richardf8 | Dark Knight: Less fun than having your appendix out.

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Dark Knight: Less fun than having your appendix out.

After reading much critical acclaim Morgan and I went to see this with a friend of ours from Shul.

Batman/Bruce Wayne is the greatest villain in this universe. The Joker? Acting according to his nature, barely responsible for his own actions, as with a rabid animal running loose in a town the only moral course of action is to kill him. And Batman fails to do this. Why? I can't tell. Does he think that a justice system that has already failed tragically to hold him once is going to do anything about him? Indeed the Joker has effectively destroyed any semblance of Law and Order by the time Batman sends him hurtling to a certain death, only to save him at the last minute.

The Joker argues that Batman's refusal to reveal his identity makes Batman responsible for the Joker's murders. Harvey Dent correctly identifies this as a terroristic threat, and acts accordingly. Batman is not responsible for those murders. But having had the opportunity to kill the Joker and having passed it up, every single murder that the Joker now commits is on Batman's head, as far as I can tell.

And what the hell is up with that paternalistic BS that Batman/Bruce Wayne and and Commissioner Gordon pull at the end with preserving Harvey Dent's image as Hero and demonizing Batman further because "the common folk need something to believe in?"

When all is said and done, this film was a morally bankrupt morass of angst and horror that failed either to entertain or edify. Christopher Nolan has perpetrated an act of narrative sadism on the public, and the public, it seems, is either sufficiently depressed or sufficiently masochistic to sustain the film in the top rankings.

I go to movies to be entertained, if I want to stare into an abyss of moral depravity lacking either hero or savior, I'll watch CNN.

A word on Heath Ledger - his portrayal of the Joker was excellent, and I suspect led him to his death. Jack Nicholson, who has portrayed The Shining's Jack Torrance, Satan, and the previous Batman's less disturbing joker is said to have warned Ledger about the role. From Jack Nicholson, such a warning is to be taken seriously.

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Well, I speak as someone who's sick of pat good-triumphs-over-evil films, inasmuch as they don't connect with his sense of the world. No doubt my worldview is fairly bleak for finding that this one did. And I agree, it's not a fun film, and you'll be disappointed if you expect to go home happy. (I don't think it's sadism in Nolan to do what he's done with a Hollywood flick, but he is going against the grain of expectation.)

Still - take the scene on the boats, which I think is pivotal - where ordinary people, good and bad, decide to sacrifice themselves, proving the Joker's assessment of that moral depravity wrong. It's the tiny lights of individual goodness against that dark background that matter. And isn't one edifying point to be drawn from that, that if you expect capital-h Heroes to be heroic for you, the world will rapidly go to pot?

The scene on the boats would have been the films saving grace. But that sort of thing is going to be played out again and again, that sort of torture will persist as long as an absolute predator like the Joker is around.

C.S. Lewis, in Perelandra, showed us the proper way to deal with a villain of this sort.

You're pretty brave for writing this. Professional critics who've given less-than-stellar reviews to TDK were surprised at the "insane" foulmouthed threats they received by the figurative truckload. Of course, you don't have nearly so wide an audience or so strong a perceived authority on movies.

I found years ago that several movies in the IMDb top 250, including some near the top, are too gritty for my taste. I also found with Memento and The Prestige that Nolan is big on antiheroes and philosophically disagreeable to me. I tend to respect his films more than I like them. That said, I think Batman Begins may be the best superhero movie ever and TDK comes close in its own way.

It helps that comic book readers have informed me of Batman's questionable mores. In the comic canon, the Joker has killed uncountable numbers, never spends long behind bars, and shows no signs of reforming. Because he's diagnosed with a mental illness, the courts cannot have him executed. Presumably, the police could legally shoot him in the midst of a would-be murder, but Batman, with his no-kill rule, prevents that from happening. The Penguin has declared that Batman is effectively the Joker's partner. Why does this happen? Because the Joker is too popular with readers to let go, as one fake death revealed. But clearly many readers are questioning Batman's hero status.

This may be in bad taste, but after the couple of times that the Joker indicated a codependent relationship between them, I thought of this: "I wish I knew how to quit you."

It might even be a good thing that Batman spared the Joker this time. After all, how else would he have learned about the Gordons' peril in time to save them?

The IMDb FAQ has several responses to the question of why Batman takes the fall for Dent in the end. Batman has learned that allying himself openly with the police puts other people at risk. Claiming to be a murderer -- in effect, to go by no hard and fast rules -- makes him scarier and less predictable to criminals. Perhaps most importantly, by keeping the chief prosecutor's name clear, he is preventing all the prosecuted criminals from being summarily released.

Actually, I've seen other reasons listed outside of IMDb. As a hero, the only thing Batman could inspire anyone to do was impersonate him, which he didn't appreciate. The idealized Dent, by contrast, gave people hope for a Gotham with a clean police department as well as clean streets. They won't lose all that hope just because he's dead; they might even try extra hard to see to it that he didn't die in vain. (I'm assuming he is, in fact, dead. There are rumors, stemming in part from the fall looking no farther than Moroni's.)

I doubt Dent's dead. This film was Two-Face's origin story, and he too is a canonical villain.

Batman Begins was superb. The gulf between that and this is huge.

Memento, which I watched twice for a class at my Shul on the subject of faith, left me with the impression that the protagonist, with very good reason, set himself up to be set up to kill his antagonist. I found it satisfying; the protagonist killed someone who was cynically using him as a killing machine.

TDK did not give me that satisfaction - call me shallow, but I want catharsis. Memento gave it (though it does demand two viewings) TDK did not.

This tells me that you're big on stopping a killer by killing.

Yep. Its a moral imperative, in my mind, to kill someone who is taking innocent lives. With Joker its a no-brainer. He's killed many, he's remorseless, and he thinks up creative ways to kill more. Someone like that you kill. Period. To even have such a thing as a "no kill rule" when dealing with a creature like that is suicide at best, genocide at worst.

And you don't even mention the fact that the Joker already busted out of jail and half-expected his re-arrest. His plans for escape might be endless.

Let me tell you, the two main objections you raise are the same main reasons I don't readily list TDK as my favorite superhero movie. (The other reason that comes to mind is contrivedness, but that's almost inevitable for a philosopher-artist.) But what did you think of the movie before the last five minutes?

And you don't even mention the fact that the Joker already busted out of jail and half-expected his re-arrest. Actually, I did note this. But who's going to hold him. Why does arresting him even matter? He blew up the last place they put him by planting a bomb in an inmate!

But what did you think of the movie before the last five minutes?

"The catharsis had better be good, the catharsis had better be flipping good, this film owes me some major catharsis, it had better be good."

And. . . it wasn't even there.

That was my point, really. If I thought prison could hold him a long time, I might approve the decision to have him arrested instead of killed.

But I like to think that no criminal will ever be that effective in real life.

He'd better not be dead! He was the greatest thing about the entire movie!

I feel you on the morality of the movie -- actually I found myself siding with Two Face more than Batman. He was almost totally justified in his actions (I certainly had no problem with him killing off the inside men). It was Gordon's fault that he and his fiancé were able to be kidnapped (crooked cops within the police force), Batman never took the proper measures to take care of the Joker, etc. Batman liked to talk big about how Harvey Dent was the "hero Gotham deserved" but when Dent claimed to be Batman when Wayne didn't come forward, Wayne just let him take the fall, which was foolish and cowardly. A real hero wouldn't do that.

Dent was a person who tried to do what was best for Gotham and live up to his campaign promises, although he did exhibit some violent tendencies when pushed, he was basically a good man. I think if I ended up in a hospital with half my face missing, my significant other killed, and my city in utter chaos, I'd be getting revenge too.

I still thought the movie was amazing and I'm probably going to see it a third time (also I have to admit that I'm enamored with Aaron Eckhart in that role... so...)

when Dent claimed to be Batman when Wayne didn't come forward, Wayne just let him take the fall, which was foolish and cowardly. A real hero wouldn't do that.

With this statement, I disagree. By doing this Dent was saying to the real Batman "Look, I don't know or care who you are, but I know you're in the room right now, and if you think you are going to get out of dealing with the Joker by handing yourself in, you have another thing coming, because I'm going to deprive you of that option."

Wayne's silence was thus a "Yes, Sir."

I guess I liked the movie a lot more than you did. I liked that they finally came up with a credible origin story for The Joker. I liked that they turned him from a ninny prankster into a totally amoral psychopath whose only motivation is chaos and destruction. I liked the moral ambiguity of Batman and the clever double bind sort of situations the Joker placed him into. I think it's OK that they preserved Harvey Dent's public image (and yes, I think he's dead, he did his villain turn in this movie). I want to see this movie again, although I'll probably wait for the DVD to come out - I was thinking of going to the Imax version, which was too hard to get into at the time. I do think it is the sort of movie that takes more than one viewing to fully appreciate.

Who knows, after a second viewing maybe my enthusiasm for it will fade a bit, but I don't think so. However, I do think that the current superhero movie phenomenon in general says something about us as a society. I lack the anthropological and psychological vocabulary to express it, but I don't think it is particularly flattering. Or maybe Hollywood just tapped out every other source of ideas.

I liked that they finally came up with a credible origin story for The Joker.

I.e., none at all. He gives conflicting histories behind his scars. Maybe his subtle message is, "Wanna know how a man gets as villainous as me? Take your pick. Any of these will do the trick."

Nicholson warned Ledger about sleeping pills, not the joker.
http://entertainment.aol.ca/article/jack-ambien-warning/67635/

You neglected to mention that Batman already demonstrated that he was perfectly willing to simply let someone die in Batman Begins. Exiting the train moments before it crashed he claimed, "I wont kill you, but I don't have to save you". Was it a personal need to "beat" the joker by not sinking to his level? How selfish.

I still haven't seen it... perhaps the huge monetary success has to do with people being enchanted by the spectacle.

there's a couple of issues i have to take with your assessment, mostly that this review doesn't really seem to be about the film The Dark Knight at all. obviously your own personal morality is your own personal morality, but when you "review" a film, your goal is to try to discover the point of the film or the meaning of the story and then discuss how well or poorly the film achieved it's goal of putting across its point or meaning in an engaging way. you don't just say "i didn't like the moral of the story and so the story sucked."

the only moral course of action is to kill him. And Batman fails to do this. Why? I can't tell.

the whole point of the Nolan retelling of the Batman story is to try to get it as far away from the idea of the "superhero" as possible. Nolan has gone to excruciating detail to tell stories about a world in which the Batman is realistically possible. first of all, in Nolan's version Batman hasn't read the last 80 years of Batman comics. the character of Bruce Wayne doesn't know that the Joker is totally irredeemable and will continue to break free from jail over and over and over again. they say so directly when Bruce is attempting to rationalize the Joker's actions and Alfred tells him such a task is futile. remember, in the timeline of Batman Begins / The Dark Knight Bruce has only been at his crusade for a short time. and by the time he encounters the Joker on top of the building the Joker has only been active for...what...a few weeks at the most? even if Bruce Wayne was willing to kill, he has no way of knowing at this point in the movies' narrative that the Joker cannot be stopped by any other means.

you are correct in correctly identifying Harvey Dent's correctly identifying the Joker as a terrorist, but you've missed the entire point of the film in saying every single murder that the Joker now commits is on Batman's head, as far as I can tell. the whole point of the Joker's plan is to make everyone - include Bruce - believe that. his goal is to prove that everyone in the world, below the surface, is as twisted and evil as he is. read Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, which actually provided a lot of spiritual substance for the Nolan version of The Joker. the Joker's grand plan is to prove that everyone is easily corruptible, and that madness lies just beneath everyone's facade. by claiming that Batman is responsible for all the murders committed by Joker's manipulation, and making everyone play into that false reality he is playing with the ultimate firepower: fear. it's the same game that government's play when they tell their citizens to rat out their neighbors or else "the terrorists win".

Batman doesn't kill the Joker for one very specific reason: by the end of the film he has realized that he himself is walking on a very thin razor's edge of becoming the Joker. the Joker is a man of obviously high intelligence and skill who is capable of bringing an entire city to its knees through selective intimidation and flashy tricks - the same exact techniques Bruce is using in an attempt to inspire Gotham to rise from it's knees and stand. Or, to be less melodramatic, imagine that you - in real life - began dressing up in body armor and patrolling the streets of your city, beating up criminals. one day, you are put in a situation where you have a choice of killing a criminal. if you kill him, then this murder will eventually cause great harm to your psyche. not "possibly," and not because you are weak, but because you are a real human being and no human being can kill another without being deeply affected and psychologically altered. In the comics, it's true, Batman lets Joker live because you have to please the fans. in Nolan's version Bruce lets the Joker live not because he feels that the Joker should live, but because he realizes that if he crosses his self-imposed line and kills, it's only a matter of time before he becomes so cold and callous to life that he can no longer carry out his crusade. it is both a tactical decision and a human one.

as for Gordon and Wayne's cover-up of Harvey's fall...all of those criminals that Harvey imprisoned will now be free. his life works are in vain. the only thing left is the ability of his memory to inspire others to carry on his work and try to succeed where he failed. can you imagine what would happen if it were revealed that George Washington was actually a mass murderer? what about MLK Jr.? all of their work would be undone in a moment. one of the main points of the movie is that one man cannot solve Gotham's problems - they can only inspire others to rise above the darkness. seen from that point of view, i don't see Bruce and Jim's decision to hide the truth about Harvey as "paternalistic bullshit" at all, but a kind of necessary lie for the greater good.

you say this film was "morally bankrupt" in the same breath that you condemn it's morality for not being punitive enough. i think perhaps i don't quite understand your definition of "entertainment."

It could have panned out to ways: Batman could have eliminated the Joker, or the Joker, seeing both ferries remaining intact, could have had a moment of clarity. Leaving a predator at large at the end of a narrative falls outside my definition of entertainment.

A truer narrative would be to say that Harvey gave up everything, his sanity included, for the good of Gotham. There is inspiration to be derived from that without destroying the truth. But Wayne and Gordon seem to think the public can't handle the truth, and that disturbs me.

it would be more disturbing to me if it was a documentary, but as realistic as it is, it's still a movie and there are certain suspensions and assumptions one makes. one of the assumptions one has to accept in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is that Gotham is a city on the edge of collapse and despair, and needs only a push to send it into anarchy and chaos. they really would be unable to handle harvey's fall, and no one would ever attempt to clean up the streets legitmately again. if you make a public announcement that "the District Attorney went crazy and died trying to clean up the streets, so who wants to go next?" i don't think you'll have very many volunteers.

and as for the end, he certainly didn't leave the Joker "at large" at the end of the movie. he left him dangling from a steel cable hundreds of feet above the ground moments away from a heavily armed SWAT team. i think the assumption that we are supposed to make is that Joker is pretty well and firmly captured and Gordon won't make the same mistakes twice and allow Joker to escape.

Honestly, I don't think they could handle the truth. In a city as corrupt as Gotham, it was difficult for people to rally around a politician the way they did with Dent in the first place ("I believe in Harvey Dent") -- so if news of his criminal killing spree were to come out to the public, they might no longer put their trust in another elected official the way they did with Dent.

A good parallel is how the American people view the office of the President after Watergate. The press reporting on that story changed the country's attitude towards the President, and now every President elect is subject to less respect, higher levels of scrutiny and more cynicism from the American people than was evident in the years before Watergate. I mean, Eisenhower had at least one marital affair but nobody knew about it at the time and therefore it didn't stain his reputation.

In other words, Gotham's next DA would have a hell of a time in office if Dent's killing spree was public. Not only that, but in this way he dies as sort of a martyr.

Holy Jewish geography, Batman!! Erm....

Beth Jacob does have Kabbalat Shabbat services but ... how do I say this nicely... they are not well attended at times, primarily because I think many people are at home preparing dinner and the bigger deal for people at Beth Jacob tends to be Shabbat morning. The singing when there aren't a lot of people there can be kind of... umm.... painful at times for me. It's not really that I can't stand the singing--I can deal...but Kabbalat Shabbat can be *soooo* lovely...

Beth Jacobites have (ok some of them) have a sort of running joke that, you know...it's a great minyan but most of the time half of the people are singing beautifully and the other half are off key and singing ridiculously slowly. It's part of our character and charm.

Anyway, that being said, I WILL be at Kabbalat Shabbat this week because we are having a family/wedding party Shabbat dinner at the shul and everyone will be there, etc. Unfortunately, my family being there will also not help the singing. ;) If you look at what groups I am in, I'm sure you can wager a guess why that is. But you guys could come and help! :)

I also friended you. :)

What time is Kabbalat Shabbat?

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Dark Knight: Less fun than having your appendix out.

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