Review of The Dark Knight (2008) by Meritcoba — 06 Mar 2014

The dark knight pivots around this one premise: there is good and there is bad and there is nothing in between. This black and white morality is embodied in the characters of the insane Joker and the angelic Batman. The one kills with the least provocation, indiscriminately because even his own henchmen and allies are killed in an offhand, often gruesome, way. The other avoids killing in the most desperate and chaotic of situations and we see him, in his human form as Bruce Wayne, flounder in his dalliance with Rachel. For Bruce is a gentleman and as a gentleman he would not impose himself upon a woman. He is the knight, a dark knight, but a knight non the less.

Joker exists to tempt Batman into falling from his shining white pedestal for no other reason then to proof that he will, if push came to shove. Thou shalt not kill..unless one has to and then one is damned for all eternity.

And it is Joker who will do the pushing and shoving, until he gets Batman to do something that is 'wrong'.

And eventually he will..

Of course he will...

It is all hogwash.

The movie, clamored to be the more realistic of them all, might be what it claims to be, but it is still unrealistic and, to boot, based on an abject morality. There is dark and there is light, and just one wrong deed is enough to turn white into black, because here is nothing in between. Intentions do not matter and it just takes one wrong deed to have people abandon Batman to the wolves, for he is a vigilante that ought to be put in jail, even though the purposefully made inept law enforcement agencies can not deal with the likes of a Joker or, for that matter, any other villain. Unless Batman helps them of course.

Ironically the movie has no reason to be from the start, for Batman is a vigilante and thus acts outside the law. Case closed, the movie has lost it's macGuffin.

The whole movie revolves around unrealism. Joker can command hordes of henchmen, who cater to his every whim. Unexplained is why these henchmen serve a psychotic murderer who has no problem in killing them at the blink of an eye. They just do. Unexplained is where Joker gets the means. He just has them, in abundance. Unexplained is how Joker knows things. He just does. The image is not of a man gone insane, but of supernatural being that has come to earth to do evil. Is Joker Satan?

So in what is it then more realistic?

Is it the style that has been stripped down to the level that there is no style at all? Where the comics are drawn in stark dark colors, gritty details, unusual angles and unsettling stylistic elements, the movie has abandoned all of it. The cinematography is mediocre. Shots are wasted, like the one that sees a conference with a long table and rows of chairs, but the camera fails to use the obvious opportunity to align the shot along the table, using a focused angle that zooms in on Bruce Wayne sleeping, while the people are talking about him. The camera is used in a 'safe' fashion. Lighting is just done away with. While to comics show a fascinating play of shadows, the movie does not use that at all.

Is it then realistic in the way people behave?

Is it in the way that people do not think twice to show no loyalty to Batman at all? Or is it in the way cops fail to spot that their fellow policemen have been replaced by Jokers henchmen? Or is it in the way a mobster engages in a standup open fight and forgets that he has to reload the damn thing? Or is it in the way the crime-bosses let themselves be bullied by Joker?

Is there then any realism in the story line?

You mean in the way the omniscient and omnipresent Joker terrorizes Gotham to the point that the citizens are willing to offer up their hero to the mercy of that madman? For that is the whole story and it takes more then two hours to tell something that did not have anything substantial to explore after the first half.

There are far better movies that examine the themes of good and bad in a more down-to-earth and humane way. Serpico springs to mind, or Taxi Driver or Fort Apache, the Bronx. All of whom score lower then this movie.

The irony is that Dark Knight is praised for what a Batman movie ought not to be. It ought to be unrealistic, stylish, shot with unusual angles, using stark contrasts, snappy dialogues and allow for Catwoman.

Catwoman, you say?

Catwoman?

Yes... because what is she? Is she black? Is she white? No.. she is shaded grey, the color that this movie has no knowledge of.