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The Dark Knight Part 1
Review of the latest Batman film.
The follow-up to the action hit Batman Begins; The Dark Knight reunites director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, who reprises the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne.
In The Dark Knight, Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organisations that plague the city streets.
Academy Award nominee, Heath Ledger, stars as arch-villain, The Joker and Aaron Eckhart plays D. A. Harvey Dent. Maggie Gyllenhaal joins the cast in the role of Rachel Dawes. Returning from Batman Begins are Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Jim Gordon, Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.
This film explores all the moral codes of our society. Is there an objective morality? Is there a difference between a villain and an anti-hero? Why have plans? Why have schemes and set methods of doing things? The Joker voices these questions in the scene involving himself and Harvey Dent:
The Joker remarks: “You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”
The film explores the psychology of a madman like The Joker. Alfred remarks to Bruce that: “Some men just like to watch the world burn.” There is no logic to Joker’s motives. He calls it business and claims that it’s nothing personal. Harvey says to the gangster character that: “The Joker is just a mad dog. I wanna know who unleashed him.”
The Dark Knight also touches on the concept of voyeurism. Morgan Freeman’s character Lucius Fox has to spy on millions of people using mobile phones. Fox says this is wrong, that it goes against the ethics of a civilised society. Yet there is voyeurism everywhere in our daily lives, whether it is Big Brother or Bebo, celebrity magazines or webcams. In the film, they use the example of mobile phones. The joker uses one for a bomb. The film explores how much technology is used for violence and espionage, how intelligence is gathered by the Batman in a clandestine way, using the mobile phone.
There is the concept of double-sided glass. We can see people outside but they can’t see in (like the social networking phenomenon that has gripped society in the last few years- webcams, video phones, blogging, photography that sends a message, cartoons, etc.) Alfred Hitchcock’s take on voyeurism is mirrored in the method that director Nolan uses in this film. Nolan basically reminds us of the Hitchcock concept of looking through the key hole; looking into a family’s day-to-day life, like watching miniature living creatures in a doll’s house or a Polly Pocket toy. This film touches on this when Bruce Wayne uses Fox’s sonar concept and applies it to mobile phones so he can spy on the entire city of Gotham.
Perhaps there is also an element of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass in this movie. The tales in those books play with logic and mathematics in many ways. For example, in Chapter One of Alice in Wonderland, "Down the Rabbit-Hole", in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle.” This pondering reflects the concept of a limit.
The film also refers to the laws of probability, betting, gambling/flipping a coin. Rachel says to Harvey that “You can’t just leave your life to chance.” Harvey replies: “I’m not” (The coin he flips has identical sides.) The film explores the whole notion of making your own luck, that maybe things aren’t pre-destined. There is free will and it is up to the individual how to use it. Everything has a code.
Maths is an abstract form of philosophy. It is a language in itself. One can describe everything in maths: the pace of one’s speech, the momentum of cars stopping and going when there are traffic lights, the shape of a computer screen; everything can be described in number and symbols and decimal places. Pi goes on to infinity. Again, the concept of how everything has an underlying code is discussed in the film.
There are lots of moral lessons throughout the film, for example, with regard to civilians and prisoners: who deserves to live more? Who is expendable? One of the civilians remarks about the prisoners on the boat: “Those men made their choice long ago.”
By: Megan Nelis
Image by lamazone on Flickr.
