Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Batman: The Dark Knight by Lamazone

Published in Madrid, July 2008

Director Christopher Nolan was gently guiding Batman through the final hoops of post-production this January when a hungry media scattered news of Heath Ledger’s overdose around the globe. In a moment, the gloomy, bitter atmosphere of Gotham City became a disquieting reality. The joker was dead.

Layman know what to expect from a Batman film: crumbling buildings, somersaulting vehicles, terrified citizens, ghoulish opera music and a saviour who wears his underpants on top. Gotham City’s murky and depressing tinge, coloured from a bitter palette of blues, greys and greens is somehow a soul sapping environment that makes Detroit look like Tahiti.

These characteristics are familiar and have become synonymous with our notions of Bruce Wayne, his rippling muscles, Gotham City and the fight of good against evil. But Batman: the Dark Knight will forever be remembered for the shadow cast upon it by Ledger’s last significant performance.

Initially it was a brave move for Ledger, accepting a role in which he would have known that he’d have to challenge the image of Jack Nicholson’s imperious performance in 1989’s Batman. Nicholson himself was nonplussed after being ignored by the producers, and declared in a fit of disbelief to the press that, ‘to be candid, I’m furious.’

Ledger became the new Joker, and one whose image promises to linger. Still photographs have swept around the Internet and media during the past five months, showing Ledger caked in make-up and at work last year. It’s a powerful image: the matted hair, head tilted down, his eyes gazing malevolently upwards, lines cleaved deep into his flesh and a blood red smile over a blanched, wild face. Ledger’s Joker is set to become a film icon, and his cackling laugh could become his epigraph.

In January Batman: the Dark Knight was regarded as a presumed blockbuster. Now it carries the baggage of being one of the year’s most powerful films. Christian Bale returns to the title role that he first inhabited in 2005’s Batman Begins and the love interest is yet again provided by Rachel Dawes, who this time is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The plot is defined in a sentence by one of those horrid Hollywood clichés: ‘Batman has to confront everything he believes in.’

Ledger aside, the film is infused with fine actors and displays a significant British spin with both Michael Caine and Gary Oldman joining Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart playing aspiring politician Harvey Dent. Critics are shuffling on their seats trying to discover more about the details of the plot and mutters of anticipation are said to be echoing around the bars of Los Angeles.

This bubbling anticipation has been augmented by a surreptitious advertising campaign that has been carefully commanded on the Internet by bosses at the distributor Warner Brothers. Amongst the arsenal of various covert methods have been the distribution of short promotional videos on YouTube and the establishment of various fake websites. In marketing speak, Batman has gone viral.

Just as Gladiator will be remembered fatefully as the final film of Oliver Reed and Silent Tongue and The Thing Called Love will be remembered as the final films of River Phoenix’s short career, Batman: the Dark Knight will forever be associated with Heath Ledger and an auspicious career cut short.