As previously noted, I saw Batman: The Dark Knight weeks ago. And loved it. Mostly. By now, most of you have probably seen it as well. If you haven't seen it yet, you may not want to continue (spoilers ahead).
As has been said a hundred times over, the movie is excellent. The opening bank heist is cleverly fun and sets the stage for an impressive performance by Heath Ledger as The Joker. He managed to portray a disturbingly evil Joker without (thankfully) gratuitous blood and gore.
The plot is good, moves well, and is even at times unexpected (didn't anticipate Harvey Dent claiming to be Batman). There is humor, but mostly suspense. And the action is both impressive and fun (as any comic-book-cum-movie ought to be).
They even managed to bring to light one of the great contradictions of Batman; if it weren't for the Batman, there would not be (in fact, could not be) the Joker (or many other of Gotham's villains). Without the threat posed by Batman, the established crime syndicates in the city would not have allowed the rise of a psychopath like the Joker. So in some way, Batman is, or at least sees himself as, responsible for the creation of the Joker.
Regardless of all this goodness, I left a little disappointed. Why did Batman and Gordon decide to blame Harvey Dent's murders on Batman?
I'm disturbed because the message behind that choice is, at the least, contradictory to what the movie had seemed to be saying up to that point. And more, because the new message is just false.
At one point late in the movie the Joker had rigged two ferries with explosives, one full of ordinary people, the other full of convicted felons. And, in typical Joker fashion, given each group the detonator to the other boat telling them they had 15 minutes to blow the other up or both would be destroyed. In one of the most emotional scenes of the movie, both groups decide not to blow up the other ferry. It's a brilliant affirmation of self-sacrifice and the ability of people to make incredibly difficult moral choices for good.
Then we find ourselves facing Harvey Dent now Two-Face holding the family of Police Commissioner Gordon hostage. Harvey Dent, the once shining hero and white knight of Gotham, the DA responsible for bringing down some of the city's most notorious criminals now driven insane by the loss of his loved one, points a gun at a child.
Batman (of course) saves the day. In doing so, Dent dies. But instead of revealing the truth, Gordon and Batman agree that what the city needs is not truth, but a hero. A martyr. An icon. So they cover up the murders Dent has committed and blame Batman who ends the movie running from the police.
So the movie turns from saying "people can handle very hard decisions and make good choices" to "people cannot handle the truth, they need a good looking lie to inspire them to good". I just don't get it. Where has the value of the truth gone?
The writers/producers even wink at this, as Gordon's son distraughtly asserts "But the Batman didn't do anything wrong!".
It's also disturbing on the level that it indicates that the public is incapable of understanding people who are both good and evil. All of us know it's simplistic to say that a person is "good" or "evil". The line between good and evil doesn't run in between people. Batman is not just good or just bad. Neither is Harvey Dent. Neither is Gordon. Neither are you. Neither am I.
And Batman believes that. In fact, needs to believe it. Everyone else is convinced the Joker is just evil. Even the Joker. But Batman must hold on to the belief that the line between good and evil is inside people, and thus there must be some good in even the Joker and he cannot intentionally let him die. For Batman knows that if the line between good and evil runs between people, that he has done enough violence to fall on the wrong side of that line. He needs to believe it for the sake of his own soul.
Pretending Harvey Dent was just good is a lie. All they've given Gotham is a fake, dead hero, when they could have had a real (if darker) one. And all they've given us is a mixed message that image is more important than truth.
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2 comments:
I think your heart is in the right place when you expect great things of people, but the weight of responsibility for murdering a shipload of people is something (that I can obviously only imagine) much more intense, visceral, and immediate than that of judging another man's character. Just because everyone is composed of shades of gray doesn't mean they're not inclined to see others in black and white just the same. We judge people constantly, and that goes double for politicians. Imagine if Obama attempted to kill a little boy! I can't imagine it's a grey area people would be willing to consider. But, that's an admittedly flawed analogy, so let me pin this from a different angle.
The Joker has just promised Batman that this struggle will be an endless one unless Batman is willing to break his code and murder the Joker, and Batman knows it's true. And yes, he knows that it's his existence provoking people like the Joker. Batman isn't the answer to Gotham's problems, and he knows it, and Dent knows it. The posthumous (sequel sidenote: I'm not convinced Two-Face is even dead) name-clearing of Dent is, to me, not just about keeping the "White Knight" spotless, but about proving that the system can work. People can have faith in people, but are highly distrusting of systems, goverments, and politicians. I could ramble on about this, and I'm not even sure I've made my point- really, it's too bad we're not in your parent's basement doing this the old school way, haha.
On a side note, after all that, can I just add that I was blown away by Heath Ledger and thought he elevated a good comic book movie to a thoroughly mesmerizing movie, and actually was disappointed with Two-face... Eckhart makes a fantastic Harvey Dent but after Ledger, it's hard to be scared of Mr. Grossface-with-an-axe-to-grind.
I'm actually going to be talking about this on my first day of class. Asking them, what is evil? What makes someone evil? while incorporating the movie because I'm sure that practically everyone in the class will have seen the movie. It's a hard thing to wrap one's mind around about evil and how we relate to it ourselves
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