The Dark Knight
July 25, 2008There are 20 kids playing on a set of railroad tracks and you’re the driver of a train about to pass through it. At some point in between your running train and the kids, the track forks out to two paths: The old lane that has long been unused, and a newer set of tracks where the train has been regularly passing.
Now 19 of these kids are playing on the new set of tracks while one kid is playing alone on the old path. You see these kids and there is still time to pull the lever and switch lanes. If you continue on course, 19 kids are going to die. If you pull the lever, one life is lost. There’s no stopping. You have a choice: Many or one?
What do you do?
I really wanted to put off writing this entry until I’ve seen The Dark Knight for the second time (on IMAX, hopefully). However, I just have too many thoughts to remember until that time comes. Knowing me and my god-forsaken memory, I’d probably forget a lot of what I want to write. I’ve probably already forgotten things since I saw the film.
The thoughts are just racing through my head, especially now that I’ve just finished Batman: The Killing Joke, and I’ve started reading Watchmen. But basically, everything just revolves around a certain theme: That timeless struggle between good and evil. (Note though: Watchmen has nothing to do with Batman, but it’s a great graphic novel)
Going back to that scenario at the start of this entry… what would you do? The simplest and most impulsive answer would be to save the 19 lives of course. No contest, right? 19 lives or 1 life - and 19 is greater than 1. But I would think that most of us understand that a lot of things aren’t really as simple as they look.
If you think about it, the 19 kids are knowingly on the wrong part of the tracks, and only that one other kid is on the right track. Taking it to a broader view, it’s like asking if you should save the 19 people who are on the wrong side of the law or the one noble, law-abiding citizen on the other side.
I don’t have an answer. I’m just thinking things through. There’s a very thick human element and a sticky web of raw emotions involved, and these are the types of dilemmas that the characters have to face in The Dark Knight… and The Killing Joke… and The Watchmen. It’s what makes them so engrossing - that sense that the conflict we’re seeing can very well happen in real life. Not that there’s a hero in a batsuit or a criminal posing as a clown or a group of superheroes out to serve justice. It’s that these characters we’re bearing witness to are also so genuinely human that we can relate to the struggle inside them.
That timeless struggle between good and evil… I guess that’s why Batman has started to rise above the pack as my favorite superhero as of late. I never really had a favorite superhero. I couldn’t find anything in anyone before that I could take as something special that separates that hero from the rest. But Batman… Batman has proven to be different…
I’m not disillusioned that Batman is a superhero. He’s far from perfect. He doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s human. He breaks. He gets hurt inside and out. To be honest, I don’t even think that the hero is what makes the Batman story. To quote something that I read somewhere on the www: “The villains make batman. A lot of them are mirror images of him or what he could have become if he didn’t decide to take his personal tragedy and make something good out of it.”
I couldn’t have said it better. And no one in the realm of the Batman universe is a more glaring example of this than The Joker.
I’m going to comment on the movie now: It’s great, really. Is it the greatest film of all time? No. (although the members over at IMDB seem to think so) Is it the greatest Batman movie ever? IMHO, yes. And a BIG part of that is Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. Heath played him so perfectly that it makes Jack’s joker look like a watered-down, cartoony, kiddie version of what the Joker should be. Posthumous Oscar? I’m all for it, and anything less than a nomination would be a travesty.
The Joker in The Dark Knight really isn’t a complex character. What you see is what you get: He wrecks havoc. He disrupts the peace. He goes against the system. He kills people and blows up things. He’s chaos incarnate. But that’s basically it. It’s not like in The Killing Joke where Joker has an origin/backstory. In TDK, The joker is simply an agent of madness. The portrayal of the character is what makes it so fantastic. I think it really doesn’t matter in the context of the film where The Joker originated. The point is that he’s a psycho. As he himself said in The Killing Joke: “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice,” … “My point is that I went crazy!”
As for the story, conflict and theme of the film… that’s where Batman and Harvey Dent come in: As a couple of good men thrust into the forefront of an evil society. Harvey Dent as “The White Knight” - the hero that Gotham needs, and Batman as “The Dark Knight” - the hero that Gotham deserves. For the dark knight though, the burden to bear is greater since he makes the sacrifices and decisions that no one else would make. And in turn, this makes him the vigilante; shunned by society and living it its shadows.
Between those two, I think I’d like to be the dark knight type… making the hard decision and fading into the darkness…
