EPTOn December 31 2008 13:44 Xeris wrote:
sort of along the lines of what Track said - I think that Dark Knight dealt with a lot of the same themes as No Country for Old Men but No Country was done much more artfully.
If you remove Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker from the movie - the movie as a whole would be good, at best. His performance particularly was off the charts, but as far as thematically and symbolically, it didn't deliver the same punch as No Country, although having similar underlying themes.
sort of along the lines of what Track said - I think that Dark Knight dealt with a lot of the same themes as No Country for Old Men but No Country was done much more artfully.
If you remove Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker from the movie - the movie as a whole would be good, at best. His performance particularly was off the charts, but as far as thematically and symbolically, it didn't deliver the same punch as No Country, although having similar underlying themes.
I guess my issue is that Batman was more of a visceral, face value BUT at the same time profound thriller. Whereas this film was entirely latent and subtle. Batman thrusts some really cool concepts in your face, and puts in you in a tense, heady world...where there is a lot of head scratching and challenging things the protagonists have to get out; this film is just as tense but the head scratching is more of a sort of meta head scratching. There is no trick to the way people do things in the film, because that's not what you're supposed to focus on.
As such I guess you need to view the film in a different light...and because I like to get absorbed in films and try to conflate their reality with mine, I guess the batman just works better for me. Interesting to see how other people view it though. I personally think batman was just full of a rich clever plot but that's my opinion.
