From Maine to Japan

I came out of The Dark Knight with a tickling memory of another scene from a book in my head. I couldn't pin it down for a long time, and finally it clicked: "1984." In George Orwell's book, the crisis of the story comes when Winston Smith is being tortured with rats, his greatest fear. A cage is strapped to his face and he's told that when the gate opens, the rats will be released to eat his face. In a panicked moment, he begs them to torture his lover with them instead:

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'

Faced with the proof of his own cravenness, with the fact that he would sacrifice anything he said he loved to save his skin, Winston is broken. His spirit gives up, he capitulates to Big Brother.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker's purpose is to reveal to as many people as possible how craven, cruel, and self-serving people are; how when given a choice between our ideals and continuing to draw breath without pain we'll sell our ideals, our loves, any of our cherished values in a moment. The theme starts with the bank robbery, in which criminals gladly kill each other for some cash. It continues through scenes such as the one where he gives the two thugs the broken cue and tells them to kill each other, to the one where people have to kill an innocent to save the hospitals, to the final climax with the ships. Over and over again, he tries to force people to choose--and to reveal to them that their choice will always be cruel and cowardly, to render their lives empty of meaning beyond chaos and self-interest. He wants to make clear to Batman that the people he serves are merely animals, slavering dogs. And sometimes people do fail the test.

This is why, in my mind, the scene with the two ships is the emotional heart of the movie. Everything after, with Harvey, is merely a gripping anticlimax. The scene with the ships is where Gotham--not Batman, but Gotham and the human spirit--triumph over the Joker.

This is a movie which manages to be dark and inspiring. This is a movie in which, given a perfectly reasonable opportunity to harm others in order to save themselves, average people choose to risk sacrificing themselves instead. (Yes, pragmatically it's likely that whoever pushed the button would blow up their own ship, but the decision is framed ethically, not pragmatically). This is a movie in which, given the opportunity to kill a bunch of criminals in order to save themselves and their children, people take a vote! And then even when the choice is reached democratically, they still know in their hearts the truth of what Socrates says, that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil, and they turn away from their reasonable, democratic choice to resign themselves to sacrifice. The moments when both ships turn away from killing are transcendantly, ludicrously optimistic about the human spirit. These are people who aren't inspired by Batman, they're not asking "What would Batman do," they're not afraid he'd disapprove of their choice--they're merely acting from the depth of the human soul's ability to sacrifice itself.

And Bruce has total faith that they'll choose right. He tells Gordon so, he tells the Joker so. He knows that human beings will not choose to deal death, and he's vindicated. Gotham wins, and in that moment justifies Batman's love for it and his continuing sacrifice for it.

Batman says he isn't a hero, and I think by that he means more than "people won't see me as the hero I am." He's not the hero. The hero of this movie is the human spirit, which is what Bruce fights for. Bruce himself makes plenty of mistakes in this movie--his extreme interrogation tactics aren't treated as heroic or satisfying, and in nearly every case they're either futile or they actively help the enemy. But even though some people do give in to the Joker's nihilism, in many key instances they don't. In fact, even Harvey repudiates the Joker's thesis at some level, as he's broken not by realizing he cares about his own life more than Rachel's, but by being unable to bear the pain of failing to make the sacrifice.

The moment when the Joker waits for one of the ships to explode, and waits, with disbelief dawning in his voice, while Bruce knows the people he protects are worth the sacrifice--civilians, policement, and convicts alike--they're all capable of making the right choice...that's where the Joker loses. Harvey, for all the attention given him, is just one man, and any one man can fail. But if normal people--thugs and accountants, mothers and muggers--can make the heroic sacrifice, how can Bruce ever consider his mission a failure?

Other thoughts:

--Ledger's Joker. I've talked a lot about the Joker's "purpose" and "goal" here. I appreciate the theme and the way it's played out very much, but...I'm not sure I like a Joker with a purpose. I tend to prefer him as more truly capricious and, well, having fun. Ledger's Joker is oddly, ironically, serious. He's teaching us an important lesson, why won't we listen to him? It works very well in this movie, but it's not a version of the Joker that will stick in my mind in the long run. The basic theme might have been better played out by a villain like Mr. Freeze...but I understand that the Joker is, like, a zillion times creepier, so I can't really blame them for using him. I did like that they kept the conceit of a totally unknowable background, a true cypher.

--The politics are iffy at times, I'll grant. Batman's always been about the willingness to take the morally gray path in order to serve the greater good. He's a fantasy of the idea that the man outside the law can still preserve the law, like the old cowboy dramas such as "Shane." Although I believe that in reality it's a dangerous concept, in a fantasy world (even Nolan's "realistic" Gotham is still clearly a fantasy world)it has a mythic resonance. The movie's about a lot more than terrorism and current world politics; it speaks to much deeper themes.

--I'm struck and moved by Bruce's essential aloneness, which is different from loneliness. There's a beautiful, sparse bleakness in his Mission in this version, his embrace of a life and a philosophy that transcend what most people are able to do. I've been rolling over in my mind images of the traditional scapegoat, who bears the sins of the community (the constant theme of being pursued by dogs seems to reinforce this), the Suffering Servant of Isaiah: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

Yeah, Batman makes me think about religion. *grin*