The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is indeed dark. Its world is filled with predators who lust after absolute power and kill for sport and with a depressing viciousness. You can count on one hand the number of characters who have a pint of human decency in them. The city threatens to dissolve into complete chaos more than once when Batman (Christian Bale) goes up against the Joker (Heath Ledger) and you get the feeling that in the battle between good and evil, good is at a distinct disadvantage.

Is Heath Ledger as good as everone says? He's very good and not just because he wears creepy makeup, darts his tongue in and out, and talks in his gravelly voice. The Joker's a scarey guy. He creates havoc just for the fun of watching it. Would this movie be doing so phenomenally well if Ledger hadn't recently died? Probably not. His death is a tragedy and we are facinated by death. Real life death that is. There is so much death in this movie that it becomes what I call cartoon death. It's not real. After awhile it's numbing. Oh look that one died. And that one. And that one.

Believe me the plot is too convaluted to go into. There's a little bit of hero in every villain and villain in every hero and blah blah blah. Could they have made their point without littering the screen with corpses? Is there a point to going into a movie theater to watch humans being slaughtered in ever more inventive ways for two hours? It's not entertainment as far as I'm concerned. Is it enlightenment?

Look I can tell the director, Christopher Nolan and the writers, Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan were trying to take on some weighty issues. What makes people evil? Well the Joker's just a psychopath. No mystery there. Another character, Aaron Eckart becomes evil when they kill his girfriend and burn half his face off. You've seen this before too, in movies starring guys with names like Arnold, Sylvester and Jean Claude. They killed my family. They killed my wife, my girlfriend, my kids. I just have to become a ruthless killer. No you don't.

And I never want to go to another movie where a character carries around a quarter and it's heads I kill you, tails I don't. I thought No Country for Old Men had driven that one into the ground. It's supposed to show how arbitrary is life and death. But there's nothing arbitrary about murder. When someone murders you, they make a choice.

People are flocking to this movie and I don't think it's just because it stars a young handsome actor who died a tragic death. This movie is nihilistic at it's core. Its characters are killed off in a continuous stream, some for a reason, some for no reason at all. Most of them are no damn good. It takes a bleak view of human nature and that's putting it mildly. There's something about that that resonates with people.