The Writer and the Christian

Title: The Dark Knight

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Written by: Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan

Grade: B+

MILD SPOILER ALERT: These are reviews, but they are also designed to explore the thematic elements and character arcs in order to help Christians better watch and evaluate movies.

The Dark Knight is the sequel to Batman Begins (2005), which was also written and directed by Nolan. Begins was simply the best Batman film made to date, and also garners my rank as best superhero movie of all time. It was perfectly written, amazingly directed, and very ably performed by Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and his dark alter-ego Batman.

Bale reprises his role as the Dark Knight in this latest in the reinvention of the Batman franchise. He is the best choice for Gotham’s nighttime defender so far (the others being Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney, all of whom were terrible choices, but Kilmer being the best of the three).

As we may or may not recall, at the end of Begins, all of the criminals in Arkum Assylum escape, and Batman and Gordon were about to begin the long, difficult task of recapturing them. The J0ker was already on the loose. The Dark Knight picks up the story a few months later, and the underworld landscape is much different. The Joker has a crew of thugs dressed as clowns, and there are Batman wannabes running around trying to help clean up Gotham.

I had my concerns about the film. The symetry and writing of the first film was perfect, because it was the first. I suspected that the second in the series would not be as good because sequels are more nebulous. When you make a first film, it pretty much has to stand alone and so more creative effort goes into it. But when a film makes enough money to justify a sequel, you are less concerned about it, since it is virtually guaranteed to make enough money for a third film - as The Dark Knight certainly did. As a result, your writing starts to anticipate future stories and each film can drop in how well it stands alone. This held true with The Dark Knight.

All around the writing was much more sloppy than Batman Begins, lacking in nearly any kind of symmetry at all.  Where Begins was a thoughtful philosophical exploration of the meaning of justice, vigilantism and revenge, The Dark Knight is shoddy at best. It is an exploration of the depravity of man and the nature of corruption - both really good themes, handled for the most part well - but the theme was not nearly as self-contained as in Begins.

The writing was not as crisp as we’ve come to expect from Nolan. A comparison of the script of The Dark Knight to The Prestige, Memento,  or even Begins, and it is shockingly paltry. I believe it is Nolan’s first sequal, so that might be part of it. But the story lurches around in search for itself, trying to hit it’s stride, but remains muddled until the last forty-five minutes. It is conflicted about who the villain is, you see. The film is really about the corruption and fall of DA Harvey Dent, but Joker is the more interesting and charismatic character, and the film wrestles back and forth about where it wants to go, with the Joker, and where it must go, with the fall of Dent. And so we get a major climactic skyscraper confrontation between the Joker and Batman over the lives of something like four hundred people. Yet once that is resolved, the real climax of the film is the final step in Dent’s journey, which takes something like another twenty or twenty-five minutes.

Heath Ledger as the Joker was originally an odd choice, or so it seemed a year ago when the cast was announced. Nobody could have imagined Heath to give the performance of his life - a cinematic masterpiece. This has nothing to do with his tragic accidental death, his performance is simply superb; we never knew he had it in him. His Joker is not a cartoon Joker, and he is not “funny” crazy. He is a ruthless, psychotically disturbed crazy,  a dark creature you don’t see that way at first. In the first hour of the film a lot of the audience was laughing at his antics, but by the time the last hour came around, he had become so malicious and dark that the laughter had stopped. Nobody expected the Joker to be seriously unfunny. And he is the perfect, consistent secularist. He calls himself a “force of chaos” to balance out the “forces of order,” which would be the police and society. He denies that social norms hold any sway and challenges Batman about the hearts of everyone in Gotham, saying that they would immediately turn and kill their neighbor to save their own life. “I’m not an evil guy,” he says. “I’m just ahead of the curve.”

Conclusion:

The film is one of the finest to come out this year so far, with an Oscar worthy performance from Heath Ledger and fine performances by all the other principles in the cast. But in contrast with Nolan’s other work, the script lacks structure and needed more direction to clear up the muddled villain conflict between Dent and the Joker. All in all, I give it a B+.