A Dark Knight Review Essay

Warning: Spoilers.

On Monday I saw the most hyped film of year: The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, as well as rather predictable, it didn't live up to the billing. That said it's a perfectly competent film, but nothing more. Everyone has been rightly raving about Heath Ledger. He puts in a fantastically disturbing performance as the nihilistic Joker. However, possibly the best performance comes from Gary Oldman as Lt James Gordon. He is just incredibly believable as the good cop stuck in an evil world.

The script is laced with black humour through out. The best line being delivered by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman):

"Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who beats criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck."

Pure genius.

The cinematography coupled with some excellent direction creates a sinister atmosphere throughout the film. Consequently the violence is some of the most disturbing I've seen since Battle Royale. It’s not though explicit. Nolan eschews modern convention of always showing the gory details and cuts away allowing you imagination to do the work. Particularly notable is the scene where the Joker has the knife to that guy's neck for an inordinate length of time and cuts away when the inevitable happens. Tim Burton would have been wise to take heed of this style when making Sweeney Todd.

This brings me neatly on to the rating of 12A by the BBFC. Those guys are absolute jokers (pun intended). The relentless violence and hopeless undertone make it wholly unsuitable for even 12 year olds; note with the 12A rating a child of any age can view it with an adult. If my sister, who is 11, would have seen it she would have been traumatised for days afterwards. This demonstrates that the BBFC's main rating categories of sex, violence and swearing are insufficient to rate a film properly. To their credit, breaking down the ratings into these categories was a step forward.

Back to the film- The frequent action sequences are suitably spectacular though nothing out of the ordinary for a film with a huge budget. Hans Zimmer soundtrack lacks the sparkle of his best work, Gladiator and Pirates of the Caribbean for example, and just sounds as if he's going through the motions.

The main problem with the film is the crucial aspect of all narrative art: the writing. Contrary to most expectations it is not a Batman versus the Joker film. They merely provide the frame for the centrepiece- District Attorney (DA) Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). The major themes throughout the film are summed up with Dent's own line:

‘You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

And the Joker's:

"I took Gotham's white knight, and brought him down to our level. It wasn't hard. Y'see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little...push."

Harvey Dent's character embodies these two lines. He is the clean cut DA determined to clean the filth from the streets by any means who then turns into an amoral two-faced individual after being pushed. Batman and the Joker provide the moral framework of the story. Batman is the principled (well, essentially) crime fighter. The Joker, the Devil. With these glasses we chart the demise of Dent.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this story structure but it doesn't pull it off. The main reason for this is that there are too many significant characters in the film. It is firstly cluttered by Lt Gordon and perversely, Batman himself. The only purpose Batman serves in the whole film is to prompt the escalation of violence from the Mafia. However, for whatever reason (probably to satisfy the producer), they give Batman a bit of a run around just to say- this is a BATMAN film and this is who you paid to see. Hence the entirely pointless escapade in Hong Kong. With the screen time divided up so much there is a lack of emotionally engagement with the characters; something which wasn't a problem in Batman Begins. If the Batman and Gordon would have been sufficiently sidelined to focus more on Dent the emotional impact of the death of Rachel Dawes, for example, would have been far greater. Apart from Dent, Dawes is just another in the long line of wet female characters who's sole purpose is window dressing.

This again demonstrates my contention that ensemble casts are in general a bad idea. The best example of them working is in Paul Thomas Anderson's excellent Magnolia. The reason this works is that you have characters with parallel experiences which compares and contrasts their reactions to them. It also helps that it is 3 hours long. This could have been possible with the Dark Knight but would have required the rewriting of the Joker. Instead of being an immutable pillar of evil, one would have had to flesh out his background, in particular his childhood, to chart his development into the man he is today. This would have provided a character foil for Dent. A similar change of writing could have done the same for Batman and Lt Gordon.

Now having said all that, Christopher Nolan should be credited for making a mainstream blockbuster film which is essence is an ideas film. And this is where the Joker becomes more than creepy. Ostensibly all he does is cause wanton destruction. The interesting part is his reason why. He says at one point,

"I believe that whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you…stranger."

which is a corruption of Friedrich Nietzsche's phrase "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Keeping Nietzsche in mind he also says this:

"It's a schemer 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 turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair."

The whole point of the Joker is that he undermines people’s beliefs, especially those in people. This is the reason he sought to give Dent a little push- to show that all men are evil, given time, and thus cannot be believed in. Notice the irony with the campaign badge which states "I believe in Harvey Dent”. This provides interesting comment on the disciples of Barack Obama who herald banners declaring "Change we can Believe In ", which in fact means "We believe in Obama". The Joker also usurps the principles of Batman (the surveillance system at the end), thus demoting him of hero status, and indirectly Lt Gordon's by causing the employment of Maroni's (Eric Roberts) men inside his department.

Belief in law enforcement to keep society safe is certainly undermined. All Batman’s crusade results in is an escalation in the retaliation of the Mafia. However, unlike Batman Begins which gives hope that Batman can redeem the streets of Gotham The Dark Knight provides no such hope. The film merely raises problems and asks questions but never solves or answers any of them. Annoyingly the character of Batman himself has the seeds to the answer to crime. He is a response to the utter failure of the police and legal services. Batman succeeds where the police fail. Why? Because Batman is a form of private law enforcement contra the monopolistic provision of the government. Due to the enforced lack of competition the government’s price of justice rises and the quality of it falls. Higher price and lower quality are the universal results of the monopoly.

The reason for seemingly immovable Mafia the film has even less of a clue. The truth is that they can only thrive under prohibition of victimless crimes. It used to be alcohol. Now it’s drugs and prostitution. If these freely consented to acts were legal then most of their funds would dry up; thus removing their teeth and the problem. See my Economic and Social Costs of Drugs Prohibition.

One of Nietzsche's major critiques of society was its herd mentality. People don't think about what's right and wrong but follow what someone else believes. This belief system originated with the master-slave relationship which he repudiated. And since God is the ultimate master it is the case that "God is dead, we have killed him." For a replacement for God, the ultimate basis of all previous moral systems, Nietzsche substituted the ubermensch- the superman: any individual who created his own moral and ethical framework. This was to be each man’s goal. (NB Nowhere in Nietzsche's writings is the plural ubermenschen used. The Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche is not accurate and was done solely to serve political means).

A great critique of the herd mentality was the absurd voting scene. The Joker claimed that the two boats would be blown up at 12am but if one boat had the moral fortitude to blow the other up he’d spare the other; he provided detonators for both boats. On one boat the passengers voted on whether they should destroy the other which was almost comical. This is further reinforced by the lack of will power of any passenger to actually take the decisive step to push the detonation switch after the “people” had decided to. Perhaps this is also a comment on those things people vote for but would not do themselves.

Further reinforcing the herd point was the Joker’s perfectly accurate line that if he killed the Mayor Gotham would descend into chaos. People don’t take responsibility for themselves and palm it off on to those in political leadership. Therefore when a leader is removed people panic and chaos ensues until a new leader emerges.

The most cutting part of Nietzsche's philosophy is alluded to by Two-Face's line:

“Chance is the only reality in this cruel world. Unprejudiced. Unbiased. Fair.”

As Harvey Dent his coin had two heads on it demonstrating his belief that there was something out there he could hope in which he could in someway bring about. As Two-Face he sees the world as it really (sic) is: meaningless. Since there is no meaning the ubermensch is necessary to confer meaning. With meaning and morality dispensed with the film endorses forms of utilitarianism: Batman’s use of the surveillance system to catch the Joker and Gordon’s employment of Maroni’s men to bring him down. It is most clearly endorsed when Dent makes the statement that Caesar would have been a hero if he had died soon enough. The idea seems to be that authoritarian government is sometimes necessary but needs to be curtailed afterwards. Enabling Act anyone?!

This worldview explains why the film is so depressing. It believes there is no meaning. The last film I saw this depressing was Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whisper’s. If you’re ever slightly down don’t watch it or you’ll probably end up slitting your wrists. Yet there is a ray of hope thrown in the Dark Knight unlike Cries and Whispers. On one of the boats with the big mean looking black prisoner is the only one to have any courage and takes the detonator. But he throws it out of the window declaring no-one has a right to blow up the boat and sits with his fellow prisoners and seems to pray. This comes deus ex machina with absolutely no justification. My contention is that unlike Bergman, Nolan cannot make a film consistent with his belief system. He intuitively believes there is hope but cannot justify it. So just throws it in there.

This is the reason that Godless worldviews always come running back to Daddy. All atheistic creeds are ultimately unliveable. If you did hold them consistently you’d probably have committed suicide by now. Hope for a better future is engrained in the heart of man. The question is how do you justify this while dealing with the evil in the world which The Dark Knight profoundly demonstrates? The Light Knight. He suffered all the trials and tribulations of our lives. In the Joker’s words he was pushed, but never fell. Most gloriously he died taking the just wrathful punishment for man’s evil, allowing us to be reconciled to God. The Light Knight is a man to believe in. In him there is new life and hope. Yet for those outside him just retribution is suffered.

The Dark Knight’s dark world needs the Light Knight- Jesus Christ.