The Dark Knight - A Review

At the outset, let me say that The Dark Knight (DK) is the best movie I’ve seen in years. It goes beyond the perfunctory displays of cartoonish violence, loud explosions and human indestructibility that characterize the big-budget summer movie phenomenon. DK confronts its audience with vexing issues and difficult questions without offering easy escape answers. Given its titanic success at the box office, Christians should realize that DK has not only conjured the imagination of the public, it reflects it. It used to be that philosophers would ask the questions that people were asking, and that theologians would provide the answers to those questions. No more. Today, our entertainment culture is asking the questions on people’s minds. Christians who want to understand the culture around them would be wise to see DK. DK, despite its almost oppressive darkness, offers us a fabulous opportunity to dialogue with our neighbors, coworkers, and schoolmates – most of whom will go see this movie and ponder it.

Some believe DK is a morality play. Others have suggested that the Batman character is something of a Christ-figure. Still others see current political overtones in the movie. All of these observations (and more) may be legitimate, which further amplifies the multi-layered richness of the film. DK bluntly communicates a worldview in which heroes are not as heroic as we think, and that villains are usually not crazy even when their actions are beyond the pale. The film relentlessly grapples with the question of whether the societal rules and limits that define ‘good’ behavior are adequate (or even ‘good’) when confronted with an adversary or a situation where the rules don’t apply. And repeatedly, the film shows two ‘good’ characters (Batman and the ‘White Knight’ District Attorney) becoming increasingly flawed and breaking society’s acceptable code of conduct in the pursuit of very imperfect justice. The Joker, who fancies himself an agent of anarchy, largely succeeds in getting ‘good’ people to turn their backs on the very characteristics that made them good just by scaring them with seeming randomness rather than predictability. But importantly, he doesn’t completely succeed in this.

A few observations:

1) The Joker is a mesmerizing character. His main aim appears to be to break down the illusion of ‘good’. The traditional institutions of ‘good’ in this film – the police, the legal system, Batman himself, are all shown to be corrupted to varying degrees, and willing to sacrifice their principles when necessary. Even Lucius Fox, the CEO of Bruce Wayne’s company played by Morgan Freeman, succumbs to utilizing a surveillance tool that he believes is so wrong that he’s willing to resign from the company simply because the tool exists. But this severe moral objection doesn’t stop him from using it. This kind of normalcy is not ‘good’, and the Joker correctly observes that in the end, ‘good’ is an illusion if this is how we’re defining it. The Joker believes that once this illusion is broken down, people will inevitably join him and turn to anarchy.

2) The notion of order and chaos is thoughtfully explored in the film. The Joker wants to overthrow the corrupt established order and introduce uncorrupted anarchy. But The Joker is not a true anarchist. The Joker is also corrupted, in that he is something-akin to The Father of Lies in this film. He protests that he simply acts and doesn’t plan. But that’s not true. His introduction of anarchy into Gotham is very deliberate, very calculated, and well-thought out – planned. The Joker wants to usher in mayhem, but a very ordered mayhem with a controller pulling the strings to orchestrate the mayhem not for mayhem’s sake, but to ‘send a message’. The fact that The Joker routinely incorporates moral overtones into his motives betrays that he is not an anarchist at all. The battle between Batman and The Joker is not a battle between order and chaos. It is a battle between two different visions of order and two competing understandings of morality. The fact that it is Batman that compromises his principles more than The Joker is a provocative statement by the film which forces the audience to ask which worldview is more pure and durable.

3) The notion of The Joker as The Father of Lies really resonated with me. The Joker offers multiple contradictory stories in explaining his scars. He routinely deceives Batman, the authorities, and even his own partners in crime throughout the film, often with deadly consequences. The Joker is masterful in taking a grain of truth, a grain of plausibility, and twisting/distorting it into a believable lie. All of this should sound very familiar to Christians, since it mirrors the Bible’s presentation of Satan. This dynamic is especially true when The Joker turns Gotham’s ‘White Knight’ District Attorney into ‘Harvey Two-Face’ who actually adopts a purer form of anarchy than The Joker in his all-out embrace of ‘chance’. Most compelling of all is the simple fact that The Joker is always ‘masked’ in the film. The notion that embracing anarchy is the most honest form of existence is betrayed frame by frame by the fact that this agent of anarchy won’t take off his mask while insisting that everyone else, especially Batman, take off theirs. It is The Joker’s ultimate lie, but like many of Satan’s lies, I wonder how many moviegoers will be perceptive enough to recognize it for the lie it is.

4) The issue of myth is a huge theme of the movie, which culminates at the end of the film with the attempted myth-building of both the White Knight and the Dark Knight. This is a huge issue, and one that Christians need to confront. In the movie, the notion that cops are good is shown to be a myth, because they are very corrupt. The notion that Batman is a pure and moral superhero is shown to be a myth, because Batman is not always ‘good’ in this movie. The theme culminates in the film’s treatment of ‘White Knight’ District Attorney Harvey Dent. Batman/Bruce Wayne is desperate to have Dent take over the mantle of moral crusader cleaning up Gotham, and willingly contributes to furthering Dent’s ‘White Knight’ mystique by holding a lavish fundraiser on his behalf. But after tragedy strikes, The Joker succeeds in turning the White Knight into a two-faced monster. Now, instead of taking on corruption by using the ‘good’ mechanisms of law enforcement and the legal system, Dent goes underground and resorts to vigilante justice, where he makes decisions about whether people live or die on the amoral basis of an ‘unbiased, unprejudiced’, uncorrupted coin toss. After Dent is killed, Batman and Commissioner Gordon (the one honest cop in Gotham) agree that the public can never know about Harvey Two-Face, because to know that the city’s White Knight has done horrific things would be too much for the city to overcome. Gordon proceeds to posthumously further the White Knight myth for the benefit of a scared public that needs to believe in something good, and ‘to have their faith rewarded’. As Christians, we must be extremely careful in distinguishing between myth and truth. Our faith isn’t based on myth, but on revealed truth. Contrary to the faith of Gotham, our faith is not misplaced. But we need to realize that our culture largely thinks we are like the people of Gotham, in that we too have placed our faith in myths. In our discussions with other people about DK, we need to be intentional in making this distinction.

5) In the end, The Joker does not succeed in bringing anarchy to the city. He does not succeed in bringing the city down to his level. The Joker’s last great ‘social experiment’ results in both ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people choosing not to destroy themselves, with the ‘bad’ people being the first to make that decision. It is noteworthy that the intimidating leader of the ‘bad’ people is briefly shown to be a vulnerable man of prayer. It is here that DK gives us a glimpse of hope. It can be argued that DK is telling us that the best and most effective way to overcome evil is not by adopting evil’s methods and trying to use them for good, but by rejecting those methods completely and finding the true source of ‘good’ – God. In contrast, in the film, Batman gradually begins to use ‘evil’ methods in trying to stop The Joker. He is attempting to use these methods sparingly and in a measured way, presumably because he hopes that this will fundamentally keep him dissimilar from The Joker. The film seems to argue that such an approach is perilous and unlikely to succeed. A prevailing undercurrent of the movie is the belief that Batman’s efforts to clean up the city have resulted in the creation of the ultra-violent Joker. The Joker himself tells Batman, “You complete me.” The audience is left to wrestle with whether this is true, and if it is, what it means for us when struggling with contemporary questions of what kind of methods are acceptable in combating evil, and when are they acceptable. The movie’s seeming endorsement of a true view of ‘good’ that rejects violent methods in favor of meek ones is strongly biblical. It also serves as a healthy warning for those of us who embrace the Reformed notion of engaging the culture in order to transform the culture. DK may or may not be in sync with this idea, but regardless, we should always remember that our engagement with culture cannot be an embrace of culture without becoming corrupted by the culture. In our engagement with culture, we have to be very sure of our footing and foundation. Engaging the culture without this footing will indeed result in transformation. But it will not be the culture that is transformed, but us, and not in a good way. DK serves as a good reality check here.

6) But while DK gives us this glimpse of hope, it gives us no guarantees that such hope will triumph in the end. After being confronted with such a stark display of the ability of humanity to be ‘good’, The Joker refuses to admit defeat. He suggests to Batman that such a display is just another example of human fickleness, and that such courage is unlikely to repeat itself once The Joker truly demoralizes their spirits. The Joker is clearly intent on seeing this all the way through, and is not deterred by one noble event in a sea of corruption and violence. Again, the film strongly suggests a biblical outlook here. ‘Good’ is not defined just by individual acts of virtue, but by perseverance in the face of sustained attack. Like Satan, The Joker isn’t going to give up easily, and intends to wreak havoc on Gotham for as long as it takes. This is a haunting vision of the very real spiritual battle that we as Christians are up against. Anyone who wants a graphic picture of the reality of spiritual warfare should see DK. It will do you good to be confronted with it in order to be reminded of how terrible and relentless our adversary is. The Joker and Satan are the same, in that both ‘want to watch the world burn’. But unlike DK, we know who comes out ahead in the end. We know the victory is ours, because Christ has already won. This is the hope that we need to sing to the world, because it is a hope that people are looking for. DK correctly deduces that while the public wants to believe in ‘good’ and wants to have hope, they’re unsure if such hope is well founded and whether it can be placed in anything real. The movie is very prophetic in accurately surmising the present mood of our culture. It is here that Christians can persuasively bring a biblical perspective to the issue.

Sorry for the long post.