The Dark Knight - A


This is more of an analysis than a review. If you've seen the film, you already know how much of a masterpiece it is.

When it comes time to make a comic book movie, all superheroes have a problem fitting into the present. Let's be realistic, most superheroes were created around the happy go-lucky days of brash American boldness and hucksterism; when truth, justice and the American Way was going to save the world. Superheroes were symbols of that power in the world, uncompromising, judicial power, American power. But anyone who reads comic books knows that superheroes have changed greatly since those old glory days. Spider-Man, the first superhero created with actual human impulses changed all that and began the descent of the superhero into where it is today. Slowly, the continuum culminated with Alan Moore's Watchmen in 1987 which delivered an entirely alternate take on familiar heroes removing the moral absolutism of the past. Since that event (a veritable paradigm shift for the comic world) comic scribes have felt the freedom to reimagine superheroes in more speculative ways. Comic series such as Kingdom Come, The Dark Knight Returns, The Ultimates and Ed Brubaker's Captain America have delivered alternate and more human takes on classic superheroes, putting them into our time and space, giving them new life and relevance for our day. Different writers will have different themes they want to explore, changing the characters slightly to achieve their desired effects. As a result, Batman has at times been characterized as a paranoid spook, Superman a self-righteous control freak. There are even some comic series (dubbed 'Elseworlds' by DC Comics) that reimagine familiar heroes in an entirely alternate universe. Gotham by Gaslight takes Batman and puts him in the late 19th Century, Superman: Red Son begins with Superman's rocketship landing on a Russian farm instead of in America, causing Superman to grow up as a Communist. The range of moral questions that comics nowadays ponder has become quite extensive and there is a seemingly endless realm of possible themes that can be explored with the same characters. The problem comes when translating a comic book character out of the freeing medium of the page and into the more potentially embarrassing spotlight of cinema. Superheroes re-entering the mainstream continually suffer from a lack of characterization, simplistic impulses and one-sidedness in the effort to produce a character that will resonate with the original spirit of the superhero without entering the sticky modern realm. The result tends to be little more than escapist fantasy and complaints are leveled that the films ignore the challenges of today and simply focus on special-effects and action scenes. Making a relevant superhero movie is just, well, hard. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan apparently realized this, looked at each other and said. "Well, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it" and then created perhaps the finest superhero film of all time.

Like the comics of today, this film is a radically alternative take on Batman. The Nolan Brothers have really stepped outside the bounds of the traditional superhero film and created their own 'Elseworlds' vision of the Batman mythology, one that intentionally places the Dark Knight into the today's troublesome world in a style they dub 'hyper-realism'. It's even different from their last film, in which Christopher Nolan successfully explored the power of symbol and legend in today's world, that it's not what Batman does to fight crime, but how he does it, using symbolism as a weapon to strike fear into the hearts of the bad guys. In this incarnation, Batman operates something like a high-tech SWAT cop working closely with the police force to bring down Gotham's organized crime syndicate once and for all, so that finally he can take off the mask forever. Gotham City is basically a milieu of stark, grayish shots of Chicago and the plot unfolds something like a noir true-crime thriller than a superhero movie. This is the perfect venue for what the Nolans wanted to do, explore the face of evil that America has encountered since 9-11 (and what man has encountered since Adam and Eve ate the apple), an irrational evil that answers to no one but its own lust for destruction. This is the terrifying insanity of the Joker. I should go ahead and say that despite the hype surrounding Heath Ledger's death and the exaggerative hoop-lah that tends to surround celebrity death, Ledger's performance was like nothing I'd ever seen. Somehow he sticks very closely to the Nolans' script (truly the heart of the film's success) and still manages to steal every scene with a broad range of bizarre emotional sadism, dark comedy and an unnatural drive for mayhem. This is the face of evil unseen by our forefathers in WWII, an evil that surpasses all intellectual process and even uses our own conception of justice against us. Ultimately, the villain's main weapon is the fact that people are not basically good. All he does is wipe away man's illusion of control and release man's inner demons. How does a superhero stop that?

The intricate plot is sometimes tough to follow. If you end the film confused, watch it again (or do like I did and download the script). Believe me, it's worth it. Thematically, I think this is one of the most important post 9-11 films yet made and it has important questions to ask an America still seeking to fight evil and establish justice.

The film begins with the aftermath of the previous one. The mob has been all but eliminated, organized crime is on the decline because of the combined efforts of the Batman, Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, and Gotham's new district attorney, Harvey Dent. He is the film's pivotal character around which the story rotates. Fortunately, he is a stalwart public servant and a staunch defender of truth and justice. Early in the film, Jim Gordon describes him as Gotham's 'White Knight' and obvious foil to the film's title and main character. He is a new symbol of optimism for Gotham, an uncompromising soldier against injustice. The only thing more important than Dent's campaign on crime is that his character remain incorruptible. It falls on his shoulders to be both a protector and an inspiration for good. To drive this point home Nolan lifts a recurrent phrase from Jeph Loeb's Batman: The Long Halloween making it an almost theologically resonant campaign slogan: "I Believe in Harvey Dent." By contrast, we are exposed to the problem of the Batman's inspiration in an early scene in which a gang of hapless vigilantes all dressed like Batman try unsuccessfully to take down a gang of criminals, including the Scarecrow from the last film. After the ordeal Wayne muses ruefully: "This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to inspire people." Wayne sees early on that a city ultimately needs a higher hope than a mysterious masked man, that Gotham needs an example to follow and Batman is not that. One of the 'copycats' asks an important question after Batman ties him up: "What gives you the right?" Though he's a pathetic figure at this point, he has a point. Does simply having expensive gadgets and martial arts training give somebody the right to take the law into his own hands? What makes a hero? Interestingly, Wayne is smart enough to ponder these questions and decides that Batman's days are numbered and makes it his goal to end them sooner rather than later in order to eliminate the need for his vigilantism by supplanting the Dark Knight with the White Knight and giving the city over to Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The Joker, however, has other plans and begins by announcing his plan to kill Batman. His plan is simple: someone dies every day the Batman doesn't reveal his identity, but trickery is the Joker's ace hand, and it quickly becomes apparent that Batman is only part of what he's after. As the plot evolves, so does the Joker's plan almost as if he's making it up as he goes along, sticking to a main goal: killing Batman, but using it as an excuse to wreak as much destruction as possible. The most interesting thing about the Joker is that just as Batman uses the mob's motivations against them (their greed, desire for power and control), the Joker uses the good guys' motivations against them. Ultimately, his main weapon is people's own desires. He wins over people by simply presenting them with a choice: cooperate with me and survive or sacrifice yourself for others. He takes the utilitarian laws of our society and turns them in on themselves, collapsing the system like a house of cards. The best example of this is when he calls into the television program.

Joker: Mr. Reese, what's more valuable, one life, or a hundred?

Reese: I guess it would depend on the life.

Joker: OK. Let's say it's your life. Is it worth more than the lives of several hundred others?

Reese: Of course not.

Joker: I'm glad you feel that way. Because I've put a bomb in one of the city's hospitals. It's going off in sixty minutes unless someone kills you...Of course, you could always kill yourself, Mr. Reese. but that would be the noble thing to do. And you're a lawyer.

The social experiment with the two boats also touches on this. Prisoners on one boat, 'innocents' on the other. Each has the detonator to the other boat. Blow up the other boat first and you can go free. Don't and everybody dies. The situation makes the other side suspicious and turns people against one another. This is a much more real version of the Scarecrow's "Fear Toxin" from he last film. This time, the poison is in our very souls and in our animal instinct of self-preservation. This is an evil that the system is powerless to defend against because it is based on every human's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Joker's deconstructive philosophy is exactly the kind of post-modern evil that America is powerless to face. What if humans aren't basically good? Then our systems are powerless to control the true evil that humanity is capable of. We say we believe in justice, but what if that justice costs you your life? We humans might be big on justice, but we're less interested in self-sacrifice. He explains it to a captive Harvey Dent in this scene.

Joker: I'm a dog chasing cars... I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. I just do things. I'm just the wrench in the gears. I hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's...Schemers trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.

It's the schemers who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. look where it got you. I just did what I do best- I took your plan, and I turned it on itself. Look what I've done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair.

That last line is probably the most prophetic part of the film. Fairness is chaos. Think about it. A free for all is really the only fair social order as long as every man is an island. Our American system that gives people an unalienable right to pursue happiness basically sets society up for chaos. This is exactly the reason why I have no faith in any social system. It's proof that liberals and conservatives are chasing after the same fantasy, that humanity is basically good and that fairness is the highest ideal. People don't understand that nobody wants equality. An equitable social order just masks the inner desire for survival. I cringe every time someone starts preaching about 'social justice' and 'economic equality', 'gender equality', 'racial equality'. It's not that these things are wrong (or shouldn't be sought after), they're just not enough, they do not save the human soul. Here the Joker scoffs at the supposed morality of people:

Joker: Their morals, their code... it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you... when the chips are down, these civilized people... they'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster... I'm just ahead of the curve.

So what does? How do you stop the Joker? How does Batman stop the Joker?

As for the Joker himself, first he lulls him into a false sense of security and then totally batarangs him in the face (cool), but to ultimately defeat the Joker's philosophical attack on Gotham, Batman must give up himself. By the end of the film, Harvey Dent has become a monster, scarred and twisted by circumstance orchestrated by the Joker to turn him also into an agent of chaos, dealing out executional justice with the flip of a coin. Batman realizes, standing over Dent's dead body, that people can never believe in Harvey Dent because of the sin he has committed, because of the evil within him brought to the surface by his encounter with the devil. Humanity has fallen once again from goodness and it's up to Batman to preserve that good. This is the role of the Dark Knight, an interesting (and pagan) take on the messiah as someone who covers up the truth: that humans are not basically good, to preserve social stability. He tells Gordon to lie, to report that the he, the Batman killed all the people Dent did instead of telling the truth. I see it more like a picture of Jesus who saw our Two-Faced nature and took our sin on his own person in order to preserve the good in us. It is interesting to compare Jesus and Batman. Normally one might pair Christ with Superman, someone lordly and upstanding. Batman, by contrast chooses lowliness, coming down from his wealthy status nightly to operate at street-level, immersing himself in the darkness of the world and ultimately is punished for humanity's sins to preserve its good side. It's not a theologically sound model to be sure (and at times smacks of the old heresy of Judas being the actual messiah, paving the way for Jesus' martyrdom) but in my mind does show a cool angle of Christ's mission for mankind. Here Batman explains why he needs to be blamed for Dent's transgressions.

Batman: Because sometimes the truth isn't good enough...sometimes, people deserve more.

Well, we don't deserve more of course, but gosh isn't that cool? That Jesus didn't just come down to show us how bad we were, as if reasoning with us would turn us away from evil, he came to do something about it. He knew it wasn't good enough to just reveal evil, he had to defeat it. Through his sacrifice he redeems our lost goodness and gives us a model of how to live, that we too must lay down our lives for others and this is the only way to fight evil, to give up one's life. The boat sequence reminds us who our neighbors are, the prisoners in one boat and the citizens in the other is a perfect comment on the societal divisions of race, class etc. The finale of the movie may seem a bit like a leftover in the overall plot, but it really ties up the film's philosophical problem: how can you do what's right when you realize that chaos is the only social system human beings can sustain, and furthermore it's the only fair social system and every other attempt is just an illusion? You give up your life for the other. You operate outside of societal expectations and fairness. You sacrifice your own life instead of taking another's. This way of life is hard (impossible for the unaided human being), but it is the only way to defeat evil, and the only way one can claim the right of a hero.

Batman and the Joker operate outside the social order, the one to destroy life, the other to redeem it. They are the eschatological figures out of whose war comes most of the film's drama. This is the one of the only places where the film departs from its good theology and dabbles in a bit of yin and yang spiritualism, making good and evil balance out perfectly. Batman won't kill the Joker and the Joker doesn't want to kill Batman. "I guess this is what happens when an unstoppbale force meets an immovable object" Joker says in a depressingly void characterization of evil. Even Satan was good once. But taken in context of the film's emotional center, it could be just another of the Joker's lies. I think it's a tired concept of good and evil balancing out to establish stability, how every hero has to have some bad in him and everything must include compromise. In this way the film falls prey to the same concept of balance that the Joker so effectively disproves.

Alfred burning Rachel's letter was a little weird. I guess it protects Bruce from disappointment and preserves his drive. It's like what Batman does for Gotham. If he knew the disappointing truth they wouldn't believe in goodness any more. I guess I just don't understand why Bruce would lose any faith in Rachel's goodness even though she did choose Harvey. She still passed the Joker's test. She was sacrificial to the end. She wanted Harvey to live instead of herself. Contrast this to the malice of Two-Face as he holds his gun to Gordon's son:

Dent: It's not about what I want. It's about what's fair...the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.

The next line could be an interesting comment on trying to justify violence in the name of good.

Batman: Nothing fair ever came out of the barrel of a gun, Dent.

It certainly has ramifications for Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, torturing in the name of justice. I, however am still inclined to agree with Dent's line. Fairness itself turns ugly when you get down to the core of what it is. The only way to fight evil is to beat the hidden tyranny of equality and always choose the scarred side of Dent's coin, dying to self to save others.