Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Dark Knight, Take 2
Went to see The Dark Knight again and this time watched more carefully for specific things.
--The plot. The plot...made no sense. There were so many plot holes and improbabilities (right up to impossibilities) that the whole plot structure felt like a very fine lace doily, just barely holding together. Example one: There's no reason at all both Rachel and Harvey couldn't be saved if the police had just gotten to Rachel in time. And they should have been able to, since there should be patrol cars in the area. There was no real either/or there. Example two: Okay, how does this work? Reece goes on television to announce he's going to reveal the Batman's identity. Cut to the Joker setting the pile of money on fire and lecturing the mob guy. Suddenly the Joker pulls out a cell phone and calls in to the tv show to announce Reece dies or the hospital gets it. Uh, how did he even know Reece was on television and why? And when did he have time to rig the bombs? Did he have a whole hospital rigged with massive amounts of explosives (which none of the police found while evacuating) just in case he might need it that evening? *scratches head* Now, I believe plot is less important than story, and the TDK's story themes blew me away so completely that I was willing to ignore the plot issues, but I can see how a more detail-oriented person (like my husband, who kept twitching and muttering next to me) might find it really annoying.
--Speaking of convoluted schemes, the Nolan Joker has to have some kind of amazing psychic superpower, like an evil Hari Seldon who can predict human behavior to the finest detail. Either that or Longshot-level luck (to pull in a Marvel character whose superpower was just that, he was always lucky). Nothing else could make his plans, which are the most labyrinthine, Byzantine, Rube Goldbergesque plans in the universe, work. He knows how to manipulate that cop into getting too close to him just in time to blow up his stooge before anyone notices he's got a bomb in his stomach, while knowing the explosion will kill or disable everyone in the HQ except him and Lau. Impressive! Even the bank robbery at the beginning involves such amazing levels of meticulous, minute planning, down to making sure the last robber stands in just the right place to get hit by a bus. All of which makes it the more ironic when Joker gives his speech to Harvey about how everyone in the world is a schemer and a planner except him, how he doesn't plan, he just does. He's an agent of chaos, yes, but he uses both order and chance to further chaos--in exactly the same way Batman uses chaos to serve the law.
It's interesting to me that one of the only times Ledger's Joker actually seems to find something legitimately humorous is when the last bombs don't go off at the hospital--that is, when his own careful planning goes awry on him.
--Rachel is frustratingly chemistry-free with everyone, and yet Bruce, Harvey and the Joker all clearly find her completely compelling. This makes more sense if you think of Rachel as somehow embodying and symbolizing all of Gotham--which makes her choice of Harvey and Bruce's agonized wish/belief that she would have chosen him much more resonant for me. It's cliche and robs the character of actual character, but it makes some sense within the movie.
As a side note, this movie could arguably pass the Bechdel test, as Barbara Gordon discusses her safety with Anna Ramirez (they're discussing Jim's reported plans, so I'm not sure it quite works, but it's closer than a lot of movies I've seen).
--The ending. *sighs* I've gotten in some rather spirited arguments elsewhere, both with people I respect and people I do not, about Batman taking the blame for Harvey's wrongdoing. Some people apparently deeply dislike this ending. Phrased in the form that I find most reasonable, they say that it doesn't make any pragmatic sense for Batman to be blamed for what Harvey did, that the people of Gotham should be able to be good on their own without having a symbolic hero to look up to. It serves no practical purpose to have Batman be seen as a murderer.
I understand that argument. Really I do. And I find myself, when responding, to be completely unable to explain the power of the ending in any terms that make sense to the people I'm arguing with. Because maybe it doesn't make practical sense, but it makes a deeper, more primal kind of sense to me. It may not fit the facts, but it tells the truth-- the truth that there's a deeper heroism than the flashy public kind, that a true hero is a darker, more lonely role than we would like to think it is. Harvey's story of the champion chosen to defend the gates of Rome, and how being chosen was not an honor but a sacrifice, rang very true for me. Batman is the scapegoat that bears the sins and guilts of Gotham, because he's strong enough to endure them and brave enough to transmute that outcast status into action. It's a story of alchemical transcendence that appeals to me at an intuitive, pre-rational level, impossible to explain in pragmatic terms. Which means I'm constantly backing down in arguments I've been having about the movie, because there's really no way to say "I'm sorry, I love the ending because it appeals to the spiritual and romantic side of me, transcending brute facts and illuminating truths beyond those of simple pragmatics" without sounding like a condescending putz.
"It's not FAIR!" cries Harvey in anguish from his hospital bed. I'm working on a textbook and have to write sample dialogues in English. In one, either Dan or I wrote a grieving relative at a funeral, saying "It's not fair they died so young." Our Japanese co-writers were puzzled by this. "What has fairness got to do with dying? How could it be either fair or unfair to die? It simply is." We could not make them understand the deep-seated feeling in the Western world that things must be fair. They must. Harvey's sense of unfairness is what snaps his mind. And I love this movie in part because it puts an arm around your shoulders and says "Life isn't fair. Horrible things happen to people who don't deserve them to happen, and there's nothing that can be done about it but endure. Endure and fight. But it will never be fair." What happens to Batman isn't fair, and I think that bothers some people a lot, at a very deep level that they don't want to think about. If life isn't fair to handsome, wealthy, charming, intelligent Bruce Wayne, who fights crime tirelessly and selflessly, what can it possibly offer us? And the answer is: nothing. The world offers us nothing. You have to take what you can from it and claim it as yours.
--The plot. The plot...made no sense. There were so many plot holes and improbabilities (right up to impossibilities) that the whole plot structure felt like a very fine lace doily, just barely holding together. Example one: There's no reason at all both Rachel and Harvey couldn't be saved if the police had just gotten to Rachel in time. And they should have been able to, since there should be patrol cars in the area. There was no real either/or there. Example two: Okay, how does this work? Reece goes on television to announce he's going to reveal the Batman's identity. Cut to the Joker setting the pile of money on fire and lecturing the mob guy. Suddenly the Joker pulls out a cell phone and calls in to the tv show to announce Reece dies or the hospital gets it. Uh, how did he even know Reece was on television and why? And when did he have time to rig the bombs? Did he have a whole hospital rigged with massive amounts of explosives (which none of the police found while evacuating) just in case he might need it that evening? *scratches head* Now, I believe plot is less important than story, and the TDK's story themes blew me away so completely that I was willing to ignore the plot issues, but I can see how a more detail-oriented person (like my husband, who kept twitching and muttering next to me) might find it really annoying.
--Speaking of convoluted schemes, the Nolan Joker has to have some kind of amazing psychic superpower, like an evil Hari Seldon who can predict human behavior to the finest detail. Either that or Longshot-level luck (to pull in a Marvel character whose superpower was just that, he was always lucky). Nothing else could make his plans, which are the most labyrinthine, Byzantine, Rube Goldbergesque plans in the universe, work. He knows how to manipulate that cop into getting too close to him just in time to blow up his stooge before anyone notices he's got a bomb in his stomach, while knowing the explosion will kill or disable everyone in the HQ except him and Lau. Impressive! Even the bank robbery at the beginning involves such amazing levels of meticulous, minute planning, down to making sure the last robber stands in just the right place to get hit by a bus. All of which makes it the more ironic when Joker gives his speech to Harvey about how everyone in the world is a schemer and a planner except him, how he doesn't plan, he just does. He's an agent of chaos, yes, but he uses both order and chance to further chaos--in exactly the same way Batman uses chaos to serve the law.
It's interesting to me that one of the only times Ledger's Joker actually seems to find something legitimately humorous is when the last bombs don't go off at the hospital--that is, when his own careful planning goes awry on him.
--Rachel is frustratingly chemistry-free with everyone, and yet Bruce, Harvey and the Joker all clearly find her completely compelling. This makes more sense if you think of Rachel as somehow embodying and symbolizing all of Gotham--which makes her choice of Harvey and Bruce's agonized wish/belief that she would have chosen him much more resonant for me. It's cliche and robs the character of actual character, but it makes some sense within the movie.
As a side note, this movie could arguably pass the Bechdel test, as Barbara Gordon discusses her safety with Anna Ramirez (they're discussing Jim's reported plans, so I'm not sure it quite works, but it's closer than a lot of movies I've seen).
--The ending. *sighs* I've gotten in some rather spirited arguments elsewhere, both with people I respect and people I do not, about Batman taking the blame for Harvey's wrongdoing. Some people apparently deeply dislike this ending. Phrased in the form that I find most reasonable, they say that it doesn't make any pragmatic sense for Batman to be blamed for what Harvey did, that the people of Gotham should be able to be good on their own without having a symbolic hero to look up to. It serves no practical purpose to have Batman be seen as a murderer.
I understand that argument. Really I do. And I find myself, when responding, to be completely unable to explain the power of the ending in any terms that make sense to the people I'm arguing with. Because maybe it doesn't make practical sense, but it makes a deeper, more primal kind of sense to me. It may not fit the facts, but it tells the truth-- the truth that there's a deeper heroism than the flashy public kind, that a true hero is a darker, more lonely role than we would like to think it is. Harvey's story of the champion chosen to defend the gates of Rome, and how being chosen was not an honor but a sacrifice, rang very true for me. Batman is the scapegoat that bears the sins and guilts of Gotham, because he's strong enough to endure them and brave enough to transmute that outcast status into action. It's a story of alchemical transcendence that appeals to me at an intuitive, pre-rational level, impossible to explain in pragmatic terms. Which means I'm constantly backing down in arguments I've been having about the movie, because there's really no way to say "I'm sorry, I love the ending because it appeals to the spiritual and romantic side of me, transcending brute facts and illuminating truths beyond those of simple pragmatics" without sounding like a condescending putz.
"It's not FAIR!" cries Harvey in anguish from his hospital bed. I'm working on a textbook and have to write sample dialogues in English. In one, either Dan or I wrote a grieving relative at a funeral, saying "It's not fair they died so young." Our Japanese co-writers were puzzled by this. "What has fairness got to do with dying? How could it be either fair or unfair to die? It simply is." We could not make them understand the deep-seated feeling in the Western world that things must be fair. They must. Harvey's sense of unfairness is what snaps his mind. And I love this movie in part because it puts an arm around your shoulders and says "Life isn't fair. Horrible things happen to people who don't deserve them to happen, and there's nothing that can be done about it but endure. Endure and fight. But it will never be fair." What happens to Batman isn't fair, and I think that bothers some people a lot, at a very deep level that they don't want to think about. If life isn't fair to handsome, wealthy, charming, intelligent Bruce Wayne, who fights crime tirelessly and selflessly, what can it possibly offer us? And the answer is: nothing. The world offers us nothing. You have to take what you can from it and claim it as yours.
// posted by Jennifer @ 4:28 PM 
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