Okay, so the review, which was frankly more of a labor of love than anything, is now out of the way. Now I can get down to what I’ve really been anxious to do, which is analyze some of the themes and motifs that I think made “The Dark Knight” so wonderfully complex. I’ve had a request or two to focus on a few lines in particular, and I intend to honor those (that’s you, Aaron).
Let’s get started! Oh, and obviously, if you haven’t seen the movie, you really shouldn’t read this.
“THE DARK KNIGHT”
1. “They’re only as good as the world allows them to be.”
The Joker says this to Batman during the interrogation scene, if you recall. He claims that any ethical code adopted by any person is fundamentally ridiculous, and will be “dropped at the first sign of trouble.” But why would the Joker believe this? What necessitates for him that people are evil? That we can’t know for sure, because his back-story is kept deliberately mysterious (don’t be fooled by his contradictory versions of how he got his scars, they’re all lies). To be honest, it’s quite beside the point what brought the Clown Prince of Crime to this conclusion, what matters is that he intends to prove it. Let’s see if he did.
Each of his major crimes can be broken down into a fundamental attack on any code of ethics. Or, to put it another way, everything the Joker does is actually some kind of awful joke: the opening bank heist uses greed to tempt each bank robber into committing what they think is only a momentary lapse in loyalty to one another. Each of them, except for “Grumpy” (the name in the script for the guy who gets hit by the bus), expects their behavior to remain in a vacuum, but the joke is that nothing remains in a vacuum. Technically, each of them thinks they’re only killing one person, but a hypocritical mentality that relies on the good behavior of others is eventually quite destructive. Human beings tend to justify lapses in their better judgment with the belief that their actions can be contained within their own lives. To put it simply, each of them thinks, “It’ll just be this one time, and only I’ll do it.” The Joker knows better: what you do echoes outward, and he demonstrates that very effectively here.
Let’s also consider the now-infamous “Magic Trick,” a gag so stunning and clever that it gets an audible reaction from the theater every time I see the movie. It’s a simple but brilliant act of misdirection: notice how the Joker waves his hands crazily around the pencil as the thug approaches him, pretending to be working on making the pencil go away. Of course, he’s actually waiting for the thug to get to him, but the Joker knows that his appearance and demeanor allows others to underestimate him, and he always uses this fact brilliantly. It also comes in handy when he murders Gambol, who is too ready to believe the Joker is dead, because he can’t fathom being fooled by a costumed freak. Later in the movie, the Joker tells Harvey Dent, “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?” Harvey buys this line, and wrecks his vengeance on the mob instead of the Joker, even though he was really the mastermind behind Rachel’s death. And, of course, this trick almost works again when Gordon orders a SWAT team to assault the Joker’s hideout at the end of the movie, not suspecting that the guys in the clown masks are really the hostages. The joke here is simple: human beings are suckers for appearances, no matter how much they should know better.
And of course, there’s the Sohie’s choice he puts Batman and Gordon through when he straps Rachel and Harvey to separate bombs and only gives their friends time to reach one of them. The Joker, of course, has already seen that Batman is highly protective of Rachel, so he assumes that she is the one he’ll choose to save and lies about where she is. He does this for two reasons: firstly, because he’s relatively sure that Batman will arrive in time to save whoever he chooses, but Gordon won’t (after all, he’s got the Bat-pod!), and he wants to make sure Harvey lives. Secondly, he wants to strip both Batman and Gordon of any feeling of agency: Batman couldn’t save Rachel because he was lied to, and Gordon couldn’t save anyone because he just couldn’t get there fast enough. The joke here is that humanity is not “in control,” and that the best-laid plans are easily destroyed with a simple lie.
So. Does the Joker win? Does he prove that humanity is hypocritical, stupid, and completely out of control?
Not quite. “The Dark Knight” wants you to *feel* like the Joker is correct for much of the running time, but the scene with the two ferries is this movie’s way of turning the tables on the Caliph of Clowns. This is where the Joker’s plan ultimately fails: both boats are tempted to blow up the other, but neither can bring themselves to do it. When midnight strikes and no one is dead, the Joker is visibly annoyed, and Batman proudly barks, “What did you want to prove? That deep down, everyone’s like you? You are alone.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a revelation about the Joker: he doesn’t want to be alone. His desire for anarchy and bloodshed comes from a need to feel connected with the rest of the world, to feel like he belongs among humanity. He can only feel this if everyone is like him, but at the end of the day, “The Dark Knight” does not believe we are. We can be very bad, yes, but we can also rise above it. Indeed, we have a two-fold identity, much like Harvey Dent and Batman do.
2. “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Chilling words, uttered by Harvey Dent and again by the Dark Knight himself when Two Face is killed. Dent was referencing the “emergency powers” granted to a ruler in Rome in a time of crisis, but Rachel wisely points out that eventually these powers became permanent, crisis or not. It’s easy to see how chillingly the fall of Rome’s republic can be applied to Batman: sure, technically the Dark Knight only intends to operate for as long as Gotham “needs” him, but once someone has the kind of power he possesses, giving it up is simply against human nature.
There are three main heroes in “The Dark Knight”: Jim Gordon, Batman and Harvey Dent. Every single one of them lives long enough to see themselves become the villain, just as Dent predicted. Each of them does it in different ways, and each to very different degrees, but the tragedy is still there. This is what makes this movie such an exceptionally complex piece of cinema. Let’s take a look at how each of them discovers their own capacity to be reduced by evil to their own worst enemy.
-Batman. The Dark Knight begins this story looking for a way out of being the hero, hoping to pass the mantle to someone else and maybe get a second chance at being with Rachel, whom he has loved all his life. The Joker, however, interrupts this. His spree of chaos, which is aimed squarely at Batman, puts Gotham into a frenzy that Bruce never could have imagined. He quickly comes to realize that even though the Joker claims he will relent as soon as Batman turns himself in, this cannot really be trusted, and would not constitute any kind of victory. Nonetheless, he knows that he is responsible for inspiring this new villain’s wave of murder, and over and over he finds himself unable to stop his foe. This constant feeling of impotence drives Batman to do several things he would never have imagined: the first is his massive sonar grid, which goes against even the most rudimentary system of ethics and freedom. There is no happy resolution for this plot thread, even though the device is destroyed. Batman resorts to unethical means to stop the Joker, and this violates the basic freedom he is supposed to be protecting. The second act that breaches his code is the semi-accidental murder of Harvey Dent. Now, to be sure, anyone can understand why Batman felt he had to act immediately to save the life of Gordon’s son, but killing is something the Dark Knight *cannot* participate in.
This, really, is the reason he is so willing to have Gordon blame Harvey’s crimes on him. Batman feels deep in his heart that, on some level, Dent’s sins really were his. He has violated his own code twice out of desperation, so playing the villain to Gotham City is easy for him to do; he *feels* like the villain.
-Jim Gordon. The soon-to-be-Commissioner Gordon has what might be considered the smallest fall from grace, but it hits him hard nonetheless. Gordon prides himself on being an honest cop, and has built his entire life on that principle, but his policy of abiding the corruption he sees in the department no longer works. He is in a position of *power* as Lieutenant, and he should be rooting corruption out, but he goes lax. He feels like he needs the manpower too much, even when Dent warns him explicitly that the people closest to him are not to be trusted. Eventually, Harvey and Rachel pay the price for this, and Gordon learns the hard way that he should have listened. Even though he is Gotham’s most noble police man, he finds that even he has been corrupted in his own way. It’s a hard lesson.
-Harvey Dent/Harvey Two Face. Harvey takes the biggest fall of all of them, and his is in many ways the simplest. The Joker targets Dent because he wants Gotham’s white knight brought down to his knees, and he suspects quite correctly that his love of Rachel is the key to doing it. Long before Dent becomes Two Face, we see glimpses of rage and arrogance boiling underneath his calm surface. Harvey is a good man who wants to protect the people of Gotham, but his demons are looming around the corner. He is violent, impulsive, and obsessed with *fairness* to a very dangerous degree. That two-headed trick coin of his represents his false belief that he can control the world, that he can “make my own luck.” He can’t, and a person like the Joker is determined to prove that to him. As this maniacal madman wrests all feeling of control from Harvey’s life, the final coup de gras being the death of his beloved Rachel, the former white knight gives in to vigilante justice because he simply *must* have fairness, whatever the cost. He was only ever committed to the law because he believed it would never let him down. But of course, the law lets us all down sometimes. Harvey simply is not ready for this, and his blinding rage demands that everyone around him lose what he lost, because that is what’s “fair.”
But then why flip a coin to determine his actions? Because for Harvey, all of life is now that coin. It’s cold, unbiased, unfeeling, completely random. He gets more satisfaction from *forcing* his enemies to be subject to that coin than he does from actually killing them, because that makes them fall into his notion of fair. Dent thinks he’s learned the true nature of life the hard way, and he cannot stand for anyone to escape it. Remember that Dent made his name in Internal Affairs, and his specialty has always been exposing people who think they can have special treatment. The idea of corruption infuriates him, and now that Rachel is dead and his face is scarred, anyone who does not submit to the same 50/50 chance he had of losing everything is corrupt.
Whew! A lot to take in! Why don’t we pause for a recess, eh? More later!
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