Dark Knight movie analysis

Dark Knight (2008)

Cast: Heath Ledger, Christian bale, Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman.

Directed by: Christian Bale

Analysis by: Zulfi (5/5)

            Garbed in the visual imagery and fantasy laden superhero world of cinema, ‘Dark Knight’ is a psychic take on the good and bad of the world. Here, these two basic characteristics are represented by characters. Good and bad is not divided by a fine line but a huge blur of the in-between which almost constitutes the whole of population, but here it is also given the name of a character. It is no secret that Joker represents the bad. But who represents the good? Is it Batman or Harvey Dent.

            Batman does the good thing by curbing crime in the city, his parents had built before they died while he was a child. He is feared by almost every mob lord and is a symbol, who sends chills for any late night rule breakers. Crime is almost at its nadir in his reign, but there his goodness stops. He had taken jurisdiction into his hands and breached the basic law of the land. Moreover, he is inspiring (unknowingly) others to be vigilantes. His thing of doing good, backfires in this aspect. And then there is Harvey Dent. The young, handsome new DA of Gotham. He is dynamic, emphatic and most of all effective in following the rule book of law and cornering the criminals. And then again he applauds Batman for what he is doing. He even works with him to achieve some impossible things in the jurisdiction for the greater good. But looking closely, he is the better of the two. This is what Batman thinks as he readies himself to hang his boots and give the mantle to the white knight. So, basically is Batman the in-between, I have earlier guessed. Or does the plot involve the real hardships to know who is who.

            Briefing the narrative of the plot, Batman and Dent join hands with the local cop, lieutenant Gordon to curb the mob. But Joker gives the mob an offer to escape the strong arm of the law. He takes half of their life’s earnings as reward to kill Batman. During his attempt to fulfill the deal, he kills Dent’s girlfriend, Rachel Dawes (former batman’s girl) and upends the whole case against the mob, leaving Dent an emotional wreck and Batman, an unsuccessful vigilante. But at the other end of the slate, he wipes off the mob and becomes the unanimous villain, leaving whole Gotham in chaos and fear.

Nolan’s ingenuity mainly lies in handling of the joker. The funny criminal mastermind’s ideas are something he twists them on themselves. He doesn’t work out great ideas, but just takes the loophole of Batman’s and Harvey Dent’s plans. He blackmails Batman by murdering people if he doesn’t come into the open. Because Batman’s weakness is innocent people. And if he tries to save a life, the clown takes two. When Harvey Dent announces he is the batman, he sniffs out the real guy going after the DA. He doesn’t sit and plot his endeavors. As he says, he just does them. Though he may look psychotic and psychic with his carved out scarry smiles and bleached face and hair, he has a sense of fine judgment, which defies his being sociopathic. He says to Batman in one vital scene, that the populace eats one another when the chips are down. What he basically tries to convince Batman is that the people will never recognize his sacrifices and they basically don’t deserve him. And here in lies Joker’s maniac but great logic of reasoning. People deserve chaos not the protection of Batman. Because chaos is the purest form of feeling. It is the disorderliness that men deserve and probably learn from, but nothing more.

He knows that Batman and Harvey Dent are good and they could only be swayed if you convince them by truth. He touches at Harvey Dent’s grief and shows the true scheme of his girlfriend’s death by telling him that whatever caused her death is by Dent’s own devices. The latter when he follows the trail of the death of Miss Dawes, he sees that it comprised of his men from his own system making him lose belief in it. The clown drives home the point by gambling his life and making chance the decider of fates and his purest form of reasoning.

As already been mentioned countless number of times by recent movie critics, Nolan revamped the comic characters of the Gotham to give them more flesh and blood rather than just glamour. In a giant leap of film philosophy, Nolan spawned a completely different form of movie medium for superheroes, where they breathe the concurrent weathers of politics, norms and notions. Jon Favreau’s Ironman just added to this. Though Avengers may look as pure commercial superheroes with fanboys’ orgasmic delights, they are imbued a lot of believability from Nolan’s Gotham.

Christian Bale’s Batman and Bruce Wayne were portrayed by him in such transforming angles of the character, never done earlier by any other actor, that he grew with the notion called Batman and what he lives for and his ideals. You can see how he was irresponsible and hotheaded as young Bruce Wayne in the earlier movie but here he is comfortable in being the responsible Vigilante shrouded in the dark and behind the cape. Even when he interacts as the flirty Wayne, he brings a lot of gravitas as the credible millionaire and a man, who sways the vote of dominance anywhere. Bale looks emphatic in the way he handles Dent by asking him if he is into ballet. Though Heath Ledger took lion’s share of the adulation for acting in ‘Dark Knight’, Bale made such a strong portrayal of Batman that he invokes throat clenching emotion when he takes all the blame of Dent in the climactic scene. I am not saying that earlier batman actors were bad. But they had no scope to workout in the scripts which were bound by the comic sense of the character.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is diabolic and threatening. He is even angry with his fellow mob bosses because they are not living up to their evilness. He is the dangerous form of terrorist, there is. Mainly, because, he doesn’t work for money but purely for the thrill of destruction. He is clinical and professional in the way, he achieves his goals. He works his wickedness depending on the minds. He scares the weak, corrupts the good, frustrates the complacent and weakens the strong. Heath probably understood this. That’s why his scene with every character is built on the psyche of the latter. In a scene with Gordon, Joker makes him guilty about the trust he has in his subordinates. And just a second later with Batman, he questions the latter’s cover, which took the lives of many innocents. He preys on their fears. Heath Ledger’s eyes gleam with this triumph over the others. He highlighted this glint with facial mannerisms which gave a shocking image of villainy. The only regret was that he didn’t live to witness the great feedback, which won him the coveted statue.

Aaron Eckhart’s Dent is flamboyantly upbeat in the first act but in the finale as Two-face, he looks fitting as frustrated, fate decider of lives with the flip of a coin. The only complaint of Two-face maybe that he is a short-lived villain and his agenda for killing people is based on his personal motivation rather than a broad theme. Gary Oldman’s Gordon is upright copper with family weaknesses and desperation to stand up to his badge. But he metamorphosed well into the next movie. So, did Albert Pennyworth. Michael Caine’s nurturing butler to the caped crusader is intelligent and wisdom parting and at the same time the keeper of his master’s secrets. But his woes at his master’s physical and mental health, derails his emotions. Lucius Fox doesn’t have this problem. Morgan Freeman gives more soul to his character when he stands up against his employer while the latter manipulates the privacy of the population using the digital technology and resonance imaging. Nolan’s mind is all work giving the characters specific shape using the props of the strong plot elements.

But in any way, you may enter into the topic of ‘Dark Knight’, you can’t miss the way Nolan uses psychological elements to explain the plot. The movie has more than one of the incidents where it gives best visual feels. Like when it shows the toppled truck or ejection of the bat-bike or abduction of a china man from his skyscraper or hovering of Dark Knight’s cape while he flies in the air, but it is always the will of Batman against the volley of wits by the Joker. Even till the last shot of the movie, we have no clear idea of who wins the race. We think Joker’s final gamble had made Batman to sacrifice himself to make the game square. But as we move into the next episode, it proves that even that squaring off proves perilous than anticipated. This awe inspiring mental reasoning however shouldn’t undermine the technical work, which gathered Oscars like for sound department. And Hans Zimmer’s score should be very specially mentioned. Probably this is one of those scores, which inspired many tracks not only in many Hollywood movies but global cinema too. The background beat gives a soul of the whole picture with eeriness, thrill and novelty.  This is a movie which can’t be replicated in ages. Its novelty is what defines it.