Knights and Jokers

Well, it's finally out. I admit, this is not a political comment, and therefore slightly off-topic, but I didn't think I could let the movie Dark Knight pass without at least speaking on it, however briefly.

First, a bit of a quotation that I think might help folks understand where I'm coming from as I review this movie. Apologies for the length:

"Ladies and Gentlemen! You've read about it in the papers! Now witness, before your very eyes, that most rare and tragic of natures mistakes! I give you: the average man. Physically unremarkable, it instead possesses a deformed set of values. Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity's importance. Also note the club-footed social conscience and the withered optimism. It's certainly not for the squeamish, is it? Most repulsive of all, are its frail and useless notions of order and sanity. If too much weight is placed upon them... they snap. How does it live, I hear you ask? How does this poor pathetic specimen survive in todays harsh and irrational environment? I'm afraid the sad answer is, "Not very well". Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random, and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark slavering buggo! Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this... any other response would be crazy!" - Batman: The Killing Joke

That is from Alan Moore's take on the character of the Joker, written back in the late 1980s. While I can't confirm the veracity of the rumours, apparently, this particular Batman story was given by Christopher Nolan to Heath Ledger, to help him understand the character he'd be playing. As most people know, Ledger died shortly after wrapping up the work on the film The Dark Knight, so there's a bit of a bitter note to reviewing his work in this film: as brilliant as he is, it's even more tragic to see him playing such a morbid character because of his own death, and because it may have been a small part of what caused his death. Part of that makes what he does all the more terrifying.

The Joker is, like Batman, and indeed, like this movie, both a comic book character and an iconic image that reflects as much of the people watching him/them and the way he/they are portrayed as anything else. The character of the Joker started, in Bob Kane's original comics, as a sociopath who just happened to look like a clown. Part of this was the imagery--clowns can be a frightening image, something that looks like its smiling, even if doing something that, out of the context of the circus or the joke, can be quite horrifying. Part of it may not have been intended by Kane, but it certainly comes out in the current era of comics (like Moore's Killing Joke) and in the current Batman film world envisioned by Christopher Nolan.

The 1960s version of the Joker and the Batman kind of put a dent in what is an otherwise fascinating character, turning him into the "Clown Prince of Crime," a joking, wisecracking buffoon who was more witty than dangerous. So too, Jack Nicholson's take on the character. As memorable as it was in Tim Burton's Batman, the character had become, for better or for worse (he was certainly more amusing than Ledger's Joker, who is not, in any way, funny), a clown or a jester who just happened to commit crimes.

Ledger's Joker, and the new Dark Knight, put the Joker back in his original territory. Just like Batman Begins, the previous film in this new, darker, take on the Batman mythos, did for the Batman himself, the Dark Knight returns its primary characters to what, I think, they were meant to be. The Batman and his world is not just comic book territory. Don't get me wrong, the mythos couldn't have existed outside the comic book genre, but it's one of those extremely rare comic books that manages to tap into something more, and can as a result exist as more than its creator may have wanted. The Batman, the Joker, Harvey Dent, and the movie itself all become more than just cartoon characters on a big screen--they become archetypes, fundamental points of view that ask very troubling questions about the human condition.

One of my favourite writers is Albert Camus, a French Algerian Noble Laureate. Among his many interesting works are two books in particular that seem to have been borrowed from by Moore, and perhaps unconsciously, the whole mythos. They are the Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel. In both books, Camus explores the implications of the nihilist and existentialist position that the universe is meaningless (no higher authority or meaning) and random. Unlike the nihilist, who decides to make meaning from power to escape the void of the meaningless world around him, or the existentialist, who simply lives amid that void, Sisyphus and the Rebel both see themselves as happy in the absurd predicament they are in. Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up a hill for all time for his crimes, only to see it crash down each time he reaches the top. When he walks back down to start again, Camus paradoxically calls the Greek happy. The Rebel rejects human attempts to create order in the universe because they can become tyrannical, choosing instead to rebel out of solidarity for his fellow human being--after all, if she cannot know what is true, how can anyone else, and how therefore can she deny anyone the ability to face the absurdist position and make their own choice how to deal with it.

The Joker has always fascinated me because he takes an alternative path out of Camus' dilemma--in a meaningless world, one can either kill oneself (a cop-out, Camus thinks, because that effectively dodges the dilemma instead of struggling to accept/resolve it), live with it as best one can, or become a tyrant and try to impose meaning on the world. The third choice, by the way, is the one that it seems Harvey Dent tries to take at the end of the movie, and one wonders if perhaps that is exactly what Batman is trying to avoid. But the Joker--he slips out the side door! He goes bonkers: "Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away... forever." - Batman: The Killing Joke

The most worrisome part of that choice is, of course, that he might be right. In the face of horror, and depravity, and confronted with the utter meaninglessness of existence--mightn't it be saner to go mad?

Now, I doubt that Nolan seriously intended to throw in Camus, or such existentialist oddities as I've mentioned here. My point in bringing them in is to show just how much depth and meaning one can find in both the Batman comics and in this new movie (and it's predecessor Batman Begins). The brilliance of The Dark Knight is that Nolan has crafted a movie that manages to ask these fundamental questions about our own sanity, and forces the audience to come up with an answer. At the end of the movie, everything Batman has gained has been taken back--he's an illegal vigilante again, the man he hoped would replace him has become a monster, and the only people who will know the truth of his struggle are the man who has to chase him (Gordon, for appearances sake), the woman he loves (Rachel, murdered by his enemy), his two confidantes (Alfred and Fox, who will never be able to tell anyone), and his arch-enemy (the Joker, who I suspect would figure out the ruse, and try to tear it all down again). The audience is left without any easy answers--something that's risky in a "Summer Blockbuster" (TM), but that is the right way to end the film. It leaves the audience with all the tough questions, and then trusts us enough to find our own answers. How very much like Camus.

I could nitpick at one or two plot points--Lau, a villain from Hong Kong, is somewhat superfluous to the main plot, and his on-screen death is only barely hinted at; the Joker claims not to plan anything in advance, but his fiendish trick with the two boats is, frankly, something that would require intricate levels of planning. But then again, these are minor, and the latter drives home something about the character Ledger has managed to create--he absolutely believes everything he says to be true, to the point that the audience is left scratching its head, wondering if just maybe he might be right.

Ledger managed to make the Joker both represent an interesting philosophical point, that madness is the only logical response to an insane world, and a terrifyingly frightening villain (everytime that guitar riff hit, when my wife Jen and I knew that he was about to appear, we actually flinched and tried to find each other's hand in the dark of the theatre for comfort!). Bale's Batman is as conflicted as ever, and all the more interesting because despite all his rage, all his terrifying darkness, he is, as Gordon (the ever-brilliant Gary Oldman, who earned more cheers from the crowd when he made his apparent return from the grave on-screen than the truck-flipping action sequence!) points out, the hero that Gotham, and humanity, needs. He makes the right choice, no matter the cost--and at what cost! Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face becomes a bit murkier towards the end, though this may be because of the CGI involved in bringing him to life, and because next to the Joker, Two-Face's more subtle character has to shine very hard to overcome the sheer power of the Ledger/Bale interplay. That said, it's on Two-Face that the whole dilemma of the film revolves, as much as Batman--he is the Joker's point, made manifest, while Gordon and Batman, and the people on the boats, are the only real hope we have that human beings can be decent even in the face of horror.

One last thing. One of the reasons why I think I'm putting this near the very top of my list of All-Time Best Movies is that it manages to get my wife and I to agree on its brilliance. Now, that's a good reason for anyone to like a film (i.e., you and your partner can enjoy it together), but the differences between us, again, illustrate the brilliance of Nolan's movie. I'm a political scientist, and Jen is a psychologist. She read a few comics now and again as a kid, but never really got into them as much as I did, and only read more of them after we saw V for Vendetta and I introduced her to the graphic novel version of the film, and some of Moore and Frank Miller's other work. I am a comic book fan and a gamer, meanwhile, in addition to my other pursuits. This film manages to drive home to both of us how the Dark Knight and The Batman itself are both comic book-fare, and something entirely different. It manages to give the audience something to reflect on that will be different for everyone watching it--from the nightmarish version of the Joker's take on the Prisoner's Dilemma, to the political implications of Batman's willingness to use a hyper-advanced wire-tapping system, to the philosophical elements I've already mentioned, above. It is a film that just about anyone could watch, and come away with something different. Regardless of their take on the film, of course, the chilling moral questions will probably remain for a long time, and I haven't seen a supposedly "action" film be willing to gamble and ask these kinds of questions since The Matrix.

I cannot praise the performances of the actors, of the director Nolan and his writing partner (his brother, Jonathan), or the technical wizards who brought the world to life, enough. That this is Ledger's last performance is utterly tragic--the man demonstrates here that he had reached the very top of his game, and he will be all the more missed. One reviewer (http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=17085&reviewer=416) rhetorically asks "Is (...) Ledger in this? I sure didn't recognize him." An odd comment, until one realizes that it is the highest compliment one can give to an actor: that he put aside himself, the actor, entirely, and became his character on screen. A frightening thought, given the nature of this particular character, but I echo the reviewer's praise--while giving him an Oscar for the role might seem like grasping for sympathy, the man deserves it. Everyone involved in the film does a tremendous job--there are so many layers of meaning that one probably should watch it more than once (take that for the free plug that it is!), and can find enough in it to talk about it for weeks afterwards.

I know I will.

Best regards,

Chris