nan | 楠木

Watching The Dark Knight left me depressed, melancholy and heavy-hearted. Multiple thoughts were sweeping through my head and it was difficult to establish coherence and meaning. It’s the typical feeling I have right after finishing any film that could be called a dark masterpiece.

And what a dark masterpiece this is. Christopher Nolan’s second attempt at the Batman franchise outdoes his first try that rebooted the master of the night, Batman Begins, in every measure possible. The film is a crime epic, with more similarity to the likes of The Godfather, The Untouchables and Heat rather than Spiderman, Superman, or this year’s surprisingly entertaining Iron Man.

The film opens with a crime scene that serves as a fitting introduction of the Joker. In the next two and a half hours, we witness the chaos and destruction that this one character brings to Gotham City, and how Batman tries to stop him. The Joker as portrayed by the late Heath Ledger is no doubt the most complicated film villain in any comic book adaptation, and is on par with legendary antagonists such as Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates.

The Joker is maniacal, cunning, and driven not by greed but instead the simple motivation to see chaos and disorder. “Some men just want to see the world burn,” the ever-reliable Alfred duly notes. The Joker obeys no rules and will cross any line, and uses this to his advantage – the difference between Batman and him is that for Batman there is that line which he cannot cross, and because of that, the Joker has the upper hand in every encounter. The dilemma that Batman faces is the very same one that the whole world faces today – when you’re up against terror, will you uphold your moral principles – which means you’ll often suffer disadvantages – or will you sink to the level of your enemies for the sake of defeating them? But if you’ll stop at nothing, what is the point of “winning” if you have become exactly the same as what you’re fighting against?

“You complete me,” the Joker says to Batman, almost like an expression of love. This reminded me of Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan’s underrated film on comic heroes – just as that film’s protagonist (Bruce Willis) and antagonist (Samuel L. Jackson’s “Mr. Glass”) were the opposites of each other, Batman and Joker are also opposite but complementary to each other philosophically.

While the Joker can be tersely summed up as anti-humanity, the frailty of humanity is painfully obvious and exposed at great length. (Joker quote: “You’ll see, I’ll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh… civilized people, they’ll eat each other.”) Throughout the film, the deeds of the Joker set the stage for what are essentially social experiments – what lows can people willingly succumb to, if given the right pressure? And while the film is uncharacteristically (and surprisingly) optimistic in one of the climactic scenes – truly a sole candle of hope in a long and dark night – there is indeed little to be joyful about. We realize how shallow, selfish and myopic people generally are, and that’s not just in this dark and bleak film.

On a parallel front, the story of district attorney Harvey Dent aka Two-Face is told, though disappointingly this sub-plot is put to a hasty conclusion and doesn’t do the character justice.

Justice, by the way, is what Harvey Dent, Batman and Lt. Gordon are after. The fall of Harvey Dent from the white knight (as he is called by Bruce Wayne) to Two-Face has Greek tragedy written all over it, but unfortunately the film does not spend enough time to fully explore this in the final act.

On a side note, I’m shocked that the MPAA actually gave this a PG-13 rating. Certainly there isn’t the blood and gore you’d expect from a zombie flick, but as Hitchcock would probably say, the most powerful image is one of suggestion instead of actual depiction, and The Dark Knight is often chillingly sadistic and twisted. Definitely not a film for the young.

To end this long list of random comments, The Dark Knight is a flawed but defiant masterpiece, and it is, like its protagonist, a master of darkness – if only to remind us how beautiful light is.

9/10