Showing posts with label the dark knight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the dark knight. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The Dark Knight – Enlighteningly Dark

Why So Serious?

Holy Smoke! Till now I thought that superhero movies are all about action, bloated egos and special effects but not deep. The dark knight which is sequel to the 2005 Batman Begins is without question one of the most demonic, pure incarnations of nightmarish instant classic movie.  I am so very over awed by the movie and still so very reeling that I cannot even put my own thoughts together and pen down anything which could be coherent even at the slightest level. I am just putting together below what I’ve heard other people say or write about it. The Dark Knight' offers a glimpse into the darker places within each of us, which might be cathartic for some, but others will simply be afraid. It is a supreme achievement in its genre. It doesn't transcend its comic book origins, but rather faithfully represents them, wholly unembarrassed to deliver its story on its own terms.

It deals with the so-called post 9-11 era and America's response to 9-11 if you want to look at it with a political undertone. Think about it - joker is the ultimate terrorist, all he cares about is destroying order; he doesn’t care about tangible things such as money or gaining power like the other mobsters. He tells us that when he burns huge pile of money in front of the mobsters, he’s introducing us to a different class of villain. That’s what the terrorists did on 9-11; they didn’t attack America because they really wanted to kill a couple thousand of people in the world trade centre or in the Pentagon, but wanted to destroy symbols of our society. They wanted to set off a chain of events, change the world order that they perceived to be unfairly dominated by America. These people and the joker are despicable and deserved to be stopped because killing people is not the way to effect change but the parallels are impossible to miss.

The political undertones are so obvious, Lucious Fox objecting to batman's use of the sonar technology to hack into to all of Gotham's cell phone conversations. Batman stating its only for this short term use, this movie is a social commentary on the patriotic act, use of torture to combat terrorism, and just the entire way the world has gone about attempting to stop the threat of terrorism.
Heath Ledger's Joker self-mutilated danger junkie, misery loves company chaos freak in hellish warpaint may be gone, but will never be forgotten. The oft-mentioned violence is not of one of gore, but more of the heart—and thus potentially more terrifying. 

The main thing is that it is a very dark movie. So dark that it binds you to your seat even when the show’s over.