This one's gonna be around a long time

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2008)

On my list of favourite movies I try to strike a balance between art and entertainment. Both forms are equally important to film and its existence today. That said, I would also put forth that the criteria for a great movie is a balance within itself between the two. A lot of movies try this, but few get it right. The films of Akira Kurosawa or Billy Wilder are good examples of ones that succeed, and I think The Dark Knight is too.
Let me start with entertainment. Well, this movie is always engaging, scene for scene, and you never feel like you're waiting for it to hurry along. It's two and a half hours, but it feels shorter than "Iron Man" or "Indiana Jones" (both still pretty good). Nolan's direction as well as Wally Pfister's cinematography (you've heard about the IMAX scenes) lend a sense of grandeur to the action scenes that make you feel like something is actually happening, right in front of you  and better, that it matters. The movie is very sad, but also very, very fun. It's to his credit that Nolan understands Batman can be a dark, complex loner and still spout cool lines before he punches people.
The story is epic, tragic, and speaks to your soul in a way that creates an emotional reaction in you. Can you say that about The Incredible Hulk? Can you say that about most movies? People might complain that Batman seems like a supporting character in his own story, but I think that's a flawed analysis. Batman, like The Joker, is complete  unchanging. We're never in doubt, even if he is, about Bruce Wayne's selflessness or the morality of his decisions. Even at one point when he has to make a pretty tough choice between two people, one couldn't possibly blame him for his answer. For this reason Batman works best as a sort of unstoppable force of nature, swooping down on his enemies and humiliating them for thinking they can enact the anarchy they represent  until The Joker swoops in and humiliates Batman for thinking the opposite.
I could talk about The Joker, but everyone knows already  and if you don't, go see the movie. What I wanna talk about is Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. In a way, he and Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon are putting themselves at greater risk than Batman, because they don't have the mask to hide behind. They're placing themselves and their loved ones in between the enemies' cross hairs, just because they really, truly believe in the justice they're defending. But one of the questions the movie seems to be asking is is it worth it? The film is ambiguous in its answer. Obviously it's clear who the good guys and bad guys are, but the battle to illuminate one instinct and suppress the other has such a psychological toll on one character that he starts to see justice and anarchy as two arbitrary sides of the same coin. If there is none of the order he's trying to uphold in his own life, then how can he be sure it exists at all? So he insanely lashes out at both sides in the only way that makes sense to him.
Who wins, in the fight between justice and anarchy? Well by the end of the movie there seem to be no signs of the battle coming to a close any time soon. The movie only provides us with a slight glimmer of hope during the climax, which I won't ruin. But, in The Joker's words, maybe we're destined to be doing this for a very long time.