“Batman Begins” (2005)
“Insomnia” was enough for Warners to feel confident in giving Nolan the keys to their big franchise revival, and the helmer moved swiftly into developing a bold new take on Batman with co-writer David S. Goyer. The film made him the A-lister he is now, and spawned two massive sequels, but it can’t just be us that finds it, in retrospect, the director’s weakest film. The approach is absolutely something to be lauded; only Nolan could take the premise of a man dressed as a bat fighting crime and make it as plausible as possible. And for the first time, we had a Batman movie that was actually about Batman, with Christian Bale giving three distinct, and excellent performances: Bruce Wayne in private, wounded and still grieving and furious; Bruce Wayne in public, the drunken, irresponsible playboy: and the Batman, a terrifying force of nature. The little choices unquestionably make Bale’s the definitive portrayal of the character, and in Gary Oldman and Michael Caine, he has wonderful support. But Nolan’s still adjusting to his bigger playset, with the action mostly choppy and confusing, and the tone is slightly uneven. And while the first two acts are pretty good, Nolan loses the thread in the third, the realistic tone giving way to a hammy Liam Neeson performance (“Excuse me, I have a city to destroy!” — although it should be said, Tom Wilkinson gives him some competition in the scenery-chewing), some creaky lines, uneven, misjudged humor (including Gary Oldman acting like Jake Lloyd in “The Phantom Menace“) and some slightly cheap and ill-conceived hallucination scenes (Batman the monster and the Scarecrow’s fire-breathing horse are nice ideas, but let down in the execution). The film slows to a crawl every time Katie Holmes is on screen too — the actress was reportedly forced on Nolan by the studio, and his disinterest shows. It’s a laudable first effort, for sure, but far, far better things were to come. [C+]
“The Prestige” (2006)
Nolan’s strangest film by a country mile and probably his most divisive, “The Prestige” was the little passion project that he knocked off with his ‘Batman’ cred in remarkably short time (filming began in February 2006, and it was in theaters only eight months later). Based on the novel by sci-fi author Christopher Priest, it follows the story of two magicians, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), who become embroiled in a years-long feud after Angier’s wife (Piper Perabo) drowns in an accident that he holds Borden responsible for. They move on, only crossing paths every so often, and each becoming famous for a trick which sees them vanish across a room into thin air, but each also holds a terrible secret that will have dreadful consequences. Many found the film (which is glorious-looking, thanks to Pfister’s best-ever photography and Nathan Crowley‘s astounding production design) hard-to-follow, thanks to Nolan’s puzzle-box-like structure, and hard to like, due to two murderous, bitter protagonists. But, if you’re concentrating, the director’s storytelling instincts never get you lost (the secret to the mystery is detailed in the opening shot, as it turns out), and to our mind, Bale and Jackman each give enough charm and sympathy to their performances that you can feel for both, although Nolan delicately lets your sympathies come down on one side of the fence by the end. And while it’s certainly a film for the brain first and foremost — Nolan using the world of magic as a metaphor for moviemaking and storytelling in general — it packs an emotional punch, thanks in part to a tremendous performance by Rebecca Hall in, amazingly, her first major film role. A film quite unlike any in recent memory, and one that you suspect only Nolan could have directed, it’s the kind of thing we hope he returns to now he’s done with the Bat-franchise. [A]
“The Dark Knight” (2008)
A sprawling crime saga running two and a half hours and until recently, the highest-grossing comic-book movie of all time (since surpassed by “The Avengers“), Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is still arguably the greatest superhero movie ever made (though that may change this weekend). But it’s also not without its flaws. Heath Ledger as the unhinged and unforgettable Joker and the cast elevate the entire thing, removing most traces of suspension of disbelief issues, but even Aaron Eckhart can’t make that realistic-style Two-Face make-up really work in Nolan’s ultra-realistic world (we spend most of his time on screen worrying what kind of infections he’s going to catch). And if anyone can tell us the narrative reasoning for the faked death of Jim Gordon, we’d be most grateful, because that particular plot thread seems unnecessary, extraneous and poorly executed. Still, aside from minor problems such as that, thematically, “The Dark Knight” is rich, textured stuff, arguably a minor love story about two opposing forces that cannot exist in the same universe without one another. Moral themes of how the means justify the ends are provoked, and the political and social implications brought up in its grand finale are stupendous. Still, this is the Joker and Ledger’s show, the late actor playing a nihilistic villain who’s anarchist on the outside and deviously nefarious on the inside, who essentially is enamoured by Batman. He doesn’t want to kill him, the Joker wants to prove to this fellow freak that their methods are essentially one and the same and that the people he protects aren’t worth fighting for. “You’ll see…when the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other,” he cackles. And while he may never fully convince Batman, the villain always shakes the man to his core. [A-]