The Dark Knight @ a glance

I'll need to see the film a few more times before I start making concrete caveats about it, but The Dark Knight is a film that stretches its themes well beyond its genre, which is what good art does, and Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker demands that this "comic book movie" be looked at as art. His Joker is not a bank robber, a desperate man in need of attention, or simply out to foil the Batman; he is, as Alfred describes him, "[a man who] just wants to watch the world burn." This Joker's intention is to conduct a psychological study in how to create anarchy and see how many chaotic choices between life and death can the human psyche take before it pitfalls into madness. The thing is, this Joker is conducting his psychological studies without taking notes or writing doctoral theses. There is no end goal, but flame and smoke. Nothing.


Heath Ledgers's portrayal of the Joker takes the character well beyond the normal archetype of a comic villian. He is not motivated by past failures or revenge like the villians of the Spiderman trilogy, and he is not after control or power as the Scarecrow was in Batman Begins. Afterall, his greatest pleasures in the film are a result of Batman taking control from him. He seems happiest when Batman takes the detonator out of his hand or is able to rescue the hostages because it brings the Joker back to ground zero, where, as Yeats writes, "all the ladders start." The Joker wants to be at ground zero, so he can build his ladders, only to burn them once they begin to resemble some sort of order. He's not trying to go anywhere and that makes him scarier than any normal villian.

He's more Colonel Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness than he is criminal: "There was nothing either above or below him...He had kicked himself loose of the earth." In fact in the Joker's last scene, the only thing holding him in existence is the rope Batman ties him up with. If not for that, then the Joker would be totally free, physically, as well as mentally. In other words, this Joker never fears death. In fact, he probably prefers it because the experience is completely unknown.

And while Heath's Joker hung upside down my eyes began to sweat. Here was Heath Ledger lighting the screen on fire, hanging from a rope that somewhat resembles a fuse, and I had smoke in my eyes. I don't know if playing this role unnerved something in Ledger's mental state. I'm sure case studies have been done, are being done, and will be done that will try and say playing this role was the death of him. Personally, I would assume something was already wrong, waiting under the surface, before he took part in this film. Either way it seems fitting that after such a performance his last scene features him suspended in air, not a part of this world and not a part of the next, which is where art exists, filling in the gaps between humanity, imagination, and God.

I feel one has to admire the man's daring to push himself to the brink, as selfish as that sounds, and his willingness to completely embrace a character forces so many questions that stretch beyond the pages of comic books: how do we deal with people like the Joker? what are we willing to give up in the face of something that goes well past evil? at what price is great art made? is there any way to keep one's moral boundaries alive and well in a world such as this? what's the difference between the hero we deserve and the hero we need?

We needed this performance, Heath, but I'm not sure we deserved it; and we may never understand how far you had to go in giving it to us.

(P.S. This movie seemed as much about Gotham City as it did about our relations with the Middle East and China)