How much time has passed since Christopher Nolan made The Dark Knight?
In that time, Nolan has kept releasing one masterpiece after another into the world. No, even before The Dark Knight, the films he made were all masterpieces.
'Inception,' 'Memento,' 'Insomnia,' 'The Prestige,' 'Interstellar.'
Beyond Batman, he's also worked on 'Man of Steel,' the film about another DC character, Superman.
Tastes differ on all of them, but quite a few people cite this 'The Dark Knight'—the second part of the Batman trilogy—as his greatest masterpiece.
In the previous film, 'Batman Begins,' Bruce Wayne became Batman, and now he comes face to face with Batman's greatest enemy, the Joker.
The whole film is just unbelievably tense, because you can't understand what the Joker is thinking at all.
He's not the type with super-strength or the ability to fly or any such special powers—it's simply that his very existence is terrifying.
He's like a charismatic figure of evil, one who will never be dyed in justice. Even if you respond to violence with violence, his resolve never wavers.
Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, took his own life before this film was released, and—though one shouldn't speak of it lightly—the Joker's madness is so extreme that you can understand falling into that state of mind.
In the following film, 'The Dark Knight Rises,' the enemy was Bane, an intellectual man of monstrous strength, presented in an easy-to-grasp way. But perhaps because he was so easy to grasp, it didn't reach the heights of The Dark Knight.
The tension of The Dark Knight is just on another level. You have no idea what's effective against this evil, and Batman—Bruce Wayne—keeps losing the things that matter to him. He loses so relentlessly that even those of us watching start to feel our hearts sicken. You want to ask the Joker, why do you make Batman such a target? But even so, the Joker keeps asking: is there really such a thing as justice in the human heart?
This time, the ones handling that nerve-shredding score are two people: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Hans Zimmer is a specialist in film music who has won awards for all sorts of works, starting with 'Gladiator.' James Newton Howard is no slouch either, having scored a wide variety of films such as 'Blood Diamond.'
Now, let's take a look at the music.
Personally, the one I felt captured the film's nerve-wracking tension best is 'Why So Serious?,' the very first track on the CD. The dissonance and noise sync up in an oddly unsettling way, giving the listener a sense of discomfort—but this is the very essence of Batman, the very essence of the Joker, a hidden gem of a track.
And of course you can't leave out 'A Dark Knight.' It's the track that plays over the ending, referring to Batman riding the Batmobile through the night streets of Gotham City. It's long—a full 16 minutes. And yet it's cool, maintaining the tension all the way as it heads into the film's ending.
Finally, here's a trailer for anyone whose interest is piqued.
You can watch a dubbed version on Amazon Prime, but personally I have a feeling you should watch it with subtitles.
Quoted from the official site https://www.warnerbros.co.jp/home_entertainment/it8i4n1yspr/
