I thought The Dark Knight was excellent, and that Heath Ledger’s performance was nothing short of stunning, but something didn’t sit right me with. I came out of the movie feeling rather uneasy. Having slept on it, I think I know what was bothering me. I think that the movie portrays Batman not as a hero, but as a self-centered vigilante who is is actually partly responsible for the carnage unleashed on Gotham. I ended up not liking Batman very much.
The plot is simple. Batman’s crusade against crime is so successful that the mob bosses feel cornered. Then along comes the Joker, an demonic agent of pure chaos, who delights in wanton carnage simply for its own sake. The movie makes clear that the Joker arrives on the scene because of Batman. He is obsessed with him, even telling him, in one of his many ironic one-liners that “you complete me”. He is not in it for material gain, but for the sheer thrill of going against Batman. The implication is plain: Batman and the Joker are more intimately entwined that the former is comfortable admitting. And in his single-minded zeal to stop Batman, the Joker threatens to keep murdering innocents until Batman turns himself in.
I think the lesson is quite clear. To secure a certain end- curbing crime- Batman stepped outside the law. Guided by vengeance– related to his personal history– he was willing to suspend the moral law when needed to secure a particular end. Batman has embraced consequentialism– up to a limit. For him, the ends may indeed justify the means. Most importantly, he is a proponent of fighting violence with violence, and the narcissistic macho swagger is never really absent. What Batman comes to realize is that his actions can have consequences. The emergence of the Joker is a direct response to his campaign. To use somewhat familiar language, he has helped unleash evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. His war is not just. Although he is not personally responsible for the Joker’s murderous activity, he nonetheless set in motion a sequence of events that produced him. For an approach based on vengeance, based on setting aside the law, ultimately leads to chaos– and the Joker is simply chaos incarnate. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
(Warning: Spoiler Alert…)
The tragic element of the story is that Bruce Wayne is aware of what he has unleashed. His intentions might be misguided, but he retains his moral compass. He might be willing to use great violence to extract information, but he doesn’t kill at will– evidenced by his refusal to run over the Joker who was standing on the road on front of Batman’s manic motorcycle. The beauty of Nolan’s approach is that he brings out the psychological element, as Batman internalizes the damage he has wrought, but at the same time he remains proud, never really learning humility. His conflict brings no resolution.
The climax of the movie centers on a pure consequentialist moral dilemma. The Joker has rigged bombs to two ferries (one full of convicts) and each ferry has the trigger for the other ferry’s bomb. He tells them that he will blow them both up at midnight, but if one blows up the other first, the remaining boat will be spared. In the end, nobody can do it. Nobody is willing to sacrifice the innocent to save their own life. Of course, when midnight comes, Batman has managed to overpower the Joker and disarms the trigger mechanism, so nobody dies. The hero saves the day.
Or does he? In another twist, another character– the unflappable anti-crime DA, Harvey Dent– embraces evil because the Joker kills his girlfriend, and he too becomes motivated by vengeance. He passes a clear line in the sand that Batman never did. But Batman too is partly responsible for Dent’s fall from grace, a point that Dent makes quite forcefully. As the movie ends, Batman is on the run, taking the fall for Dent’s crimes, so that the now-deceased Dent can be memorialized with honor. And the beacon used to signal Batman is smashed up. For in a city that passed the Joker’s ferry test with flying colors, there is no more need for a fake hero. And that is how it ends.
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