The Dark Knight

"Criminals aren't complicated" says Bruce Wayne and for the most part, he's right. At their core, most criminals, especially of the organized variety, are nothing more than supremely unscrupulous businessmen. As such, when The Dark Knight begins, the Caped Crusader's war on crime that began in 2005's Batman Begins has reached an equilibrium of sorts: the gang bosses try to extract as much money from Gotham through drugs and racketeering as they can, and Batman tries to stop them, with both sides battling for the souls of the city's police officers, judges and politicians. The question: will these bureaucrats be corrupted by the mob's money, or inspired by Batman's unyielding crusade? It's a straightforward, rule-bound dynamic, almost...boring. At least that's what a greasepainted, costumed freak calling himself "The Joker" thinks. He's not interested in anything as banal as money; he wants to upend every system of belief and code of behavior adhered to by Gothamites of all stripes, from city fathers to godfathers. Robbery, murder, arson, he commits these crimes with gusto, but they are not ends to themselves. No, the Joker wants to strip the veneer of civilization from the Gotham citizenry and enjoy the show as they tear themselves, and all of their illusions of decency, to pieces.


How do you respond to a malevolence such as this? That's the central question of Christopher Nolan's film, easily the best movie every made about the usually farcical or dull world of costumed superheroes. Like the best film of 2007, No Country For Old Men, The Dark Knight explores how people choose to engage with an absurd universe ruled by random chance and casual cruelty.

Bruce Wayne deals with the guilt, pain and fear that accompany such an existence by creating "the Batman," a heavily armored crimefighter without guilt, fear or pain. He escapes from the powerlessness of life by embodying omnipotence. He escapes from the meaningless of life by dedicating himself to one cause with total focus: justice and the meting out of said. In the short term, this means jumping from rooftops and striking fear into the Gotham criminal element through the liberal application of fists, batarangs, and keen detective work. In the long term, this means inspiring the citizens of Gotham through his example to live honestly within the system they profess to uphold. If cops would stop taking bribes and start taking down gangsters, Batman would be able to ride off into the sunset...if he could bear it. In the meantime, Batman can work out his demons by tuning up the demimonde. The cost of all this power and purpose is alienation and unresolvable internal conflict. Batman fights to defend the system, but he breaks the law with every ride in the Batmobile (no way is that thing street legal). His most important goal is to make Gotham's criminal justice bureaucrats honest guardians of the public trust, but his liaison with the Gotham Police Department requires Lt. Jim Gordon to ignore the law by failing to apprehend him. This conflict, coupled with the oppressive secret that Bruce Wayne must carry with him every day, make him utterly isolated from the system and the city he loves. It also keeps him from the woman he loves, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, forcefully played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who knows his secret identity, and who refuses to be with him as long as "Bruce Wayne," the man she loves, is merely a front for the Batman.

When non-caped crusader District Attorney Harvey Dent takes office (and starts dating Rachel), with a promise to clean up Gotham using proper legal channels, Bruce Wayne sees the chance to retire his cowl for good. But not if the Joker has anything to say about it.

Most of the time in films, comic book villains seem to wear silly costumes for no more reason than...that's what villains in comic books DO. Heath Ledger's Joker is a different breed. Every sinister giggle, every guttural snarl, every nauseating lick of the lips, show the audience what the face paint and motley mean. For the Joker, every concept of humane behavior, from love to honor to dignity, and every human institution, is a fraud, a hideous joke people play on each other and on themselves. But nobody acknowledges this, and the Joker's mission is to let as many people in on the joke as he can. Ledger channels the manic nihilism of the character through a live-wire intensity and a parade of textured tics and vocal mannerisms, transforming him from a mere symbol of anarchy into a nightmare made flesh. The Joker is made even more compelling by the fact that he has a good point. Who among us hasn't been sickened by society's smug hypocrisy? There's a perverse pleasure in watching him torment pillars of righteousness like Dent, Gordon and Batman, using their principles as weapons against them, forcing them to reconcile the essential paradoxes of their natures through the gleeful application of savagery.

All of this angst and moral ambiguity plays out through a dizzying action plot that features some of the most purely entertaining and unnerving sequences in the Batman canon. the intensely focused performances of Ledger, Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart as Dent are matched by a dread-soaked atmosphere, propulsive direction, and a canny editing choices. Crucial events happen offscreen, forcing the audience to piece things together as they go. It enhances the Joker's seeming omnipresence and the sense that Gotham is slowly succumbing to chaos. A prominent feature of the film's score is a unbroken, atonal note that sings in the background whenever the Joker is about the strike. It's deliciously unsettling, and it reflects the nature of the movie as a whole: it's one long, sustained note of heightened tension and fear, with no prospect of release, even as the credits role. Similarly, the movie channels anxieties about terrorism and the ethical response to it without offering the comfort of resolution or pat answers. It's all accumulated tension, the only catharsis available in the amazing action scenes, with the knotty philosophical and personal questions left unanswered. You laugh, your jaw goes slack on numerous occasions, and you actually think a little bit.

The Dark Knight is a singular achievement; a comic book movie that treats its subject seriously, deftly develops characters, oozes relevance and still delivers the action and iconography that the genre demands. Ang Lee and Bryan Singer, let it be known: you are Christopher Nolan's bitches for all eternity.

Score: 9.5