Dark Knight: Less fun than having your appendix out.

[richardf8]

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.

Comments

[richardf8]

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.

[jack-mirth.livejournal.com]

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.

[childings.livejournal.com]

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.