Lotus Mantra

The Dark Knight

I saw the batman flick last night. It’s hands down the best adaptation of a comic franchise to film. There were no bungling hoodlums, no bad puns, the hero is fallible, the villain is truly, believably insane, and the storyline makes sense. Ledger’s Joker is horrifying and mesmerizing; he’s everything about that villain that he was supposed to be. The pace (it’s a long film – 2 ½ hrs) was both steady and yet demanding. The film’s events are demanding and routinely had me nervous or anxious. The best thing about it, though, is how much it wasn’t a film about Batman. The Joker’s role put all the ordinary people and conflicts of conscience and morality at the forefront of the film, regularly making me ponder what I would do in the situation. It was riveting and brilliant in a way that the Spiderman or Superman films don’t even aspire to be. It was an adult focused film from the start (I can’t believe it’s PG13) and treated the subject matter seriously. It’s one of the best flicks I’ve seen in a long while.