A Child's Rage

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2008)

Batman has been a perfect Tabula rassa for artists in almost all media. He isn't locked into any one archetype such as his Kryptonian ally, but can perfectly reflect his time and fashions.
'The Dark Knight' is no different. What director Chris Nolan has deciphered perfectly is that Batman and the Joker are different sides of a child's rage - the rage of the outcast, the abused, the alone in the dark. In many ways the nemeses are the most in-control characters in the world of the film - like the war god and trickster gods of mythology.
It is the Joker who truly kills for his sport, as Shakespeare once observed of the gods - but, when sacrifice is required, Batman is not averse to treading on lives in his pursuit of justice.
Yes, Nolan has hung his story on pegs left - at various points - by 'Heat', '24' and even the 'Saw' movies, but it is an ingenuous one.
Batman is the avenging angel the "good" people of Gotham prayed for, the Joker is the demon Gotham's underworld unwittingly summoned - both represent the potency of the unlocked child within to conjure bravery, goodness or mischief and pure evil. Dent's dilemma at the end of the film is that of the plain-sailing, smart "jock" who experiences a troubled adolescence, a body-horror - all of a sudden, in the middle of his perfect, adult life.
'The Dark Knight' is the unspooling of the inner child in a way no other comic-book movie has dared - a perfect comment on the USA, the west and it's two-faced dilemma now.