Dark Knight… of the soul?

It’s just hours before he rises (from where exactly?), and here I am trying to shine light on this Dark fellow.

As an aside, I would like to point out that my last post took a few tangents into the realm of shoulds and should nots, which were fun, but not the goal. I hope someone noticed that I’m writing posts about movies I’ve seen (and assume you’ve seen) and so it makes little sense for me to spend my time trying to tell people not to see what they’ve already seen. Certainly don’t be afraid to avoid the lies and perversions in contemporary culture, but don’t expect me to start finger wagging about you seeing this movie that I’m telling you I saw. To be clear, my stated purpose is to expose the movies (and other things) to as much light (of reason and grace) as I can so that you can “unpack” whatever they tried (accidentally) to cram into your head. [Whether they do it consciously or not, and whether or not they are aware that its their own, the worldview of a filmmaker will usually find its way into what they make.]

Now, on to the Batman. Woohoo! Comic Book hero, beats up bad guys, huge action scenes, great acting, endearing quirks (“WHERE IS HE?!”), and man’s triumph over crazy (and eerily similar to demonic) evil. What’s not to love?
Plenty.

In case you haven’t read my former post, Begin!, you might want to at least skim over the section about events and the lens (scope). I’m going to use those words assuming you understand.

I can’t see any better way to come at this, so chronological seems best.

Near the beginning of the movie, we have wannabes getting themselves nearly killed (events) and Batman telling them to stay out of it. Right away, the movie dives into gray areas and possible contradictions. Here we have a man dressing up as a bat and fighting bad guys telling other guys dressed up as bats not to fight bad guys. To me, that is a lens that establishes tension and curiosity about the “right” way to deal with all of it.

Fairly quickly, the movie dives into reporters asking questions about being “outside the law,” which is a natural concern to any (mostly) law-abiding citizen. As if in answer, the character of Harvey Dent is introduced. Here we have a seemingly virtuous, law-abiding prosecutor who is hell-bent on cleaning up Gotham. In my opinion, the quick match up of vigilante and district attorney is a good way to frame the major drive of the movie: The Salvation of Gotham City. (i.e. Mankind) This is tied up with the question of justice introduced in the first movie and continued throughout.

There appear to be two approaches with some varying degrees. Everybody wants the mob out of power – Batman and Lieutenant Gordon are willing to play a little dirty (a vigilante, and Gordon working with suspect police officers), Harvey Dent wants it clean cut, challenges Gordon’s decision, but ultimately supports them because he is a little realistic and trusts Gordon’s (and Batman’s) success so far.

The grit of this message is just that, real life is gritty.

Without Batman, the mob’s Chinese supporter would be untouchable, but without Harvey Dent’s ideals and a sound legal system (the express desire of every “good” guy), there would be nothing but an endless turf war. Still, we have the ends (an eventually reliable legal system – a.k.a. Justice) justifying the means(breaking the very laws we want others to follow). Is there an appeal to a higher law that justifies this? I think this appeal is found in their concern for justice and the safety of Gotham, but its a little vague.

Yet we run into the problem of whether a man can help save mankind (Gotham city) when he himself is fallen. Batman knows he can’t keep breaking the law and wants to be replaced, so he places his hope on Harvey Dent. Somehow he is aware of the kind of feedback loop that he is in. If, when laws are ignored, its okay to break the laws – who gets to decide which laws are (temporarily) breakable and when they no longer need to be broken? The biggest emphasis of this problem is the use of the freaking-cool cell phone sonar technology, where Batman knows it is too much power, decides to rely on it, and then has it destroyed.

You could say Batman exemplified the right kind of lawlessness (or Law-transcendence maybe?), but my question to you is this: what’s the standard in the case of future chaotic corruptions? Sure, I (and many people I think) feel that Batman is justified in stepping outside some of these laws, but this is only because I posit a higher, unbreakable, incorruptible law (Natural Law and/or Divine Law) against which one can measure man’s laws (a.k.a. “Justice”) . When man’s laws don’t measure up, they can be justifiably broken within the context of the higher, more perfect law. Does Batman make this appeal? Not clearly. He seems to know that a bad law ought to be broken, but what defines bad? By what standard do we measure the appropriate level and method of law breakage? There seems to be no implication of this higher law in the movie, only the chaos our imperfect law… Batman is just a man made bigger than himself by the use of symbolism and theatrics, but in the end, he is subject to the same weakness that underlies Gotham’s corruption, Joker’s insanity, and Harvey Dent’s downfall – More on that at the end…

Turning now to the Joker – that was intense…
Possibly the best portrayal of absolute evil I’ve ever seen – perhaps too well portrayed. A man who sets the world on fire just to watch it burn. A mad genius who loves destroying things, but loves destroying people even more. The portrayal was excellent, but what did it cost? Yeah, yeah, I’m sure people will dismiss what I’m saying as though I’m nuts or taking things too seriously…

…but really, read this (beware the ads…). Locked himself away to become like a sociopath? Ends up dead not long after from sleeping pill overdose? Further, check out how he actually starts manifesting the Joker’s traits (tongue in cheek thing) while he talks about it in this interview. In another video of the same interview he starts hunching over and holding himself as he talks about it… Kinda creepy…

So yeah, at what cost did he portray such evil? And what is to be made of the fact that the Joker was so widely mimicked in costumes by young children for months afterwards? Did we expose evil, or glamorize it? [I suspect a similar concern will turn up in looking at The Hunger Games…]

Okay, okay… too much negativity up in here. People are going to think I’m just a hater..
Something good: The two ferries that Joker wired to blow each other up… The one to blow away expectations is the convict – “I’m gonna do what you shoulda did…” That is an excellent use of lens (societal expectations that are then crushed) to make the events speak to you in a certain way. In the midst of the darkest hour of the Joker’s reign of terror, the man expected to kill shows us some of that great human potential for goodness. In my opinion, Nolan meant this scene to be the true defeat of the Joker. Imprisoned, sure… but proven wrong about his gamble that all men eat each other alive? by a convict? Perfect example of Man’s goodness and that we are not beyond hope…

Ah.. warms my heart

So back to the Salvation… Gotham is falling apart and chaos is everywhere as the Joker turns everyone upside down and manages, using the very compromise of Gordon (wicked cops), to give Harvey Dent half a new face and a whole new name, Two-face (though I don’t think its actually said in the movie). His goal was to burn the world by showing man his own wickedness and so let Gotham descend into self-destruction (the lens is simply the most evil character explicitly telling us his goal). As he hangs upside down, the Joker reveals his ace-in-the-hole: Dent’s downfall. Taking the one ray of lawful, upstanding hope, he perverts it through loss into utter destruction (talk about a pendulum swing). In this case, there is no need of a real lens because I think Nolan assumes we can all agree that Two-face’s murdering spree is bad… “Duh”

The counter point to that is that at least Batman, via his awesome no-kill rule, does not succumb to this tactic – “Come-on, hit me, I want you to hit me!” – He really wanted Batman to hit him and fall short of being a hero, just like he did to Dent. Bravo, Batman!

Well now I come to the crux, the height, the point, the driving arc, and the utterly depressing downfall of the whole movie. In my own experience, I was literally on the edge of my seat (actually jumped out when his motorcycle went up the wall) for the whole movie. The last five minutes, however, shot me in the heart (and the head) like a hollow-point sniper round…
and that sniper-shot sounded like this:
“Because sometimes the Truth isn’t good enough”
“Because sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded”

Say what!?

The words are the events and…
The lens/scope? – yeah, the main character (and the only hero who hasn’t fallen yet) voicing over in a dramatic monologue set to powerful music, that is the lens screaming “Hey, we think this is True!” [Incidentally, if they think its true, then it being true doesn’t matter very much…]

They decide to lie to Gotham about Harvey Dent, to hold him up as an example of a martyr for the good of Gotham… They want to tell the world that a man, who is actually one of their biggest liabilities, is their savior and example. The only example in the whole movie is that huge, and hugely impressive, convict that refuses to kill in order to save himself.

The end is a capping point, a summing up, and  the Dark Knight’s answer (at least until he rises) to the problem of Gotham… Lie to people because life sucks and their hero is a failure…
The whole movie was driving at what it would take to save Gotham and show man some hope. People got caught up in the White Knight of Harvey Dent who, like and man can, fell and became wicked. The fact is that they placed their hopes on a man, and man failed – he always will when he counts on himself. The answer to that problem is not to give the people a false hero (What happens if they find out its a lie?), but to turn to something bigger than man. I assume the implication will turn out to be that Batman’s symbolic nature is that something bigger, but this is just another product of man.

And, oh yeah, that whole line about faith and truth… What is faith in a lie but false faith? Truth is the reward for faith, not its opponent. If the truth isn’t good enough, then nothing is good enough because nothing matters because its all fake anyway…. *sigh*
If you have faith and are then disappointed by the truth, what needs to be fixed is your faith, not the Truth….

The worst part…
“Dark Knight was a good movie!”
[Well made? Yes. Exciting? Yes. What the hell do you mean by “good?”] How many people swallow that pill and let this relativistic, hopeless time bomb float around in their subconscious? How many people agree that lying to a whole city is better than loyalty to the Truth (part of which is our weakness and part of which is our potential to go outside ourselves)? In this era of Political Correctness, Niceness (root word nescius – “ignorant”) as a virtue, and dismissiveness of the Truth, the Dark Knight threatens to keep our culture’s soul dark by telling us that the suppository placebo of the pleasant, hopeful lie is better than admitting that we suck at life and we need some serious help (or something more than a high-powered D.A. to put our faith in)….

I applaud your stand against evil, Dark Knight. I rejoice in the excellence of suspense-filled, thought-laden movie making. Oh Dark Knight, I know thee as I know myself – we are dark indeed… yet there is a difference that culture won’t admit… and your failure actually serves to point it out. If the Dark Knight can’t help us, then what we really need is a light… indeed We have a light!
Perhaps when you rise, you will see the darkness for what it is… perhaps you can show us that there is something true in which we can have faith… Until then: