, artistic, virtue) around them, using risky but innovative directorial techniques such as a 35 minute sequence shot in near real time in the closed quarters of an apartment.
The Dark Knight is a good movie, and a highly enjoyable one, and deserves all of the critical acclaim it has received so far, but I’m not really sure what some of our foremost film critics are sniffing when they’re writing their reviews. The Dark Knight is not “Shakespearian”, “pop-Wagnerian and operatic”, “grimly magisterial”, or “dark poetry”. Gosh, call the hyperbole police! It’s a thrilling and riveting action movie which also happens to pose intriguing questions about the nature of self and the consequences of making decisions that may not have been the right ones. I think the key point here is that, unlike a really substantive cinematic masterpiece, The Dark Knight stays at a very superficial “posing the question” level, and hints and teases and creates little doubts and thought streams in our heads, but does not develop these themes into a compelling discussion. And it shouldn’t- it is a popcorn movie, first and foremost. I think everyone, especially these insufferable film critics, are doing the movie a disservice by claiming these grandiose, artistic claims that frankly it doesn’t hold up to. If there is one thing that The Dark Knight should ultimately remembered for in cinema history, it is for the magnificent, fearlessly crafted performance by the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. It is a startlingly inhabited performance that freezes you in your tracks like a stun gun; he makes your skin crawl with his scarred Kabuki face, the insane glow in his eyes, the way he both drawls and snarls his vowels, but he also draws you in hypnotically, like he does Batman, pushing one more of your buttons, tapping into those little hidden desires that everyone has of breaking the rules, not following orders, stubbornly doing what one wants, regardless of the impact it creates. It is a performance that only a truly great actor can give. In my humble opinion, his Joker is right up there with his invaluable Brokeback Mountain Ennis del Mar, and a sad reminder for this movie fan that Ledger would have possibly given some of the best performances recorded on celluloid, if not for his untimely demise. One last point about the movie, too: what is up with Batman’s voice? When Christian Bale is in his Bruce Wayne persona, he sounds like, well, Christian Bale, but when he dons that batsuit, he sounds like Bea Arthur in a Darth Vader mask being run through a wave machine.
There are no jarring reminders of Bea Arthur in Contempt, thank goodness. Contempt, based on a novel by Nobel prize winner Alberto Moravia, is about a playwright, played by Michel Piccoli, who is asked to re-write an obtuse, artsy-fartsy version of The Odyssey being directed by the great German director Fritz Lang, playing himself, by a boorish, egomaniac American film producer played by Jack Palance (in a performance that is more Oscar-worthy than the City Slickers one he won for). The playwright’s wife, played in a dazzling performance by Brigitte Bardot, quickly falls out of love with him over the course of several days because of a thoughtless, emotionally unkind gesture he makes in order to ingratiate himself with the producer. It’s a simple story, but Godard tells it with panache and vision, creating a “slow burn” environment of alienation and disintegration, with the help of brilliant photography (both within constricted, angular spaces, and amidst breathtakingly beautiful, panoramic vistas) by the great Raoul Coutard and an emotionally haunting score by Georges Delarue. The screenplay, which Godard wrote uncredited, is marvelously complex, and yes, intellectually demanding, touching on various levels of transitions. On one level, there’s the marital breakdown brought about by an almost inadvertently selfish gesture on the part of one partner that has unanticipated impact on the other partner; on another level, there’s the artistic breakdown, where cinema auteurs like Lang have to kowtow to the commercial sensibilities of producers like Palance’s character (supposedly Godard’s way of poking fun at the film’s own producers, Joe Levine and Carlo Ponti, who he famously tangled with); and finally, there’s a level that tackles the socio-cultural change in values and principles (which is a reflection of the early 1960s environment it was filmed in, but feels still freshly relevant today)- what do we do and what do we give up for success and material goods? Like all Godard movies for me, there are maddeningly vague and monotonous points in the film where I’m thinking, I’d rather be doing my laundry than seeing this movie that seems to be meandering to nowhere, but overall, I did like it. And that technically brilliant 35 minute sequence where Bardot and Piccoli go through a whole rollercoaster of emotions still remains unmatched by very few film experiences.
The Dark Knight is still in gazillions of theaters, including Navy Pier Imax, in the Chicagoland area. Contempt is available on Criterion Collection DVD. By the way, Godard played Lang’s assistant in the film and can be seen in the very cool photograph holding the clapper.
Tags: Christopher Nolan, Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard, The Dark Knight
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