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Cast: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/ Batman), Heath Ledger (The Joker), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), Gary Oldman (James Gordon), Maggie Gyllenahll (Rachel Dawes), Michael Caine (Alfred), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox)
Written by: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Release date: July 2008

Either you die a hero. Or you live long enough to see yourself turn into a villain…

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Day and night. Light and dark. Good and evil. One deriving its meaning from the other. The essential dichotomy between these opposites has always been a source of comfort for man. It assures him of his place in the world. Today these boundaries have all but disappeared. The consequence is fear…an all pervading terror. Lurking about in the collective subconscious. Ready to rear its head at the slightest indication of a rent in our orderly, progressive society. In this morass of ambiguities what role does a superhero play? Where are the bad guys he can bash up the old-school way so that things go back to being the way they were before? This movie doesn’t just ponder upon these questions. It tosses them right on top of a big summer blockbuster, with the requisite gizmos, car chases and explosions, so that we can’t take our eyes or mind off them. And all the while it’s gleefully rubbing its hands together, extracting demented pleasure out of the yarn it’s spinning.

It’s been some time since Bruce Wayne donned the black bat- suit and began to soar among the neon-lit skyscrapers of Gotham city. It is still a cesspool of corruption. However, the crime graphs are in a downward spiral following the escapades of the masked vigilante. Though he is derided by some for being above the law, he’s tolerated by most as he’s needed. He has even got copycats now. Who mostly get in the way at inopportune moments. However, in his daytime avatar, Bruce Wayne is a filthy rich playboy, who goes cavorting on the high seas with an entire Russian ballet troupe.

This dual personality, his inner conflicts and paranoia are getting to him. And he’s waiting for the moment when he can call it a day. And probably get back his lady love, Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhall creates a spirited Rachel after the listless performance by Katie Holmes in the first movie). And he sees the charismatic, incorruptible new district attorney, Harvey Dent as the best chance that he or Gotham city would ever get. He joins hands with Dent through Lt.Gordon, the soft-spoken cop who is prepared to go the extra mile and do the needful to make Gotham a safer place. Aaron Eckhart plays Dent as a righteous, relentless crusader with a streak of arrogance and obsession running through him.

Here, arrives the Joker. A sadistic, fiendishly intelligent and perceptive psychopath. Starting with a daring daylight robbery at a bank, where money from the mafia is laundered, he moves on to higher pursuits. The mob bosses hire him to do their dirty work. But little do they know what’s behind the clown’s grotesque, grinning face, with caked white and red paint over scars running from ear to ear. Heath Ledger burns up the screen, literally and figuratively, his malevolent specter looming over each and every scene. Twitching and slouching around in a threadbare suit, his tongue snaking in and out of his scarred mouth, bustling with manic energy. He’s the pure embodiment of chaos and destruction, every human’s darkest nightmares brought to life. He wants to hold up a mirror to Batman, to the cops, to Dent, to all the residents of Gotham city. To tell them that he might be the devil but deep inside we are all monsters. There’s just a thin line separating the joker, the freak from the rest of us. And Batman he takes as his soulmate. In custody, while having his head brutally smashed into the ceramic tiles by Batman, he cheerfully intones, “You see…we complete each other. We could keep on doing this for ever.”

Joker

Batman along with Dent and Gordon are pushed time and again into ethical and moral quandaries, forcing them to make compromises. Which threaten to break them irreparably. The Joker himself commits ghastly crimes. But what’s even more terrifying are the actions he leads others to perform. His orchestration of anarchy is unnerving in the clarity of its vision.

A performance such as Heath Ledger’s could have easily taken over the movie and the script, rendering all else impotent. But here thanks to the deft direction and the powerful script, it is a part of the bigger picture, an intricate, labyrinthine, bleak epic. Of course the exceptionally strong cast of Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhall, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman helps.

Fantasy, whether it be fairy tales or comics conceal reflections upon the human condition in extremis, beneath all the bluster of magic and superpowers. That’s what gives them their enduring power and vitality. And The Dark Knight is a supreme example of a work which utilizes the strengths of its genre and at the same time transcends it to create something which achieves greatness through its universal relevance.

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