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Night and Day
By Administrator | August 3, 2008
Today has been abnormal and off-kilter, but not in a bad way. I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of car doors outside our house as two of our three daughters headed off on a road trip to Las Vegas (along with one fiancee and one friend). Daughter number two remained at home and, since both of us were awake, we spent several hours talking about the various deep subjects that we seem to discuss in the wee hours before the sunrise.
Daughter and I also decided to go out to an early movie. Our choice this time was The Dark Knight - the third time for each of us - and we both enjoyed ourselves just as much as we had at the previous two showings. Many people have written excellent reviews of this newest installment in the Batman franchise so I don’t really feel a need to go into too much detail here. I would like to say that The Dark Knight takes movies, especially the superhero sub-genre, to a whole new level of artistic excellence. From the opening shot of two men in clown masks riding a zip line from a skyscraper window down to a rooftop, we are drawn into a gritty world of fear and depravity; a shadow realm of gray that obscures the identities of everyone so that we are never quite sure who is lurking behind a mask in the darkness. Here there is no good or evil, no right or wrong, only unhappy choices that must be made in order to ensure the safety and security of the masses. Here dwell flawed characters who express the true nature of the human race. This city of Gotham is a place well worth visiting in the safety of a dark theater, but is not a place we’d like to inhabit in our real lives.
Movies can be a good way to examine the thoughts and emotions we don’t always experience throughout the course of our day-to-day lives. Seeing movies with members of my family tends to spark interesting conversations about what we’ve seen that go far beyond the artistic elements involved. We are a group who enjoys discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and I think our movie-going experience is a reflection of that.
I highly recommend The Dark Knight - a movie as different as night and day from its predecessors.
Topics: Entertainment, Current Events, Family |
