Of reason and destruction

“The Dark Knight” plays like a gritty crime drama inspired by Scorsese and assembled to play like philosophy-as-spectacle. It works; this is a supremely well made film. Christian Bale returns as Batman, while Heath Ledger’s blood chilling Joker is a most formidable enemy. This is logic against chaos, order against anarchy, and caught up in it is Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent, a so-called “white knight” District Attorney aiming to rid Gotham City (which is stunningly realised in this film) of its suspicious Mafia elements. Let it be said that Ledger is truly magnificent, but much credit should go to the character himself, possessing no history, no origin, but who possesses a very particular view of human nature and brilliantly exploits it. Everyone – Bale, Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and an award worthy Gary Oldman – is at their best. They take the film and its themes seriously (and whew, there are many themes addressed here) and so do we.

The film opens with a bank robbery and for the next 145 minutes, the film oscillates between character driven moments with some sharp dialogue and the sheer spectacle of the action sequences; regarding the latter, the “transportation sequence” across the dark streets of Gotham rates as the most well crafted, well edited action set piece since Michael Mann’s “Heat” set the standard in 1995. There is time for reflection on the thematic content of the film but the movie is so packed with characters and intertwined events that the full impact of the film’s intellectual dimension only really dawned on me when I was out of the theatre. This is an achievement: intelligent entertainment on an epic scale, followed by discussions on the movie stimulated by the movie that go beyond the design of the Batsuit. (A minor – minor – complaint is that the film is so kinetic that it’s almost overwhelming.)

“Batman Begins” revitalised the tired franchise thanks to a detailed view at the vigilante’s origin, in particular the character’s psychology. “The Dark Knight” devotes no time to background information; it heads into action with all its pieces in place. We know the blues-and-blacks of Gotham, we know the stalwart Gordon, and we know how things ended with Rachel. Now things get worse. Everything action has a reaction, and here it ends in destruction and death. “The Dark Knight” seems to work in absolutes, at least according to what the characters say. However, based on what we see the film itself suggests a world that’s far more grey than black or white.