It may not be the fourth-greatest film ever made, but Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is destined to be one of those fondly remembered pop masterpieces, the rare film which satisfies a large number of people on a number of fronts. It is hard to integrate such thematic depth into a format which allows for so little subtlety, as Hollywood film does in general and the superhero film does especially. Whatever its faults, the film is eminently watchable, not just for the Iron Man crowd or the prestige film crowd, but for large groups of both. The Dark Knight requires you neither to turn your brain off nor think too hard, and does so without seeming forced or pretentious. That accomplishment is no small one in any fiction.
So you may not find me arguing that The Dark Knight is the greatest film of all time, but it is certainly one of my personal favorites. It is such a vast improvement over all previous superhero films — including the film that preceded it, Batman Begins — that it may eventually spell the end of the recent wave of comic book films. Given the source material and the studios’ understandable interest in making money off its $180 million films, it is hard to imagine any entry in the movement improving on The Dark Knight. Over the next four years, we will see superhero films released in droves, but after that — and I have my fingers crossed to the contrary — we might be able to pinpoint the cultural event that was The Dark Knight as the beginning of the end of the whole thing.
As soon as it was released, comparisons to recent gangster films like Heat and The Departed were made, although beyond the bank robbery sequence and the prominent role of the mob, these films share little. Thematically, only Departed is close to The Dark Knight in its flirtation with its anxiety over urban chaos and corruption. What separates Knight is its very ambitious scope. Nolan and his co-writer, his brother Jonathan, try to say a lot with Knight, with the end result being that both sides of the political spectrum this summer claimed the film as their own.
With the film being a summer blockbuster, Nolan and friends won’t own up to any political significance, intentional or otherwise, just as Wall-E writer/director Andrew Stanton denied that film’s blatant political agenda so as not to alienate potential conservative movie-goers, some of whom were already raising a stir about the film’s “propaganda.” But, obviously, The Dark Knight is symptomatic of our times: a city (read: society) is under siege by what is clearly a terrorist, but is too corrupt and inefficient to deal with his assaults on its basic infrastructure. A single, determined man uses morally questionable — and certainly illegal — methods to bring about the capture of this terrorist, allowing himself to invoke the public’s ire in the process. The authorities, helpless themselves and assured that he is on their side, give him the de facto power to do so.
As a reader of comic books, I realize that these elements are true to the character of Batman, or at least what he’s been in the last twenty years. Batman is the cold-hearted answer to Superman’s bleeding heart humanism. He is typically willing to make compromises within his own moral code and society’s, when he feels these compromises necessary to catch the bad guys or ensure the safety of the people. Batman functions as a symbol of that which is to be both feared and aspired to or respected, an idea that is evoked by Nolan’s new franchise more than once. If this is sounding more and more fascist, then good, you’re paying attention.
What is interesting is that The Dark Knight doesn’t give us a wholesale endorsement of Batman’s methods. His methods prove to be effective, as he defeats the villain(s), but the movie wants us to ask, “at what cost?” The problem here is that the film is a superhero movie. We have to root for the superhero: the movie wants us to, the studio executives want us to, hell, we want to. Batman ends up coming off as a martyr, to be admired rather than questioned for his actions, especially in the last scene. I suspect that Nolan was trying to make a film about the anxieties of our times, and perhaps in the future it will be read only as such. But, like a number of other films I love despite my personal politics, Knight comes down on the right side of the political spectrum, though not as crudely or offensively as, say, 300. That is, it is a thoughtful film — and an exciting one, to boot. It’s like reading George Will — if George Will had a motorcycle and a utility belt — instead of listening to Rush Limbaugh.
The point is this: try to imagine one of Joel Schumacher’s Batman films or even one of Tim Burton’s raising the same questions about Batman’s usefulness and morality. Superhero films have now come far enough to consider these issues, even if to some people The Dark Knight seems like conservative propaganda. At the very least, it is no longer only propaganda for children’s toys, though the Batpod has the distinct flavor of something (awesome) for the kids. The characters are interesting and developed, relating and reacting to one another and their surroundings with verisimilitude and consistency, which is more than you can say for most of the previous Bat-incarnations, especially Burton’s and Schumacher’s.
So go out and buy The Dark Knight on DVD and/or Blu-Ray today. You know you were going to anyway.
Next Week on From the Box
Exploration of the phenomenon of The Dark Knight spills over into next week’s column, wherein other DVDs are probably mentioned, too. Does our writer like ABBA enough to watch Mamma Mia!? Is he strong enough to actually finish watching The Mummy 3? Find out in next week’s episode, Take a Chance on Mia! … or, Embalmed Aplomb!