Completely Unnecessary

How pretty is Chicago?!?!

That’s my takeaway from The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s new installment in the Batman series. In short: it was great.

But back to my pretty city. In Batman Begins, most of the action focused around ‘The Narrows’, a CGI island plunked in the middle of the Chicago River. In Dark Knight, however, the city is filmed with a lot less computer fussing and frequently during the day.

The river even looked clean! It was the best the city’s looked since The Fugitive. And it’s the closest to feeling homesick I’ve been since returning to Oz. It’s really funny to watch chase scenes running up and down Lake St. and the ending up somewhere completely different. (Look out also for the awesome ‘GTA’ bus.)

And, of course, there’s the obligatory chase scene on Lower Wacker Dr. I was just joking to my friend Avi, which whom I watched Batman Begins the other day, that any movie filmed in Chicago must involve Lower Wacker. And as a cop yelled, “Go down to Lower 5th Avenue!” (or something like that), I turned to Avi and said, ‘See? Here we go.’

Which is not to say that those pesky things like plot, action and acting weren’t present as well. The story was a little overpacked, even with a runtime of 2.5 hours. But that’s not a major complaint. There just wasn’t always time to digest everything that was going on with the large number of characters.

I was thinking the other day that Zodiac is basically a who’s who of who’s good in Hollywood these days, but the Dark Knight cast has it beat, actually. Plus, this movie was also more or less a who’s who of men I’d cheerfully marry if it came to it. Or even just suggested, really.

Heath Ledger’s performance, as has been widely speculated, etc., was amazing. It’s clear that he was coming into his talent in a big way, and would probably have been one of the greatest performers of his generation. The only thing that detracted from his turn as The Joker was that it was almost too nuanced for film. There was so much going on in his face and eyes, that I sometimes missed what he was saying for watching him so intently.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is a happy replacement for Katie Holmes as Rachael. Aaron Eckhart is great as always. Gary Oldman gets better material to work with this time around; I thought the writing for him was really bad in the first film.

Strangely, Bruce Wayne kind of got left out of this movie. There were few scenes with Christian Bale as Wayne - and he was often shot from the side or from behind his shoulder. The person part of the character was subsumed by Batman, but I think that’s the point. It’s definitely a second in a trilogy, darkest before the dawn kind of thing.

Nolan really knows how to make beautiful set pieces. The Bat… Lair(?) this time around is beautifully minimalist in stark blacks and whites.

That all being said, I am so jealous of those of you who get to run around beautiful Chicago. Go play in the Lake and see The Dark Knight when it cools down.

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