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 Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey Dent, Gotham City's crusading D.A. in The Dark Knight. Dent's law and order campaign takes a fateful turn, Eckhart says. |
LOS ANGELES -- Deranged defacement? Check.
Hatred of billionaires who dress up like bats? Naturally.
Heath Ledger's Joker? Guess again.
Remember, this is Gotham City, a sprawling evil-festooned metropolis that attracts theatrically homicidal maniacs like L.A. attracts females named Lohan. And so in The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne's winged alter-ego must not only battle for his hometown's soul with Ledger's sadistic clown, but defend its citizens from Aaron Eckhart's gruesomely realized Two-Face.
In fact, the transformation of Eckhart's incorruptible prosecutor Harvey Dent into the schizophrenic coin-tossing sociopath is one of the many twists the Batman Begins sequel springs when it opens this week.
Although the film's marketing blitzkrieg hasn't been shy about promoting Ledger's red-lipped Joker, the image of this revised Two-Face has been carefully concealed.
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And for good reason. At the screening we attended, Eckhart's split-screen visage elicited audible gasps.
"I actually thought it was pretty subtle," Eckhart, 40, tells Sun Media.
"Imagine what they could have done."
Or better yet, don't. Compared to Tommy Lee Jones' incarnation in 1995's Batman Forever -- who looked like he fell into a vat of pink lipstick -- Eckhart's charred Two-Face is jarringly grotesque.
That said, director Christopher Nolan believes the version of Two-Face moviegoers will see is one of the least disturbing considered.
"When we looked at less extreme versions of it, they were too real and more horrifying. When you look at a film like Pirates of the Caribbean -- something like that, there's something about a very fanciful, very detailed visual effect, that I think is more powerful and less repulsive."
POLITICAL THEMES
Perhaps. But the movie's themes are clearly rooted in our politically thorny present-day. District attorney Dent is elected, after all, on a campaign whose motto is "I believe in Harvey Dent" -- a reference, in the midst of a heated U.S. presidential campaign, that illustrates how the ideal can be more inspiring, as well more important, than the candidate himself. As Dent himself proclaims, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Says Eckhart, "What's interesting with Harvey's darkness was -- and I'm sure law enforcement plays with this -- they love the law but they're constrained by it. Sometimes they can't deal with what they know is right the way they want to. That's what Batman's all about -- doing extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. And at this point Gotham is so mired with the cancer of corruption and criminality, that Harvey really is the only one who is willing to take it on publicly. So I'm sure Harvey dreamed of doing what he might later be doing as Harvey Two-Face. It's frankly probably pretty liberating in the end. It's like when the Joker asks Batman to betray his one cardinal rule (of not taking a life). Will Batman do that? What other route is there for Batman? It's so pertinent today in what's going on with torturing people -- how far are we willing to go for the answers and I think Harvey struggles with that."
Not surprisingly, then, Eckhart -- known for such independent fare as Thank You For Smoking -- welcomed the chance to explore this blockbuster's most demonstrable, deeply felt arc.
"I loved playing Harvey Dent, the leader of Gotham City -- the political crusader, the crime-fighter ... I was surprised Harvey Dent was in the movie so much, to be frank.
"The more difficult thing in playing Two-Face was finding the right tone ... keeping it in the same ballpark as Batman and what Heath was doing with the Joker."
The result, he believes, fits in snugly with the film's overriding realism -- something that extended to its many hair-raising action sequences.
"The reason things feel real is that they were," Eckhart says. "Chris (Nolan) would do the real thing -- he would fly helicopters in, he would flip trucks. That's why this movie looks real. I know green screen was used, but sparingly. He likes to employ stuntmen."