I was expecting this movie to be good… great, even. But even with such high expectations, I was still blown away. The Dark Knight isn’t just a good superhero movie. Or a good blockbuster. It sets the bar for superhero movies. It is almost without a doubt the best superhero movie ever made. And for my taste, it’s the best blockbuster action film since at least the early-nineties.
The dilemma with being a filmmaker/film geek and watching multi-million dollar Hollywood-fare is that I’m often forced to shut off my mind a bit just to enjoy the film. When I say that I “like” a Hollywood film, it typically means that I’m not holding it to the same rigorous standards I would say, an art house film. This is not at all the case with The Dark Knight. This film is what a Hollywood film SHOULD be. It demonstrates the incredible potential of the “genre,” and in doing so, puts everything before it to shame. It demonstrates that such a film can be simultaneously intelligent, artful, and entertaining. That “high” and “low” can co-exist in a single work of art, each element fueling the other. That it’s okay to take risks; to ask the audience challenging questions; to assault the certainty of their morality; to display an ethical ambiguity and relativity that far transcends the “good vs. evil” cliché.
Of course, it’s Ledger’s Joker that drives the film - stealing it from Batman himself, even. The rest of the cast is fantastic as well, but Ledger delivers a performance that borders perfection. He IS the Joker. It’s completely terrifying. His interpretation of the character is the perfect villain. He is a force of nature, a self-described “dog chasing cars,” with no back story and no real motivation. “Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint.” He is without empathy. A pure manifestation of our most anarchic and anti-social desires. Chaos incarnate. Furthermore, he’s supremely intelligent. He understands the game, on a level that most audience members likely don’t even understand. A sociopath with a grasp on reality firmer than the “heroes” he fights. He recalls Haneke’s Peter and Paul in his humor and audience-baiting, Kubrick’s Alex in his sadistic cool and illicit appeal, and Lucas’ Palpatine in his intimate understanding of the darker side of human nature and his attempts to draw the hero to that side (urging him to break his “one rule” - against murder). Contrasting with this understanding, however, is the fact that he cannot be understood. He is essentially an enigma, allowing no real insights into his psychology. In fact, he mocks our attempts to make sense of him - wittily changing his back story multiple times in a move that is hilarious and brilliant. Such a trick insults the audience’s expectations of a dime-store psychological explanation for the villain’s zeitgeist and motives (abusive father, etc.). Part of the reason Ledger’s Joker is so appealing is that he’s so frustratingly elusive. “Do you want to know how I got my scars?” he asks his victims (and us, by proxy). We DO want to know. The catch, of course, is that we’ll never find out.
Batman has his own set of issues. In the first ten minutes of the film we learn that there are Batman impersonators who attempt to emulate their hero and fight crime themselves. “What makes you any different from the rest of us?” one impersonator asks. “I’m not wearing hockey pants,” Batman responds. Despite being diffused with a joke, it’s a piercing question. What makes Batman’s vigilantism legitimate? (His response seems to indicate a smug belief that it’s the money - Batman can be Batman because Batman is Bruce Wayne, a billionaire) Is it in fact legitimate? Who or what decides? Public opinion? One interesting aspect of the Batman universe is that the character has typically been portrayed as not always favored (and sometimes hated) by the public he aims to protect. A sentiment best epitomized by the iconic Gotham Times headline: “Batman: Savior or Menace?” The Dark Knight plays up this aspect of the character to the extreme. In one pivotal scene, Wayne is forced to weigh the consequences of turning himself in to police versus the potential death of hundreds or thousands. In another, Batman constructs a mass surveillance system that allows him to monitor the entire city illegally - a technology that Wayne Enterprises C.E.O. Lucius Fox staunchly disapproves of. Bale’s Batman is a totally contemporary anti-hero, and the film feeds on distinctly 21st century fears about terrorism as well as overreaching, corrupt, and ineffective government.
All of this amounts to a thrilling, thoughtful, and unapologetically dark exploration of morality, senseless aggression, social order, vigilantism, revenge, crime & punishment, security vs. privacy, the monopoly on force, and more. The film is completely unrelenting in it’s questioning: how far would one be willing to go to achieve order? What is worth sacrificing in the name of justice? How does a society balance peace and security with freedom? In it’s ability to rapidly assault the viewer with often contradictory moral challenges while remaining continually exciting, it reminds me of Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. Although it certainly won’t ignite the kind of controversy that film did, it does touch upon topics of human nature and the very foundations of society itself (topics most Hollywood films vehemently attempt to ignore) with audacity and artistry that far surpass what would ordinarily be expected of a film of this budget and exposure level.
The Dark Knight sets a new bar for commercial cinema. And that bar is very very high. I’m looking forward to seeing what the Hollywood dream factory will come up with next if this is what they have to measure themselves to. Because there’s absolutely no reason that every studio film can’t aspire to this level of quality. If there was any doubt before, The Dark Knight definitively proves not only that it can be done, but that it can be done without sacrificing a shred of entertainment value, and perhaps more importantly, that it can make money.
