The Dark Knight

A famous man once said, "Batman's a scientist."

In the second movie ever made about Batman, The Dark Knight, Batman is indeed a scientist - a physicist to be precise. And the two laws of physics explored in this film are: 1) what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, and 2) madness is a lot like gravity; all it needs is a little push.

I had to see The Dark Knight twice to even know if I liked it or not. Okay, I knew I liked it. But I wasn't sure why, or how much. Besides breaking several records and doing a killing at the box office, it has also seemed to ignite a lot of conversation. The critics, for the most part, have lauded its praises. Which is weird for a Batman movie. Certainly, star Heath Ledger's recent death has added fuel to the fire. But regardless of your opinion, this movie is creating buzz. And it's too hard to dismiss - it inspires debate and conversation. That in and of itself is a good sign.

The synopsis is thus: Approximately one year has passed since Batman Begins ended (that reminds me: how do you like the tagline for the new Terminator? "The Ending Begins." Nothing sells an epic movie like an epic, ironic catchphrase that doesn't make any sense.). Gotham's streets are a little bit cleaner. There's a new D.A. in town, Harvey Dent, and he's as determined to fight corruption and crime as Batman - only he doesn't wear a mask, and his batcave is the courtroom. Strides are being made in putting away members of the mob, thanks to the cooperation and determination of Lieutenant Gordon. Batman has inspired some oddballs to don black hockey pads and masks and try to help him put criminals behind bars - but all in all Gotham is in much better shape.

Enter the Joker. A madman with no motive and no background (don't believe his agonized narrative about his abusive father), he has a penchant for upsetting the criminal underworld as much as he does the law. But in their desperation to get Batman out of the way, and by so doing saving their cash and their hides, the mob reaches out to a man "they didn't fully understand."

There's an elaborate plot involving the mob, a Chinese money launderer, and a weaselly blackmailer. But the real story is about the Joker - who is evil incarnate - and the three men in Gotham who would stand up to fight this evil. Rachel Dawes, who was an annoying character in the first movie, is an even more annoying character in this movie. She's caught in the middle of the battle, both for Gotham and for her (by the two men who love her). And the entire city is tested, several times, to show whether there is still good left or if they've been corrupted to their core.

My biggest complaint is this film's lack of focus. My second viewing clarified many things, and it's definitely one of those movies so chock full of details that it deserves at least two viewings. But at 2.5 hours, it covers more ground than is completely necessary to the central plot. Not that there's anything really tangential or extraneous; no doubt any additional editing would have been painful for the director. But it could really stand to be trimmed down and the focus narrowed, and I could think of a few scenes or subplots that could be sacrificed without compromising the picture.

The Joker is, indeed, a fantastic villain. I came away from the first viewing, like everyone else, in awe of Ledger's performance. And I don't know whether all of the effusive praise I've been hearing had a backlash effect on me, but I was less impressed with the performance on my second viewing. It's still captivating and very interesting, and the Joker truly feels like evil. I have no complaints about Ledger's job whatsoever. But I believe his death must be clouding many people's vision, to warrant the kind of historic importance they are ascribing to this performance.

The Joker is such a great villain because of the level of evil he represents. Nameless, merciless evil - that cannot be threatened physically, psychologically, or emotionally. Evil enough to laugh and make jokes out of his destruction. He is not motivated by greed, or revenge, or anything tangible. For him, evil is sport, it is a lifestyle. He is so evil, he places people in seemingly impossible moral dilemmas, and puts the responsibility of life and death in their trembling hands. He is sick, because he gives people a choice without leaving them any choice. He makes Ra's al Ghul from the first movie look like Oskar Schindler; he makes the mob look like the Goodfeathers. Bruce Wayne is convinced that criminals are easy to figure out, to determine a motive and a weakness. Alfred, on the other hand, knows that "some men just want to watch the world burn."

The beauty is, in the face of such insanity and wickedness, people rise out of the corruption that has heretofore defined the city and exhibit genuine goodness. Oh it's baby steps, but it's enough to show Batman - if not the Joker - that deep down, people aren't as wicked as the Joker believes they are. The high levels of corruption only serve to motor men of integrity like Alfred and Lucius Fox - and the triumvirate of Gordon, Dent, and Batman.

And The Dark Knight really is about those three men. I was frustrated that this film isn't really about Batman, unlike Begins. Bruce Wayne/Batman gets about equal screentime as the three other major characters in the film. But I now appreciate how the story centers around all three men and how they face evil. In one sense, they're all working together. But they each have independent methods, beliefs, and rules. The Joker preys on people who abide by rules. For him, there are none.

Plenty of rules are broken in this movie - by the bad guys as well as the good guys. For some, this may be an unacceptable trait. Personally, I choose to suspend any "Christians-shouldn't-even-speed" beliefs and accept that in superhero worlds, laws get broken. I don't care if Batman blows up cars to intimidate the bad guys. I don't care if he breaks international treaties. I don't care if he "spies" on the entire city. I'm a little uncomfortable with his methods of interrogation at one point in the movie, but it's understandable...because Bruce Wayne is human. There's one law that Batman never breaks: out of a sense of justice rooted in compassion (or is it the other way around?), he never kills.

The evil/madness of the Joker infects some. It inspires panic and terror in most. But the unstoppable force meets a few immovable objects, namely the Dark Knight himself. What the Joker does to Gotham's noble triumvirate is both tragic and inspiring. He proved that the best of us can be brought to his level; but he also proved that his level of evil brings out the best in others.

Upon reflection, I love the ending. It is true to the outcast/outlaw nature of most superheroes, but especially of Batman. It reinforces Batman's commitment to protecting the people of Gotham, no matter the cost to himself. It is, in many ways, repaying Harvey Dent for a similar choice he made earlier in the film. Batman's choice honors his belief in something greater and more powerful than a hero. It honors his belief in an idea, an ideal. He chooses to serve the idea rather than himself. And that is noble.

Is it worth it to deceive people, to hide them from the truth? Maybe not. But I like to look at it as an act of limited revelation. For now, people can't know the whole truth. For now. Maybe that's a copout. I know that Christ said the truth would set us free. But Christ also told his disciples not to tell anyone who he was when he sent them out among the people. I'm not trying to cheapen what Christ did or give undue weight to a Batman movie. But this film does wrestle with some pretty heavy, spiritual issues. How important is truth? What will people do if they know the truth? There's a line near the very end of the film that says, "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. People need to have their faith rewarded." I guess I'm just not sure.

If you've seen the film, remember when Gordon had to "deceive" his family for their own safety? Sure it was painful. And sure, it wasn't completely honest. But was it necessary? That episode, to me, is representative of that area where people are saved by not knowing the truth...at least for a time.

Superheroes have always lied. To protect their identity. To protect the ones they love. Because they know that the truth can be used advantageously by those who want to wreak havoc. Satan's lies always have a morsel of truth in them. Like many things created by God, the devil can twist the truth for his pleasure and our destruction.

And likewise, sometimes God chooses not to reveal certain truths to us. Because we're not mature enough yet. Because we can't handle it. Because His sense of timing is far superior to our own.

There's obviously a huge difference between choosing not to reveal something and flat-out lying. I know that. But maybe The Dark Knight is a fallen, dark shadow of that basic principle - that the truth, at special times and in special circumstances, should be withheld.

Whatever the film's message does, it provokes a lot of questions. I like that.

Warnings

There's a fair amount of mid-level language in the film, uttered mostly by the bad guys - but occasionally by the good ones.

Some have said this movie is too violent. I disagree. That's not to say it isn't violent. There are several explosions and several deaths, but very little is graphically shown. We see one man shot up, several bodies that were killed offscreen, some cars getting blindsided, lots of punching and kicking, a sure-to-be famous death-by-pencil, and one man breaking his legs in a fall (probably the most unsettling violence, in my opinion). It's not a kid's movie, for sure, and the violence is probably more on par with a crime drama than a comic book movie.

But I think violence is being confused for psychological trauma, of which there is plenty. The Joker threatens to do many violent things, and we are dragged along in the suspense. But he rarely goes through with what we're anticipating, and if he does we don't really see it. There are knives held in people's mouths, guns held to people's heads (including a child's), and other similar traumatic images. I'm not discounting the impact of these images. They are rightly disturbing. But they rarely segue into actual, visible violence.

Bruce's playboy persona yields a few immodestly-clad women. Fortunately it's all just for show for him, and the scenes are brief. But they are still very annoying.

Redeeming Value

Yes.

This film deals with evil, corruption, compromise, and deception. You won't always like the choices people make. Is someone as evil as the Joker worth breaking the law to stop? Are people so fragile and faithless that they need to be lied to in order to act rightly?

See it just for the questions it poses. You may not agree with it, but it never hurts to wrestle with such fundamental ideas. And as dark as this film is, your faith in humanity is rewarded at several turns - the ferry scene being one of the most memorable. I love this film for how it exposes the true mettle of flawed people in tremendously difficult times. What would I do in such a city? In such a time? Against such evil as the Joker? Could I be bought out if my mother was in the hospital? Would I break the law to save people I loved?

Would I become a scapegoat, and suffer the treatment of a criminal, only to protect a world that hates me? Would I devote my life to such a thankless, bloodied vocation? Sounds awfully Christlike. And while the messiah analogy is not perfect, it's still there. If only in a dark shadow of the real thing.