Hello class. Malkavian: Professor of Batmanology here. Please take notes. There will be a test.
If there’s one thing on my mind right now, with all the hype about The Dark Knight Rises, it’s this soon-to-be trilogy. Recently I’ve rewatched Begins and only minutes before writing this sentence I finished rewatching The Dark Knight. It’s a pretty amazing experience, and while it was recently fashionable to bash this pair of films as over-rated, they really are top-notch. My mind reels every time I watch these films, because of what they have to say. This is a trilogy not just about good vs. evil, but about human beings.
I rate my three favorite superhero films as Spider-man 2, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight. The thing about all those films is that they’re all actually about something. These are films that satisfy the frustrated teenager in me searching for meaning and kicks to the face while still satisfying the adult in me looking for a proper experience in the cinema. In Spider-man 2’s case, it was a story about responsibility, forgiveness, and love: morality on a personal level that trickles its way through all of society for the better. They’re rather Christian themes for the very Jewish Sam Raimi, but hey. Iron Man was about the systemic war machine and how much we needed to realize our (at the very least) complicity in such a world. The Dark Knight is about political realities in a post-9/11 world, the psychology of the fear experienced in such a time, and the reactions of the people trying to protect the innocents. The Dark Knight and Iron Man in particular arrived at just the right point for the social consciousness to react to them.
Not bad for movies with soft-science nightmares punching out genetic monstrosities.
One of the things that’s the most recognizable about The Dark Knight is how different it is from Batman Begins in Misc-en-scene. This a darker film. Blues to Batman Begin’s oranges, Midnight in winter to Begin’s Dusk in Autumn. It makes me wonder if there will be a dawn-oriented color-scheme to the (if so) appropriately named Dark Knight Rises. I have to wonder how much Nolan planned ahead of time, because that’s just one of the many ways the films transition into each other completely perfectly. Not just in mood, but in themes and story structure. I complain about Hollywood’s desire to make everything into a trilogy after the success of Star Wars, but Nolan’s Batman is actually moving in a direction where the progression makes sense.
Then there’s the cast. Were it not for the fact that the protagonist of the film dresses up like Dracula to beat up clowns, this film would probably have been accused of being Oscar bait. Even the weakest link, Maggie Gyllenhall, is only great. To be fair, the fault is more that she is easily the weakest part of a very strong script than anything to do with her acting. Even at its lowest accent-breaking, all of these actors present highly effective and moving melodrama that marks what superhero fiction at its height can accomplish.
We obviously need to start with Christian Bale’s Batman. There have been some complaints about him, mostly to do with the voice, but I quite frankly see him as the best Batman yet. An important aspect of Nolan’s Batman in both films is that he is completely ego-less. Batman is willing to demonize himself both as a superhero and as Bruce Wayne to save lives, made apparent in the Begins where he pretty much pisses on Thomas Wayne’s grave and makes an ass out of himself to get people to leave his mansion and thereby save their lives. The theme only continues in The Dark Knight. As Bruce Wayne he makes a consistent fool of himself in public. He even makes Harvey Dent, the man he pins as Gotham City’s hope for a brighter tomorrow, think him a complete upper-class twit through his showboating. Even in saving the life of the man who was about to reveal his secret identity, Bruce Wayne goes out of his way to make himself look like an idiot drunk driver. Incidentally, this scene also shows how much Bale and Nolan can do with a single shot in which simply by looking at this lawyer who was about to sabotage everything he was working for, Bruce Wayne assures the man that nothing bad is going to happen to him. It’s an important part of Batman as a person: even those who consider themselves his enemies are not below his protection. This is a theme that actually becomes the crux of the climax of the film. As Batman, he also acts in no regard to popularity or image. Batman Begins ends with the ever-important exchange where Gordon says he never got to thank Batman. Batman replies that he will never have to. It’s an important insight into Batman’s relationship with Gordon and by extension Gotham City. There is no reward in this for Batman, other than preventing potential Joe Chills from creating more little Bruce Waynes and the importance of this line is ironically echoed at the end of Dark Knight. When Gordon is announced to be dead, Batman is there to take the hatred from Gordon’s wife because he’s the best candidate whether or not he deserves it. When Gordon comes back though, Batman is nowhere to be seen, because the glory belongs to the white knights. So important is Batman’s dedication to protecting the city that in the end, he’s willing to be labeled as the villain. Unfortunately, this also leads to the biggest problem of the film for me, but we’ll get to that later. In a weird way, this actually gives Nolan’s Batman more in common with the Adam West series than it does with Tim Burton’s film. While Tim Burton seemed to be avoiding the idea of a superhero and implying Bats is just as crazy and damaging to Gotham as the Joker. By contrast, both West and Bale as Batman are bright symbols of hope for the city, and in both interpretations Batman’s theatricality works to save Gotham. The main difference, obviously, is the type of criminal they end up of having to fight. It really separates him from a lot of modern heroes, perhaps typified by Smallville’s Clark, whose search for heroism comes not from a desire to do good but for acceptance and to be lionized. Batman doesn’t want your respect. He just wants you safe.
Then there’s Harvey Dent. We’re set to love this guy from minute one and it totally works. In his first minute of screen time, he knocks out a guy for pulling a gun on him (a chinese one, which prompts Dent to lecture the thug to buy American) and then decides to continue his prosecution because he is Just That Awesome. He’s brazen, intelligent, charming, and patriotic. There’s no question as to why people in Gotham love him. In every way he does things, he’s a crowd-pleaser which instantly separates him from Batman. He really is the very image of a modern white knight, which shows how everything down to the title ties itself together perfectly. One of the major ways that The Dark Knight differs from many Batman stories is that it’s Harvey and not Batman who is the polar opposite to the Joker, the force of radical order against the force of radical chaos. This is ultimately what makes his inevitable fall so tragic and forceful. Nolan creates a character we want to see win. Even his coin starts out as a dark mirror of what Dent will become; from someone who believes that you make your own luck in the world to someone who sees the world as an uncaring ball of chance. In the end, Batman decides to further stain his own armor to keep Dent’s spotless when he falls. I have to question what Nolan means here. Is he saying that a being of pure nobility is the most corruptible? It seems like Batman was incorruptible not despite but especially because he stares into the abyss.
Jim Gordon perhaps stands out in the cast in that he’s perhaps the only human not being a symbol. He’s in the most ‘real’ position. A cop and authority figure watching a city descend into near-anarchy. He’s the one who also becomes the most frantic and loses control. He’s the happy medium between Dent and his perfect image (“I don’t get points for being an Idealist”) and Batman and his complete disregard for PR. (“We have to save Dent! I have to save Dent!”) Part of why Gordon is so much of a focus isn’t just because of Oldman’s fantastic performance. He’s the tether caught in the middle, not just symbolically but in that he’s the very way Dent is a contact to Batman. Gordon takes pages from both Batman’s and Dent’s books, employing deception to catch the Joker but also knowing the value of how people see him. In the end, his ability to mix realism with idealism is what makes him one of the few people in the movie that doesn’t let Batman down.
Then there’s the weak link: Rachel. I’ve long decried Rachel as something of a callous bitch and that still stands, since Begins ends with her telling her she’ll be there for Bruce. It couldn’t have been more than a month between the two films and already she’s dating this Harvey Dent dude. That weakness aside, her important point is in how she’s both an anchor for Batman to the real world but at the same time she’s his weakness. This isn’t the near-sociopathic and broken Batman that Frank Miller is in love with. He’s still a very strong human being and Rachel is a sign of it. It’s the very reason that when Batman stops screaming “Where’s Dent?” and starts screaming “Where’s Rachel?” that the Joker realizes he has a weapon with which to hurt Batman. Even in death though, she remains an anchor for Batman to be a better person despite his erroneous belief that Rachel chose him causes him anguish. Alfred realizes that it’s a ‘truth’ he needs, especially in the wake of what happened to Dent and lets the lie slip. (Once again, we’re moving into that big problem I have with the movie)
The last character we’re going to cover is none other than The Joker. Let’s not mince words: we lost what I think is one of the world’s best method actors. Make all the Joke Bat Mountain jokes you want, but this is a pitch-perfect Joker for this story. Ledger’s Joker is both funny and scary. Nicholson could only occasionally manage the first and while Hamill had the chops for both and it showed, he was limited by the demographic of the animated series. I still maintain to this day that The Dark Knight deserved an R rating and its all thanks to this hilarious, frightening transvestite clown. Like I said, this Joker is really funny. If nothing else, the countless reaction images and .gifs the internet has produced of him should be proof of that. This Joker has deadpan comments, great one-liners and does it all while shoving a pencil into a man’s brain. This is the crux of the Joker: he’s unpredictable. You could even make an argument for magical realism as the Joker really does seem like a monkey’s paw for the criminals of Gotham: a demon summoned a collective unconscious ritual chanted by the scum of Gotham. A common criticism of this Joker is how he insists he doesn’t have a plan while having everything planned out: a character trait established with his initial bank heist. Here’s a hint: THE JOKER LIES. The fact that he lies is a commonly established fact, from the scar stories to the fact that he switches the locations of Rachel and Dent when he tells Batman. A lot of people were shocked and disgusted at the people championing the Joker but it makes perfect sense to me. The Joker is a charismatic sociopath and he’s the best kind of liar: The kind that uses truth to tell his lies. His lies are filled with personal tragedies meant to appeal to our rage at systemic injustice, all meant to encourage chaos and destruction. The film doesn’t refuse to choose sides, though. While Batman may break some pretty big rules (as pointed out by God himself, Morgan Freeman) there’s no question who the villain is and who needs to be stopped. In fact what stops him in the end is that the only aspect of human psychology he does not understand is altruism.
It’s why the movie has such an accusation of plutocratic conservatism, and those arguments are really hard to rebuff. In actuality Begins was worse about this. While it did try to address class issue with criminals (and did pretty well) it still featured a plutocrat securing control of a megacorp for the good of the plebians, though the other plutocrat who was going to take control was a jackass so that’s all right then. The Dark Knight is actually willing to ask the question of how far you’re willing to go to fight the madness. Nolan’s answer seems to be ‘It’s Just This Once’ which also seems to be the answer many conservatives have.
People ignore a much more important part of the film, though: a part that not only betrays further liberal sensibilities but also reflects important themes of Batman as a character and myth. This scene is none other than the Joker’s ‘social experiment’ with the boat. One one side we have the cream of Gotham’s crop: upstanding citizens. On the other we have the scum: murderers and rapists. It touches on an important theme of Batman, ever since he decided not to take revenge on Joe Chill in 1941: Every life is sacred and no matter how heinous the crime you have committed, nobody has the right to take if from you. (except God, and we’ll get into that latter) The words of the citizen who decides that they have the right to execute the criminals because ‘they made their choice’ rings hollow because he is making the exact same choice. In the end, he cannot bring himself to become like them and have the weight of human beings on his soul. We’re left to wonder if it’s because of his nobility or his cowardice: most likely a combination of both. The second lesson we learn on the boat from a roughed-up convict who immediately knows what to do with it. He throws it out the window and absolves all the criminals of any potential guilt. This is another important theme of Batman: No one is beyond redemption. There are echoes of The Killing Joke where its shown that what Batman wants more than anything else is to cure the Joker. Both the moral and practical reasons for the sanctity of human life is made clear here: you never know what good they can be capable of.
There are arguments about whether these films are optimistic and pessimistic about human nature and personally I think it’s a blend. While The Joker is brought down by his very pessimism, so too is Batman by his belief in humans. Only four people (Gordon, Rachel, Alfred, and that black guy on the boat) end up living up to his expectations and they are rightly galvanized for such. Such is Batman’s dedication to these people that he decides to ‘reward’ their belief by preserving Dent’s image into a christ-like figure. Belief is a very strong recurring role in these films. The rant of the shotgun-wielding bank teller even feels like a zealot’s rant. “What do you believe in?” is a recurring theme in this film. Batman makes it clear that he doesn’t believe in truth, or at least he believes in it less than he believes in security and the faith of the people. It’s that reason that he takes the blame and makes himself the Devil in place of the Joker, so that Dent may maintain his sainthood.
Once again, not bad for a movie about a guy in Dracula cosplay beating up Bozo the clown.
edited 7th Sep '11 12:03:24 AM by Malkavian
"Everyone wants an answer, don't they?... I hate things with answers."— Grant Morrison
