I just came home from watching “The Dark Knight” in the UCI Colosseum in Berlin and I have to say: What a bunchload of crap! Really? No, of course not! This movie actually seems to me as one of the best super hero movies there can be — with a sophisticated story off the beaten tracks while staying true with the fans. Read on.

Marlboro, Magic and many ‘Mercials

It was my first night out watching a flick here in Berlin. I ordered the ticket online and once there I got myself all buzzing on salty popcorn, sugar and caffeine - thanks to the liter of coke which troubled me a little in the final act of the movie: I was ready for a nice evening with a good film.

Before getting into the movie itself I have to rant a little about today’s movie theaters and their way with advertisements. When paying for something today, you’re not really paying so much for the movie but for keeping the ads out of it. Interestingly this is not so much the case with films: If you download them for free (illegally, fair enough) there are no ads, but when you pay to see them in the theater you get half an hour of commercials. That’s right, half a frickin hour!.

I haven’t been in a bigger theater watching a movie quite a while so the first images that popped up on the big screen where breathtaking to me: A very strong score, beautiful helicopter shots of wild horses running in the prairie, the Death Valley, cowboys, more horses, more cowboys, more helicopter shots — and after a minute: “Marlboro” followed by a short “Smoking can kill you” plate. I don’t smoke, neither did anyone in the ad. But I discovered my love for the big screen again. Then there was a stupid German beer commercial and some more really shitty ones I luckily forgot about. But Marlboro was one of the most cinematic ads I’ve ever seen. My recommendation!

In between the ads there was a call for watching movies in the theater rather than one a tiny screen at home or, god forbid, on your iPhone. Yes, this clip really tried to convince us, the people already sitting in front of the silver screen, paying money for it and fed up with watching shitty commercials, to visit the cinema more often: “Don’t watch movies on your tiny screen at home while ironing!”. This ad was a waste of money and time. Especially mine. And the next ad was for a mail-order video rental service: “Watch all of your favorite movies at home while ironing!”.

After the commercials the lights went on again. The audience shared some puzzled “wtf?!” remarks with each other until the lights faded out again after a minute and the trailers-reel was shown. And one of the first ones was for Far Cry, another ratfucking of computergame-based films by German director Uwe Boll. But when I saw the trailer suddenly it was magic to me. Ooooh! — I can hear your “wtf?!” remarks now but it meant something different to me than watching Till Schweiger in a Hawaii shirt: Once at work I opened accidentally a project of an effects-shot from another movie rise had been working on, Far Cry. And I think there even was a five frame long sequence of that shot in the trailer. Seeing on the big screen what I only knew from the small computer screen, even for a tiny amount of time, made me realize that some of this immensely tedious work I do on the computer will eventually become unleashed. “One day”, I thought, “one day some of my works could end up on a big screen in a big theater with a big score as well…” That thought brought back the magic into my work-life at an instant. “One day…”

When the Italians next to me already shared a loud conversation about when the movie would “fucking roll already!” it finally did so. And what did I hear? A clipping in the front right speaker, it was getting old and you could hear it, which was quite a nuisance once you kept thinking about it. At least it wasn’t as worse as the Ursty screening in Salzburg!

But you did see the movie, right?

Yes! And first of all hats off to Heath Ledger, who played the Joker so frightingly crazy yet so real that I was really scared of his presence. The Joker was his best movie role and it’s a tragedy that such a tremendous actor is no more. He was among a very talented and well directed ensemble of strong character actors: The first half minute I saw Cristian Bale as Batman in action it was like “That’s what Batman should be like!”, any memories of the feeble and pathetic 60’s Batman were gone, as well as Robin’s character in the movie. A very good decision. Maggie Gyllenhaal just keeps getting better and better with every movie and is like a strong colored flower in the dark and gloomy world of Gotham City. Actors Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhard appear along the movie veterans Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, and everything fits so well together, that The Dark Knight would’ve been no less recommendable if there were no action sequences in it, which wouldn’t bother me much personally. Director/writer Christopher Nolan did another great job and can be considered not only a superb director but also a tremendous writer. In the 152 minutes (plus a random ten-minute break after the first hour) there hasn’t been a single time when I felt the urge to check the time or think of something different. And I easily get bored or distracted by thoughts like “If he really fell from a height like this and would catch his fall by hanging on to a ledge like that, then there would be one million pascal pressure on his fingertips…”

Nolan and cinematographer Wally Pfister kept the camera as free as a bat, flying over Gotham City, sometimes nearly jumping from high buildings with the actors, circling around the actors in some scenes. Gotham City is not as stylized as I would have liked to see it, still the city is always present and becomes an actor of its own. Nearly all the apartments, offices and other locations display the city through long and mostly seamless windows. Everybody is part of that city.

Sometimes I couldn’t help from watching the actors’ edges against a computer generated background closely for some glitches or problems that might occur with thin hairs comparable to my work at rise at the time. But, of course, Double Negative, Framestore CFC and BUF Compangie don’t make any mistakes. And you wouldn’t see them in a scaled down negative of the IMAX version. Although I couldn’t pay much attention to that because the story sucked me in, although it sometimes got a little puzzling.

So I should watch it, right?

Absolutely! The Dark Knight is a great movie even if you’re like me and not into all that super hero movies that flood the theaters with the same story arc of injustice, vigilante justice and oh-so-predictable ending. No, The Dark Knight offers some interesting twists, a real plot with interestingly developing characters and a dense atmosphere. The high rating (currently 9.1 out of 10) on IMdB is justified in my opinion. It is an stereotypical hero-story masterfully enhanced and populated with multidimensional characters and the mandatory action sequences. I recommend to go and see it at least once — on a big screen!

What I have learned today:

• That I don’t have to stand in line when retrieving a pre-paid ticket.
• That I hate hate HATE commercials that keep you waiting for the main feature more than five minutes.
• That one liter coke and a movie longer than two hours don’t go well together.
• That when strong lights are blurred by a defocused lens, the flare’s rays are still sharp.
• How much evolution within an genre like this is possible.
• That I still feel the magic when watching a movie in the theater.