In mid-May, at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Nolan was in the late stages of post-production on “The Dark Knight” and the marathon hours were taking their toll. “Come on in,” he told his visitor, “but I must warn you it’s quite loud inside. I mean, really loud.” In the mixing suite, Nolan joined sound editors Lora Hirschberg and Gary Rizzo, who were laboring over a bank of control boards. Up on a screen in front of them was a frozen image of Ledger, a rocket-launcher in his hand and an expression of callous menace on his face.

Nolan ran through the scene a dozen times and pulled apart the barrage of sounds, homing in on what he disliked (“Why am I hearing an air brake there? The truck is speeding up, that’s a disconnect.”) and what he needed (“In the first film, the roar of the Batmobile that we hear when the headlights first go on; let’s go back and get that and use it right here.”). The director stretched his neck and exhaled. “OK, we’re getting there.”

Nolan looked up at the screen and, again, the image was of Ledger’s Joker, his chalk-white face set off by a lipstick “grin” that emphasizes the jagged scars that curl up from the corners of his mouth.

Throughout the movie, Ledger probes those scars with his tongue, the way some toothless people incessantly chomp their gums. He also walks with shoulders bowed and his chin out and down, like a hyena. Stepping out to take a break, Nolan ran a hand through his hair. The 37-year-old was wearing a sports coat and vest — it’s his standard look, far more formal than many of his generation — and he began to talk about his new film in terms of a search for the dark heart of society and the blood-red line between justice and vengeance. It’s still a super-hero gizmo movie, of course, but “The Dark Knight” delves further into Nolan’s familiar themes of moral uncertainty, madness and the cost of vendettas, which gave shape to “Memento,” “Insomnia,” “The Prestige” and his first trip to Gotham, the 2005 “Batman Begins.”

Nolan co-wrote the screenplay for “The Dark Knight” with his younger brother, Jonathan. They also co-wrote “The Prestige” and, before that, “Memento,” the US$5 million movie that earned them an Oscar nomination for its intricate, reverse-order noir tale.

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