This essay contains SPOILERS
A few weeks ago Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited 'The Dark Knight' was released to the masses, and the masses attended the premiere like there was no tomorrow. The sequel to ‘Batman Begins’ exceeded everybody’s expectations in terms of popularity and broke almost every box office record imaginable. On top of that it managed to make its way to the very top of the IMBd Top 250, usually shared by ‘The Godfather’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ as the only serious competitors for the #1 spot, both residing comfortably around the 9.1 out of 10 mark. Until now, that is.
I went to see ‘The Dark Knight’ and felt thoroughly entertained. But I did not leave the cinema thinking that I had witnessed a masterpiece; far from it. The middle part is slow and rather uneventful with Batman’s quite unimportant trip to China as the low point. The acting, in my opinion, is not as impressive overall as in ‘Batman Begins.’ The ending is a bit of a letdown as it doesn’t really offer any closure but merely points toward another sequel. Furthermore, and this is an absolutely subjective reflection, the movie is so realistic and credible that the presence of a grown man wearing a black mask with pointy ears and heavy mascara fighting hardcore criminals somehow ruins the realism – at least for me.
I ended up giving ‘The Dark Knight’ an IMDb rating of 7 out of 10; good but not great, and certainly nowhere near the level of excellence characterized by the movies usually found at the top of the list. Apparently, I belong to a minority in this case. A couple of weeks ago, no less than 75% of the then approximately 150,000 voters had chosen to give it a 10 rating and consequently the latest Batman epos was catapulted to the top of the list with a hitherto unbelievable score of 9.5.
Death hype
Seriously, 9.5? How can so many people regard a decent and highly entertaining but in some respects flawed superhero movie as the best thing ever brought to the big screen? The joker is, of course, Heath Ledger. His untimely and tragic death in January was the most stunning and overwhelming kind of advertisement Warner Bros. hopefully never in their darkest speculations dared dream of. Add to that the widespread and ecstatic interviews with Michael Caine and others praising Ledger’s performance and calling for an Oscar nomination, and the expectations reached astronomical proportions. The death hype was evident for anyone to behold.
Granted, Ledger gives us the creepiest, clammiest, and most disturbing Joker ever seen – in fact, one of the most memorable movie villains in history. He owns every scene he’s in and leaves you with laughter as the only acceptable reaction to his demeanor and behavior, because if you actually took him the least serious you would be regarded as a sick and dangerous individual in the world we live in.
So yes, the late Heath does indeed subject us to a terrific Joker; that part of the hype is well-deserved – he gives a towering performance in an overall above-average movie. And here is my theory: Upon watching ‘The Dark Knight’ the majority of moviegoers were so impressed by Ledger’s acting that they decided to pay their last respects to Heath by going to the movie’s IMDb page and rate his performance – and not the movie as a whole – with the highest possible mark.
I might be wrong. Maybe hundreds of thousands of movie fans actually think that ‘The Dark Knight’ is among the best things they’ve ever seen. In that case I can only shake my rather elitist head and grumble “… don’t know what they’re missing…” or something to that effect. But I’d like to think that it’s up there (which by now means 9.2 with some 65% of the 217,000 votes being 10s) in honor of a promising actor who left us when he had just begun to show the real depth of his talent.
The Joker as a trickster
An aspect of Ledger’s Joker that fascinated me is his similarity with the so-called trickster figure of various mythology and folklore. According to wikipedia, “a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior.” The Joker of ‘The Dark Knight’ is an unstoppable agent of pure chaos – he comes from nowhere and has no personal desires apart from spreading as much anarchy as possible. He puts ordinary people as well as our heroes in extreme situations, face to face with horrifying and highly moral choices in which the cost is high whether they choose to react or not.
In another recent movie, the brilliant ‘No Country For Old Men’ by the brothers Coen, the villain Anton Chigurh can also be seen as such a trickster character coming from no specific place (hence the strange accent) and going nowhere in particular, an unstoppable force of nature. Some would perceive him as an incarnation of evil, others might interpret him – and Ledger’s Joker as well – as necessary adversaries of the protagonists. (Randall Flagg from Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ series also comes to mind as such a trickster character, as I’m sure there are plenty of other examples.) Without serious opposition the hero has no real raison d’etre – which the Joker himself tells Batman in the jail scene as the movie begins to head toward its climax.
‘The Dark Knight’ can as such be interpreted as a highly psychological movie in which the hero and the villain represent two opposing sides of the same personality (think C. G. Jung and his shadow archetype): Batman is the ‘good’ guy with a fair share of inner darkness reflected by his black costume and nocturnal tendencies whereas the Joker is the ‘bad’ guy whose white facial makeup (indicating some degree of benevolence) might represent the interdepedency of their mutual relationship – in order to do good and be a hero, Batman must have something or someone on the ‘bad’ or evil side of the spectrum to fight against. This Yin-Yang-type struggle is further outlined by the presence of Harvey Dent/Two-Face and the two strongly opposing sides of his personality.
In conclusion, the suggested trickster elements and the psychological symbolism along with Heath Ledger’s impressive Joker all add to a movie that’s able to do much more than just entertain – which it certainly also manages to do quite remarkably. Come to think of it, I might change my personal IMDb verdict of ‘The Dark Knight’ from a 7 to an 8 out of 10. I still won’t call it a masterpiece, but this essay should be evidence enough that it’s a movie that stays with you long after you’ve left the darkness of the theater behind.
Link: 'The Dark Knight' at IMDb
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