THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

"I believe anything that doesn't kill you makes you stranger."-- The Joker, THE DARK KNIGHT.

It's quite appropriate that Christopher Nolan, who had his version of Ra's Al Ghul make vaguely Nietzschean statements in BATMAN BEGINS, should deliberately misquote Nietzsche's famous line. The Joker doesn't care about becoming stronger, though in some ways he's stronger than the often vacillating Bruce Wayne. The Maniac of  Mirth wants to be estranged from the needs of common humanity, to be the guy who values money so little he can set fire to a veritable fortune and think nothing about it. (It does raise questions as to what the evildoer does for operating expenses, though, since there's no evidence he, unlike his foe, is independently wealthy.)

But despite all the daylight scenes and the action-thriller tropes with which Nolan lumbers his second journey into the Bat-mythos, this time the esteemed writer-director does come closer to achieving a myth of sorts, though not one that any other creator could profit from. Nolan may have derived his Bat-myth in part from a work he claims to have influenced him: 1996's THE LONG HALLOWEEN, which as I argued shows Batman's costumed rogues as being far less of a threat to Gotham than its quotidian career crooks. But when HALLOWEEN's three crusaders-- Batman, Commissioner Gordon and D.A. Harvey Dent-- attempt to bring down Gotham's crime lords, they aren't seen chasing after the mob's money all the time, as do the analogues of those characters in KNIGHT.

In BATMAN BEGINS Nolan shows a Marxist revulsion to the accumulation of money under any circumstances, even those with philanthropic ends. In KNIGHT, it's implied that Batman (Christian Bale) has made significant inroads against the mob, but not so much from preventing specific crimes as from hitting the bosses in their pocketbooks. Gordon (Gary Oldman) and his cops pursue an even more direct assault upon criminal coffers, almost managing to seize the mob's holdings from a crooked bank. But an equally crooked Chinese accountant spirits the filthy lucre away, and for a time the accountant plays a minor role in getting the goods on the bosses. But the money is what matters, except to Heath Ledger's Joker.

Now, in HALLOWEEN, organized criminals are the ever-present menace. But in the lockup, Joker tells Batman, "Those mob fools want you gone so they can get back to the way things were"-- in other words, crime as a regular, money-making business. Joker considers both Batman and himself to be above the common breed of "civilized men," telling him, "Don't talk like you're one of them. You're not, even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak." I guess I'm fortunate Nolan didn't work in any mentions of Ubermenschen, possibly counting on audiences to interpolate the (false) idea that Nietzsche's supermen were simply strong men who ignored society's rules. 

As Batman, Bruce Wayne ignores a lot of rules, except for his rule against killing-- a stricture that's at least partly the legacy of his time with Ra's Al Ghul, who tried and failed to get Wayne to become an unquestioning assassin. Joker, as much as Ra's, wants Wayne to be Batman, but not as a servant, but as a divine opponent. Yet Wayne seethes with guilt about his every transgression, feeling that he has "blood on his hands" for the acts of others. And in KNIGHT the Hairshirt Crusader acquires a new chink in his armor; romantic competition for Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who's apparently the great love of Bruce Wayne's life, even if we have no evidence that they've even slept together.

In BEGINS Wayne is trammeled by father-images, but in KNIGHT, his greatest challenge is that of a same-age romantic competitor, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent might not be Wayne's brother from another mother and father, but they share an identical obsession with cleaning up Gotham (though we never really know why Dent is so passionate on the subject). But Wayne envies Dent for being "one of them," the regular civilians, and in his identity as Batman he tells Dent that "Gotham needs a hero with a face." At the same time, like a lot of Wayne's actions, this sentiment too may be underpinned not by recognition of a fellow crusader, but by a desire to compete for the woman he and Dent both love. 

Wayne, ever moved by the exigencies of negative compensation, pins his hope on a statement by Rachel -- who knows of his Batman-identity-- to the effect that they could be together if he could hang up his cowl for good, But not only does Rachel die at Joker's hands, she leaves behind a psychologically emasculating note with the words, "I'm sure the day won't come when you no longer need Batman," though she also hedges her bet by stating that if he does, he can take joy in occupying the "friend zone." In essence, Rachel believes in Harvey Dent, but not in Bruce Wayne, who will always need to be Batman, and this enables Rachel to justify devoting all her love to Harvey Dent. The fact that faithful Alfred spares Wayne from reading the note does nothing to change the status of the hero as a sacrifice to a writer's concept of normality.

Ironically, though, when Dent is tested in the crucible of trauma, he doesn't manage to acquit himself as well as Wayne. Joker is also responsible for Dent being maimed over half of his body, which is the prelude to his becoming the criminal Two-Face. However, Dent also dies in this movie, becoming a "noble lie" instead of a recurring Bat-rogue. Joker, who often excels in the role of the tempter, even comes to Dent's bedside to celebrate his creation, and later gloats to Batman that he succeeded in corrupting Dent even if he didn't sway the hero from his investment in the world of freakishness.

Similarly, Joker conducts various experiments on the citizens of Gotham to see if he can make them "eat" one another. The fact that he doesn't succeed in some cases doesn't really invalidate his main point, that sometimes one can drive people to become animals. He tells Dent that his whole purpose is to make people with "plans" realize how pathetic their desire for control is, but this is not Nietzschean. It is, however, Nolanesque, the self-insertion of a writer who's overturning the safe world of superheroes with his supposedly sophisticated message of anarchy. I suspect that Nolan's Joker had a tangential effect upon the majority of the MCU movies, with their passionate championing of mass murderers like Thanos and Killmonger.

Of course, like Joker Nolan doesn't know when to get off the stage, so the last half hour drags with yet another Joker experiment in mass psychology. On top of that, Batman's finally able to track down Joker, but only by using a spy-device to tap into cell phones, which Wayne's allegedly principled tech-guy calls "unethical." 

I would be remiss that there are a lot of well-choreographed action-scenes in KNIGHT, though no particular sequences stand out for me. Of the three Nolan Bat-flicks, this one is the only one to sustain a myth, albeit very intellectualized, with respect to human dependence on controlling the world, and how the endless battle of Batman and Joker somehow transcends all that jazz.