Warning! This review contains minor spoilers about plot points within the film.

Christian Bale in The Dark Knight.
Image courtesy of Warner Brothers.

It’s a rare thing to have the sequel to a highly successful film exceed the prestige of the first. Furthermore, it is remarkably rare for said movie to work on its own merits despite whatever happened in the first. Then, for the two films to truly complement each other, to work in tandem as companions rather than functioning as a serial, each adding its own unique take on our world, is something just short of a miracle.

Christopher Nolan, the genius behind Memento and Insomnia, rocked the world with his first installment of the re-booted Batman series with Batman Begins. A movie good enough to transcend the super-hero label and live as filmic art, rivaling any award-winner in 2005. Batman Begins brought weight and profundity to a genre that is never taken seriously by movie-goers, film students, or industry professionals. It is a deep, dark look at the inside of the human psyche and explores our behavior due to past trauma and hidden fears.

The sub-plot of Batman Begins, not to be outdone, centers on how those fears are exhibited socially, the result of which manifests as apathy, desperation, and institutional corruption. With strong performances by Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman, and award-winning cinematography, Batman Begins, to me, goes down as the most significant comic adaptation in the history of film.

That is, until I saw The Dark Knight. What is important to note here, is that the strength of the film, and of every film, is story. A lot of directors try to gauge the movie on the strength of the plot and its devices. Christopher Nolan knows better. Plot itself is a device, a tool of the filmmaker, intended to help develop the story and what the story says. A novel idea, I know, but so many miss the point. A movie, like any art, must say something. There must be a point. It must serve us; teach us. If a movie does not, it may be fun to look at and experience, but it’s ultimately expendable.

In all of his work, Nolan uses film is a medium to express a moral and explore an idea. To him, it seems, film is not important for itself. It is a tool. He uses his films to make a statement. What statement he makes is, of course, open to interpretation. The Dark Knight is a perfect example.

With The Dark Knight, Nolan examines civilization itself. The Joker (Heath Ledger) is introduced as a logical reaction to Batman (Bale). He quite explicitly represents chaos, anarchy, and random injustice. Philisophically, he contradicts Batman’s very existence. Batman operates from the principle that most people are inherently good and that justice is attainable. Joker says that justice may be temporarily attainable, but since it is unnatural, it is too fragile to be effective or to last in the face of real adversity.

The majority of the movie consists almost wholly of the Joker trying to prove his point. His essay of mayhem, destruction and murder firstly consists of intricate criminal action, then escalates quickly into more elaborate acts of violence–unspeakable acts that require monstrous choices by victims. These wicked games, for which the participants are unwitting and ill-prepared, are designed to provoke monstrous reactions out of people because they “are not part of the plan.”

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) starts as the legal antithesis to Joker, even moreso than Batman. Dent’s legitimacy puts him in the best position to oppose the Joker and everything he stands for. Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman), arguably the central figure in the film, stands likewise as proof that the justice system itself, at its core, is incorruptable. The Joker, recognizing this, then turns his attention to actions aimed at destroying these last strands of hope for Gotham, and for civilization.

Gordon survives his attempted assasination, but Dent is turned into the notorious Two-Face. Twisted and beaten by the Joker, Two-Face bolsters the idea that random chance is all anyone has to hope for, and that predictability, systems, plans–even civilization itself–are all illusions. Just masks and symbols that obscure reality. To the Joker and his acolyte Two-Face, those symbols are not productive, they do not serve the common good, but rather do exactly the opposite. They give false hope and hide the truth of human existence.

Batman and Gordon’s conflict, then, is to overcome this: to show that symbols are necessary for progress and prosperity. This struggle is the source of both their heroism and their suffering. And yet, for all that, they succeed. Despite the costs that they endured.

The Dark Knight is the great American novel for the 21st century. It sums up all of what we aspire to and demonstrates how terribly we sometimes fail. The Dark Knight is, in a word, a masterpiece.