The Definitives
The Dark Knight (2008)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, and Aaron Eckhart
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 152 min.
by Brian Eggert
Entered into
The Definitives:
07/18/2008
Original Release Date:
07/18/2008
If Batman Begins is the launching pad for serious comic book-to-film adaptations, The Dark Knight is the definitive destination, a place where the heroes brood on their perches and the villains are either described without a modicum of sympathy, or convert from heroes themselves. The second chapter in director Christopher Nolan’s restorative treatment of the DC Comics character, the film imbeds symbolic drama worthy of Greek tragedy into an erupting narrative, tinged with a burning shower of distrust toward the absoluteness and simplicity of good and evil. Just as he did in 2005 with the film's predecessor, Nolan elevates comic book legend beyond mere pop culture entertainment and lines his material with a dark poetry of shattered identities and the frightening truths of hero responsibility.
Removed from the wholly psychological conflict of Batman Begins, brothers and co-writers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan have decorated each stirring moment of this sequel with external threats far more challenging than the previous film. Personifying sheer bedlam is Batman’s timeless archnemesis the Joker, who, given a brilliant splattering of unhinged madness by the late Heath Ledger, epitomizes Gotham City’s need for a hero. Neither trouncing of fear nor overcoming of guilt can defeat this “mad-dog” of anarchy, armed with little more than gasoline, gunpowder, knives, and the aggressive wit to use them.
Teaming up are Batman (Christian Bale), Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman), and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Gotham City’s new White Knight. Providing a face for justice where Batman’s masked façade remains ambiguous, Dent makes moves against otherwise untouchable organized crimelords like Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts), convincing his fellow citizens that a change can and should be made in Gotham. His campaign slogan “I Believe in Harvey Dent” suggests that the city may someday no longer need their Caped Crusader. And so, Dent is Bruce Wayne’s personal symbol of hope: a beacon for potential good in the common man and a possible ending point to Batman’s necessity, leaving former flame Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) open to pursue—if only she and Dent were not an item.
But in the meantime, Batman has his devoted followers too—would-be vigilantes in copycat Batman garb. They have the look, not the talent, carrying guns and getting themselves mowed-down by the experienced criminal element of Gotham. The entire city teeter-totters between good and evil, masses driven to commotion by whoever pulls their strings, signifying the limitations of people and their need for someone to guide them: heroes like Batman, but more importantly, Harvey Dent.
Leading Gotham down a path to destruction is the Joker, breathing bloody and unbalanced fear into everyone around him. Etched into the character’s face are scars indicating a permanent smile; he tells one victim his abusive father did it, another he did it to himself, and no doubt has other explanations... But the origin of the Joker remains unimportant, since he exists, and with every heavy, licking breath and hideous cackle exudes terror. In symbolic terms, he represents the human potential for evil, wearing a messy greasepaint mask as a living design of frenzied masochism. He also represents an antithesis to Batman, who despite (albeit shoddy and unwelcome) copycats, retains himself as a symbol of hope. Joker orchestrates his own influence on Gotham, testing the limits of human savagery through a sadistic terror campaign that demands common citizens become murders, finding a conclusion in the fate of Harvey Dent.
Gotham’s White Knight, a tangible and human figure, Dent has the potential to reform Gotham into a city no longer characterized by crime. Unfortunately for Gotham, and for Wayne, who places so much optimism in Dent, their District Attorney is just a man. Realizing that humanness will not sway the tides of Gotham, no matter how much Dent is aggrandized, becomes Batman’s harsh insight. When the Joker proves Dent getable, transforming the heroic public servant into horribly scarred and vengeful Two-Face, he in turn births a living icon of the uncertain duality of people—how they turn with the flip of a coin depending on chance and circumstance.
Each of Nolan’s films explores a split in the psyche of his protagonist(s) that externalizes in the outward narrative, and ultimately affects the film’s formal presentation. And so, Batman’s superhero/alter-ego dynamic, the Joker’s antithetical posture against Batman, and Harvey Dent’s eventual cracking each fit nicely into the director’s exploration of divided characters: Nolan's masterful debut Memento is bisected between forward and backward moving temporalities, between the protagonist’s unknowing short-term memory loss and his self-deception to keep himself advancing, regardless if perceived forward motion actually takes him backward. Insomnia presents an immoral detective’s pursuit of a killer, his sleeplessness provoked by his guilt because he too is a murderer. And The Prestige involves two magicians attempting to achieve the same teleportation illusion using doubles, either by a look-alike or by recreating oneself through scientific manipulation; the film meditates closely on the duality of the performer and his personal life, and how one must sacrifice the other to thrive. Batman’s duality, his distinction between and eventual separation of personas, aligns with Nolan’s ongoing pursuit of internal duality conflicts by manifesting it in physical vocabulary.
In a tragic interplay, Dent sits at the human center of the iconic clash between established hero Batman and decisive villain the Joker. Stricken with the potential for either law-abiding heroics or murderous vigilantism, as Two-Face he stands for the whole of Gotham City. And therein dwells the poetry of Nolan’s narrative—that hero and villain vie for the soul of one man, whose presence as savior is seemingly representative of an entire city’s fate. Indeed, the duality of the core subject tears at the seams, strengthening the significance of the symbolic (and exciting) battle at the film’s forefront.
From elaborate car chases to high-wire stunts to unexpected twists throughout, The Dark Knight's thrills are extraordinary. Nolan permeates a plot that moves, urgently keeping up with the pace the Joker establishes from the outset. Despite the grand treatment of the action sequences, smaller, close-quarter combat scenes steal the show, since this is a movie about individuals battling for larger, figurative stakes. Ledger gets face-to-face with his character’s enemies, spewing out nasty rants, matching his words only by his skilled ability to disturb us with a palpable sense of alarm. And Batman retailors the long-standing rigidity of his costume into one capable of fluid movement, bringing new mobile life to his fight scenes. Never has a comic book movie gripped the viewer so on equal plains of raw entertainment, involvement in the plot, and emotional significance.
Nolan dons his picture with an appropriately dark look, saturating the image with metallic blues (Batman Begins was saturated with a rusty yellow-brown), but paints in a seemingly natural palette. He takes admitted inspiration from Michael Mann’s crime epic Heat, both visually and structurally—right down to the first scene’s elaborate bank heist. The director outdoes his sources with his decoration and fulfillment of characters, as well as the city they inhabit. Gotham is not the Gothic paradise of the comic book, but rather just a city, occasionally filled with daylight, familiar architecture, and masses easily swayed. Less stylized visually than the first, The Dark Knight does not placate itself as a sequel. Instead, the film subsists as its own adroit personality, complete with a Batman-less title and actors delivering performances of the highest caliber, moving further into the realm of dramatic (actionized) storytelling, versus a reliance on comic book archetypes.
Case in point, Bale’s Batman comes with a serrated voice cutting through any chance for campy banter, any sense of charm; instead, he evokes that horribly surreal sense of other-worldliness, startling and appropriately intimidating. Whereas Batman’s philosophy of striking fear into the hearts of Gotham’s criminals seems a joke with Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, or George Clooney, there is no doubt Christian Bale’s menacing portrayal would do just that. And yet, while his onscreen intensity perfectly captures the moody Batman, Bale exceeds at accomplishing those lighthearted moments of Bruce Wayne’s playboy buffoonery, essential to the character’s duality, not to mention keeping suspicions linking the two at bay—something the other Batman films forgot altogether.
The film's best performance comes from Heath Ledger, who died in January 2008 at the age of twenty-eight of an accidental prescription drug overdose. Since then the media has lamented that his potential was barely tapped; and yet, here in his most realized, disturbing, and kinetic performance, we see the zenith of his talents. Forget the near-slapstick interpretation by Cesar Romero and the over-the-top showmanship by Jack Nicholson; Ledger offers a wild animalistic portrayal of the Joker that inspires genuine fright in the viewer. The brothers Nolan succeed in writing a villain worthy of Batman’s iconography, without reducing the figure to gimmicky devices. From his character’s pointedly shocking entrance into the criminal underworld, to his meticulous, seemingly out-of-control plans to spread pandemonium, Ledger evokes greatness, making his penultimate performance the stuff of legend.
Film critics and scholars commonly dismiss the superhero genre as pulp eye-candy undeserving of the designation of cinematic art. And yet, the debate about what it means to be a hero, one heavily discussed in comic books, is timeless, stemming back to Gilgamesh and Achilles—figures either altogether fictional or first written about hundreds of years after their supposed existence. Their stories passed down and retold over the ages, the mythology changes to fit the storyteller’s pretext, reexamined to pierce our understanding of the hero’s inner conflict. Heroes and villains epitomize the basic roots of storytelling, providing evident boundaries and supplying the most apparent symbols of right and wrong. But ever since Homer’s Iliad split Achilles between his hunger for glory and his displeasure with Agamemnon’s war, humans have been fascinated with the inner complexity of heroes.
We feel Batman’s grip on Gotham slipping all throughout The Dark Knight, and we simultaneously realize his desperation to wrap the city in his protecting cape, just as we grasp how the troubled hero wavers under the brutal duress of the Joker. But his devotion does not end at mere enduring heroism; his commitment extends deep into self-sacrifice as Batman confirms his place as protector of Gotham City, even while not taking credit or playing the hero. With these turns, Nolan devises a narrative harbored away from comic books, broadening the scope into realms of epic, dramatic myth-making.
What comic hero better personifies the complex hero than Batman? Distinct enough to be split personalities, Batman and his alter-ego Bruce Wayne seem to operate in different realms. Unlike the Clark Kent-Superman dynamic wherein the secret identity exists as decoration to an authentic super-man, Bruce Wayne came first. His development into Batman requires a psychological bisection, a splitting emphasized with progressively dark interpretations since his inception. Wayne acts the part of wild playboy and billionaire-philanthropist amid Gotham City’s elite, all of whom are none the wiser to his damaged psyche traumatized enough to create Batman: the brooding, fanatical, and yet entirely logical and intelligent mask worn by Wayne. But as discussed in Batman Begins, the Batman front, what at first is an emblem of fear, melts into the man, consuming his every selfless action for his city, whether as a hero or not.