The Dark Knight: A-

"Why. So. Serious?" The Joker (Heath Ledger) croaks out at a mob boss...right before he slits his face open with a knife. It's a violent act coupled with a macabre punchline -- the usual Joker modus operandi -- except that, as re-envisioned by director Christopher Nolan, the exquisitely terrifying villain in The Dark Knight operates by only the most abstract code; his jokes and murders and randoms acts of terror keep cropping up and pulling down on all the bright, shiny people of Gotham City as if they and not the works of our protagonists were the Acts of God. As a morality play, that's the central theme at work in Nolan's second Batman film, and as an Agent of Chaos, the Clown Prince of Crime himself can seem a tad -- how to say this and not sound like a grouchy non-fanboy? -- omnipotent. (Really? He had months of planning to rig all those explosives in all the right places? Really?!) But as an inspired piece of filmmaking trickery, a force of manic cinematic alchemy, that visage of tear-streaked circus makeup and the body it's attached to are a pair not to be triffled at -- barely even in whose direction you would want to snigger. They are relentless, pitch (hell, bruise) black, and thrilling. So is the movie that surrounds them.

From the ashes of a torched Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, effortlessly making it seem as if Katie Holmes never even existed) have emerged, it seems, victorious over the criminal element in their city. Which thrills Bruce, because as soon as he's finished with this whole "The Batman" business, he can get down to finally marrying his one true love. Rachel is thrilled in a similar way, except she has her eyes on Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the new District Attorney who she is now dating. Oops -- sucks for Mr. Wayne. These are the states in which our characters are left precariously trapped for the majority of Knight, each of them in turn scrabbling to gain ground in an increasingly violent and unstable society. All thanks to The Joker, of course, whose bank-heist opens the film; he's a devil in a cheap purple suit, and he just keeps amping up the fun for his audiences watching at home and in the streets of their own private hell.

Grim, right? Christopher Nolan, and his brother Jonathan (who co-wrote the script with him), have crafted a film teeming with schemes and desperation; double-crosses and last-minute saves; survival laced through with death in the next footstep. Gone are the great, glamorously gothic cityscapes of the Burton films -- but a new hallmark has crept in: a feeling of gnawing, clashing, grasping, tensely mortal mechinations grinding down on the people purporting them. In this new modern era (it's obviously Chicago, and no effort is made to disguise it), the battle our hero has to wage is double-edged: with he swing he takes, the enemy doesn't grow smaller, no -- it grows crazier. When asking his butler (Michael Caine, in a performance of crinkly-faced drollery and skill) how it was he caught his own villains back when he was a civil servant, there was but one piece of advice left to give: "We burned the forest." In The Dark Knight, more so than Batman Begins by probably 100-fold, the spectacle of battle, of such a burning, squeezes its way into almost every other frame, and it can grow to seem, quite honestly, all too tiring and overbearing. A battle for a city's soul should never, ever, take 152 minutes. A showcase for supreme in-front and behind-the-camera talent, on the other hand...

With a raspy boom that shrinks to a velvet whisper without his mask on, Bale returns once more with a performance of admirable versatility. He isn't gifted with the same delicately executed undercurrents of psychology (you'll hate me for saying this, but the Good/Bad, Chaos/Order dichotomy here isn't nearly as personal, and therefore accesible and relevant) as he was in Begins, but his vigilante still morphs back and forth, in each second, from Cause to Effect. He's always saving the city, so the city always needs saving. Sliding both farther to the right and left of him on the moral scale is Dent, and embodying him as Eckhart does, the tragedy that eventually befalls the character has real heft, even as the surrounding players' jaw-boning and philosophizing about his conscience grows weary. Staring both of them in the face, and only rarely cracking a smile (though always seeming to cackle) is The Joker. And Heath Ledger. In what may well prove to be his last screen performance ever, Ledger expanded on the skill he showed in Brokeback Mountain of possessing characters to an impossible, bone-deep degree and he pushes his monster over the edge of mania. His acting (and facial features) lack the careful sculpting of Jack Nicholson's very same clown, but his turn is ferocious in a way Ol' Jack never was. Sucking on his facial scars, prancing or tripping through dark streets and corridors, dolling himself up in a red wig and nurse's outfit, and alternately rasping, screeching, squealing, or grouding out his vowels, Batman's archenemy gives off a magnetism that haunts the film and propels it in equal measure. And when he laughs, his insanity burbling up like rot in the form of demented grunts and giggles, the performance is beyond great: it's transcendant.

Leaving the theater, I couldn't help but notice I had what seemed to be a headache forming in the back of my skull; how curious -- after all, Nolan's film is a Greek Tragedy produced with the nerve-jangling power of talent in its prime. So how could I feel bad? There is no doubting The Dark Knight is a very good film (some would say great, fantastic, a masterpiece...on which I have to subtly disagree) but it's also overwhelming. The plot entangles the audience, and leaves them with a sickening, fascinating, buzz of dread and joy, but it also ties itself into knots in the process; after the fifth double-cross, the seventh surprise killing, and the third coin-flip, it has to be said: the spectacle of this, Batman's sixth outing in twenty years, nearly and almost completely covers the drama that supports it. Almost, but God help us all, not quite. Left behind is, instead, a vision of urban criminality and the vigilantism required to destroy it, as well as the soul-killing steps involved. It's a heady pop vision that is as baroque and unwieldy as it sounds. After all this, my opinion is still almost beside the point: people will trot out in droves to see the movie for the next month regardless. Which is in a way, a blessing. Maybe, now, after leaving the theater of Christopher Nolan's latest success (after all this time, from Memento through Insomnia to The Prestige surely we can all say: he's a man of vision, maybe even magic) they will reach their own conclusion: superhero movies can grow up -- maybe they need to -- and become a work of almost-art, displaying for the world the complexities of Good fighting Evil, becoming it, and then mocking nobility all together.