My offical review of The Dark Knight
There are 2 sentences in this film which are spoken several times, which summarize the entire story:
"The only morality in a corrupt world is chance".
"Either you are the hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain".
The Dark Knight is not a comic-book movie. It is more of a tragic myth, told through modern mythological figures. This is definitely not a film for children.
"Superhero" figures in comic-books are sometimes compared to characters in Greek mythology. The Greek gods were exaggerated humans: characters with normal human virtues and failings, but with exaggerated powers. Many people back then probably knew these gods didn't exist, but they served as useful vehicles for telling stories or teaching morals, in the context of exciting stories. Modern superhero stories serve similar functions.
I'm sure some people, perhaps many, will see this film and think it's simply an action film with some creepy characters for a good scare. But this movie is far deeper than that. Most people avoid "deep" movies, since they just want to enjoy a film and not get depressed, but this film has snuck in a deep story in the disguise of an action/horror film. And that is reason enough to admire the writers of the film.
However, I didn't like this film. It left me with a queasy feeling in my stomach when I finished watching it. This had nothing to do with the form or technique of the film, but with the story itself. I will probably see it again to more fully digest it, even if that digestion is less than pleasant.
The story asks a simple question: is morality a meaningless idea? Do the words "good" and "evil" really mean anything? Are these words just like 2 sides of a coin, that flips and lands on one side or another randomly? Are morals just wishful thinking?
Morals do not apply to all of life. Insects don't worry about good and evil. When a spider kills an insect, we don't call the spider immoral. We accept this as what comes naturally to a spider. Why then do we talk differently when a human acts like a spider?
First of all, before critiquing the story, I should mention what I thought was good about the movie:
The film almost perfectly translated the look and feel of the the original comic-books to the screen. Modern comic-book stories are almost never about comedy or silliness. The writers usually take their stories seriously, and Batman is a very brooding, almost Wagner-esque figure. These last 2 Batman movies with Christian Bale do an excellent job in translating this visual aesthetic to the screen.
I loved how they showed Batman gliding around in the air on his cape, like a hang-glider, looking like a dark angel. Batman doesn't really have any obvious super-powers. He's just a rich guy with a lot of amazing toys. These scenes added a lot of dark mood to the scenery, looking almost like a crow or a raven from an Edgar Allen Poe story.
I also like how Batman talks in deep, raspy voice. He almost sounds angry when he talks. This makes him even more ominous. It was a bit weird when he talked like this in the first film, but I think it fits his character well.
The story was very cleverly written. The central question in the story was mirrored in several plot details, from the dialog between the Joker and Batman, to the flipping of the coin to determine someone's fate, and to the District Attorney's face being half burned, externally symbolizing his internal change from good to evil. I thought these were brilliant plot details, and it showed that this story was written with great care. This was not a re-hashed Hollywood script. Christopher Nolan spent a lot of time and thought on this script.
The fact that Heath ledger died shortly after he finished this film put a lot of attention on his acting. But, even if he hadn't died, he still would have deserved a lot of praise for his role. The Joker was disturbing in the extreme, which was required, in order to try and mirror the extreme good that Batman supposedly represents. Ledger brought a nightmare to life.
However, here are a few things I didn't like about the film:
I thought it was far too violent. The drawings in most comic-books show quite a lot of violence, but for some reason violent drawings have less of a visceral impact than watching it in live-action. The camera kept cutting away at just the right time to avoid an R-rating, but I think it should have got an R-rating anyway. You don't need to see blood in order to know a killing has been shown.
The chase scenes were obviously needed, since Batman is an action figure, but they went on for too long. Batman has sort of a James Bond aspect to him, so naturally we need to see a lot of cool cars and the bat-cycle with the huge tires. But the chase scene with the trucks and the vans in the freeway underpass was simply too many crashes and big explosions. Why are these scenes so often filmed in the dark...?
I didn't like the ending. I'll explain why.
Basically, this was a morality tale, but one which questioned the very idea of morality. Think of a spider. Spiders will trap insects, paralyze them, cut them open, plant eggs inside of them, as they die a slow, painful death. The spider is like the serial-killer of the animal kingdom. But no one talks about spiders in any moral terms. They are not evil. Spiders are simply doing what comes naturally to them, and few people question this.
The Joker behaves like a human version of a spider. He is cruel, he is taunting, he is violent, and he has no feelings of remorse. The scene of him dressed as a nurse was disturbing, where he is walking out of the hospital as it explodes behind him. That image is stuck in my mind, and it would have given me nightmares if I had seen it as a kid.
When he has that dialog with Batman in the police station, where Batman gets angry and starts throwing the Joker around, as the Joker tries to convince Batman that they are 2 sides of one coin, 2 halves of one whole, was basically a human reaction to spider-like behavior. Batman is convinced that the Joker is evil but the Joker argues that "good" doesn't mean anything unless it's contrasted against so-called "evil". Good and Evil need each other, supposedly, and Batman starts to believe him.
This is the part that bothered me. Batman becomes uncertain of himself and doesn't have a good answer to the Joker's argument. Near the end of the film Batman throws the Joker off the building, but then pulls him back up, and the Joker hangs upside down and gleefully argues that Batman can't bring himself to kill him, because he knows that the Joker is right. Good needs Evil, to give it something to contrast itself against. And Batman has no answer.
This would be like Saddam Hussein telling Mother Theresa that they are both the same. Their actions in life are simply 2 randomly different reactions to the chance-events in life. Neither of them is good or evil, they are just like insects, who just do what feels natural to them. No one has any right to call Saddam evil, or to call Mother Theresa good.
At the end of the story, Batman only acts good because it comes naturally to him. But he never has any answer to the Joker. He decides that people are simple-minded, and need a hero to worship, as well as needing a scape-goat to blame. So he agrees to let the District Attoreny be euologized as a hero - a "White Knight" - and Batman will take the blame for the deaths and will become the villain - a "Dark Knight".
Watching him run away from the dogs at the end of the film and jump on his motorcycle and ride off into the dark horizon was weird. The story had no resolution. The only resolution was that the Joker was right, and that morality is no different than the flip of a coin. All we can do is what comes naturally to us. If we feel like doing good, or we feel like doing evil, either action is no better or worse than the other.
This kind of argument has been made before. During the 1930's, French Exitentialists like Jean-Paul Sarte argued the same thing, that moral categories were meaningless. But then World War II happened and they were forced to admit that an evil thing had occured. They were forced to use a word they had tried to discredit. But they were never able to explain what evil was, or how it was really any different from good. They just had a feeling of what evil was, nothing more.
We are living in their shadow today. The question has never been resolved, and this is reflected in this movie. If this is true then we can never call Al Qaeda evil, or George Bush evil, or the genocide in Rwanda evil. Just feeling that it is evil is meaningless. Spiders and serial-killers do what comes naturally to them. Their feelings are just different from my feelings. But no one really believes this. Everyone recognizes evil when they see it, but we have lost the ability to justify this recognition.
Anyway, that's my deep analysis of The Dark Knight. Batman is a symbol of modern Angst.