Late TDK review

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2008)

The Dark Knight
I know that everything that needs to be said about this movie has been said, but I write this after having viewed The Dark Knight for a third time. I truly believe this film to be one of best Blockbuster films to come out in some time; An elegant, intelligent film about the extremities of good and evil and most importantly, about faith that the better angels of our nature will prevail in mist of an unjust world. For that, the film ingrains the Batman mythology into our vision of American pop-culture, where archetypes Bruce Wayne/Batman, The Joker, and Harvey "Two-Face" Dent can be re-imagined for the perils and anxieties of our times. Wayne is portrayed as a man living in the skyline of his city, unaffected by the violence and mayhem that Gotham endures. His only newsworthy events are tabloid fodder, escaping in the ocean with a beautiful Russian dancer(of course all of these are alibis for his true motives). He is how we see the rich in this country, unattached but undeniably compelling and drawn to them. The Joker is re-identified as our worst fears, the random whims of destruction that can possess our lives in a deeper, morally unclear platform. He is a pure example of Terrorism, a man eager to play his chords while a city is engulfed in flames. Unlike some popular origins in which Joker is born from a fall into a batch of chemicals while encountering Batman (Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, for one), here he has no background, and appears as random as a Tornado in Kansas. He is similar to Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men, an uncompromising force that has a disturbing view of humanity without losing a peculiar charisma. Batman is the guard of Gotham's safety as well as a launching pad of criticism for the methods he employs to combat crime, including a sonar device that can detect the whereabouts of Gotham's citizens in order to stop The Joker. His actions are vaguely parallel to our government's war on terror, where our protection has severely compromised our personal liberty and begs to ask if the presence of a Big Brother, even for the sake of good, is a high price to pay.
The structural lead character of this story, however, is Harvey Dent. A valiant, benevolent civil servant, Dent is a classical tragic hero that has his convictions turned against him, permanently transforming his face and his soul into a grotesque amalgam. His rise through the political ranks as a District Attorney resembles a youthful, energetic promise a fresh candidate with engrossing ideals brings, which perhaps resonates for us to the fascination we have for current Democratic nominee Barack Obama. But the ideals are irreparably tarnished when a personal tragedy destroys the will of this great man. As Two-Face, Dent's view of fairness relies on the flip of a coin, a final betrayal of the alliance between himself, Batman and Gordon. The sadness of Two-Face's rationale is that the world is indifferent and that random chance is the only balance of justice, where in fact the ability to change the world lies in the decisions we make. In that argument is where this movie transcends from a very good action thriller into one that reflects and questions our own morality and the role we play in society. Should we or shouldn't we be neutral in a moving train?