[Note: Because The Dark Knight is a direct sequel to Batman Begins, I'm watching it here rather than waiting until "D" comes up.]
I remember seeing The Dark Knight in the theater and coming away so emotionally drained and unsettled that I could not sleep properly for three days.
Much later, in an effort to understand a bit more, I started connecting the mindset and actions of The Joker (and to a lesser degree, Two-Face) to another angel of death, Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men.
To be fair, No Country For Old Men plumbed the darkness better and reached higher thematically. Chigurh had this window into existentialism, but he also killed men with a cattle stunner, as if his victims were just meat to be slaughtered. I'm not sure he wanted "to watch the world burn" in the same way as The Joker, and he was not out for revenge or some sort of irrational white knight fascism a la Two-Face. (Though interestingly, in one scene, Chigurh decides to kill or not with...a coin flip.)
No, Chigurh was essentially a terminator. Couldn't be stopped. Couldn't be reasoned with. And he was going to keep hunting and hunting and killing and killing until he finished the job. And unlike a terminator, Chigurh won.
What's especially frightening about No Country is to think that somewhere out there, Chigurh has a boss. Chigurh is on someone's leash. At least in The Dark Knight, we're pretty sure The Joker is the boss, unleashed, yet in total command of this mayhem.
Much has been written about the late Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker, but comparatively little about Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Dent's psychological breakdown would be legendary had it not appeared in the same film as Ledger's Joker. Both characters are genuinely frightening. We fear what we do not understand, what we do not see coming, and perhaps most of all, what we see as a logical extension of our darkest feelings.
In plumbing these psychological depths for antagonists, I wonder where films like this leave us. Do we walk away better off for understanding something better? (Ourselves?) Do we walk away rattled, as though our worst fears are somehow confirmed? Or are we left with a confirmation that we are normal to feel what we feel as long as we do not act?
There is value in darkness.
Great comparisons between these films. I'd not have thought of that. I need to go back and rewatch Dark Knight again. I just remember being completely blown away by The Joker and his chaos theory and his ideas about humanity, the philosophical aspects of his "insanity," etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you're right--it completely overwhelms the transformation of Dent into Two-Face.
One scene/line that hit me hardest, when Batman and Two-Face are at it in the end, and Two-Face says to Batman that he can't know how he feels having lost Rachel, and how Batman has to just live with that himself, has to hide that he knows exactly what Two-Face feels, and still live to do the good work, to be the hero.
I mean. Damn.