Thoughts on Batman.
So, I saw The Dark Knight on Saturday and have been digesting it. Below are my thoughts on the film.
First off, let's address the Heath Ledger factor. His portrayal of the Joker was mesmerizing. People are calling this his greatest performance (personally, I'd give that honor to his work in Brokeback Mountain). And it is great! He bravely took on that oh-so-iconic role in a completely new way. He is a creepy, sociopath anarchistic with no grasp on morality or ethics.
And what about our hero? He's an antihero, as the film makes painfully clear. Batman has never been a shiny penny hero like Superman. He's a vigilante, and it's not peace he seeks; it's justice. Vengeance. Yes, he battles criminals, but his motivation for doing so is pretty dark. Batman is the other half of the Joker. In the scene where the Joker taunts, "You complete me" we realize that it's true. They are both isolated individuals acting out their peculiar visions of how the world should be. For the Joker, it's chaos. For Batman, it's justice. They make up two sides of a coin (to use a laughably relevant metaphor), and it seems the balance in the favor of good or evil is always precarious.
Enter Harvey Dent. To me, Harvey Dent is the most fascinating character of the film because he encompasses the qualities of both good and evil. While Batman has made up his mind to choose to do good, Harvey leaves it up to chance. In the mind of Two-Face, the "choice" between good and evil isn't so much a choice at all: it's arbitrary and ultimately devoid of meaning.
And okay, there were the explosions! The flipping semi trucks! The fight scenes! The morbid curiosity of watching a potentially great thespian doing his last performance. But that was all background for me. The real draw for me was I left the theater thinking about what makes a hero. What makes something good or evil. Is it the motivation? In Batman's case, when he kills another human being is it good because the person was a villain? For Two-Face, if he lets someone live, is the morality of that act voided because it was decided on a coin toss? I don't know. But I do know that this is probably the only comic-book film that's left me ruminating on good and evil for days afterward.
First off, let's address the Heath Ledger factor. His portrayal of the Joker was mesmerizing. People are calling this his greatest performance (personally, I'd give that honor to his work in Brokeback Mountain). And it is great! He bravely took on that oh-so-iconic role in a completely new way. He is a creepy, sociopath anarchistic with no grasp on morality or ethics.
And what about our hero? He's an antihero, as the film makes painfully clear. Batman has never been a shiny penny hero like Superman. He's a vigilante, and it's not peace he seeks; it's justice. Vengeance. Yes, he battles criminals, but his motivation for doing so is pretty dark. Batman is the other half of the Joker. In the scene where the Joker taunts, "You complete me" we realize that it's true. They are both isolated individuals acting out their peculiar visions of how the world should be. For the Joker, it's chaos. For Batman, it's justice. They make up two sides of a coin (to use a laughably relevant metaphor), and it seems the balance in the favor of good or evil is always precarious.
Enter Harvey Dent. To me, Harvey Dent is the most fascinating character of the film because he encompasses the qualities of both good and evil. While Batman has made up his mind to choose to do good, Harvey leaves it up to chance. In the mind of Two-Face, the "choice" between good and evil isn't so much a choice at all: it's arbitrary and ultimately devoid of meaning.
And okay, there were the explosions! The flipping semi trucks! The fight scenes! The morbid curiosity of watching a potentially great thespian doing his last performance. But that was all background for me. The real draw for me was I left the theater thinking about what makes a hero. What makes something good or evil. Is it the motivation? In Batman's case, when he kills another human being is it good because the person was a villain? For Two-Face, if he lets someone live, is the morality of that act voided because it was decided on a coin toss? I don't know. But I do know that this is probably the only comic-book film that's left me ruminating on good and evil for days afterward.