A student from last year was kind enough to give me a movie theater gift card at the end of school. My wife and I have held onto it until a movie that would be theater-worthy (you know, lots effects and sound, something that won't be the same on the little screen) came out. There were two such picks out this last weekend when we had the opportunity to go. This will undoubtedly give readers a heads up about the kind of films a guy like me watches, but our choices were the Dark Knight and the new X-Files movie. Because of timing, etc. we ended up seeing the Dark Knight.
It was a great film. The cinematography, lighting, music, etc. were fantastic. And I enjoyed the story as well. But it was a very dark film, as I understand it was supposed to be. Heath Ledger did an amazing job as the Joker. I know people in that audience really believed he was the Joker and just a sadistic as he was acting. He made the character real, which is a hard thing to do in our culture. On to the review aspect of this.
My wife and I were talking it over after the film and trying to figure it out. We always begin by establishing the worldview of the film. Some of my students think that takes away from the enjoyment of the movie, "Just watch it and have fun," they say. I can assure you, I can no more "just watch" a movie (even if I have seen it several times) than I can stop breathing. And it doesn't take away from my enjoyment. I enjoy the film on two levels. At any rate, we begin by asking for the absolutes of the film.
In this case there is an absolute moral or ethical system in place. Murder is wrong, etc. The police force, the District Attorney, and Batman are all agreed that murder and its consorts are wrong. They may have different methods of handling that issue, but they are agreed. Batman, at one point, tells the Joker that murder is the one one rule he will not break.
Honesty and integrity, however, turn into situational issues in the film. By the end of the film, the truth about what Harvey Dent has done is too damaging to "hope" to be known. Batman agrees to assume responsibility for Harvey's crimes so that Harvey's reputation and the hope he brings to Gotham will remain in tact. There is a Christ-figure here folk, we'll come back to this later. With the idea that hope transcends truth there is a Kantian-Humean ideology going on here. Kant, of course, believed in a dualism of thought between the world of sense-perception (the noumenal) and the world that is actually there (the phenomemal). Our knowledge of truth was determined not by the phenomenal realm but by our mind's inherent ability to reconstruct sense-data in the noumenal realm. Combine that with a Humean way of considering habit and you get a world where we must have hope by habit because truth is beyond our mortal grasp. It is more important, in Gotham, to have hope than to have the truth. This is clearly against Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 that if Christ is not raised our hope is in vain. Hope is only hope if it has an objective basis to hope in. What are the people of Gotham supposed to be hoping in? They are left with an empty hope that Harvey Dent was a good man who never did anything wrong and yet was slain in the line of duty. All the while, Batman becomes a total fugitive, expressing that he can handle being chased.
Batman operates outside the law. He is the man who must step outside the legal and civil approach to justice because civil justice is ineffective and corrupt. This is a classic revolutionary mentality. The only way to fix this situation is to get outside it and impose order without process. This has been the revolutionary way of doing things for eons. Sulla did this in Rome of the 70's BC by marching on city, imposing his own totalitarian rule, rewriting the Roman constitution, and then turning power back over to the people when he was done. In his mind, the only way to save the state was to invade the state and control the state. This is the same method used by Cromwell in the 1640's and by Robespierre in the French Revolution.
Aside: This is one reason I object to calling the American War for Independence a revolution. We did not revolt, we declared independence.
On to Batman as a Christ-figure. I willl keep this short. It is obvious that Batman is a Christ-figure long before he takes Dent's sin into himself and becomes an outcast for the sake of the city. He is the substitute for Dent. Dent represents fallen humanity every bit as much as the Joker does, but the Joker is unredeemable (and not really seems to try either), while Dent can be redeemed. But what is redemption when the rest of Gotham (the universe) is shown a picture of a flawless man rather than the two-faced monster we all really are? What does it mean that Dent it redeemed? It really only means that our sins are not worthy of real justice, they are easily removed. Just photoshop a picture of our soul and it will look all pretty rather than ugly and debased.
I really enjoyed the movie and will likely own it when it comes out on DVD. It is a great picture of fallen humanity. Gary Demar's review is excellent as well. It reminds us that ideas have consequences, which is one of the best lessons we can really learn.
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