Several people have asked me for a few comments on the new Batman film. So here goes:
This is the darkest Batman film so far and picks up again on the theme (see my previous comments on "No country for old men") of senseless evil. Heath Ledger plays a more-than-convincing Joker who kills on the flip of a coin and blows up a hospital to create havoc, his very randomness making him hard to predict, a powerful adversary and near impossible to stop.
Lurking just beneath the surface of course is the question of identity. Who are we? What would we be like if all the restraints were removed? How would we cope in the face of overwhelming darkness?
This portrays a world where common grace has been removed. Government is powerless in the face of the Joker and people begin turning in on themselves in anarchy. As he says at one point, "A world without rules and without morals."
The only relief we are given from this bleak view of human nature is a scene where the Joker designs a social experiment where two boats have to decide whether each is going to blow up the other or they will both be blown up by the Joker. Tension ensues, not least because one of the boats is filled with the scum of Gotham while in the other is its respectable citizenry. Without giving the game away, one suspects that Christopher Nolan needed to inject some basic human goodness back into the equation to combat the terror.
The most sobering note of the film is probably watching it in the light of Heath Ledger's reported struggles with the role of the Joker and his subsequent death due to an overdose of sleeping pills. This means that many scenes in the film take on a deeper significance, which will be disturbing to some: the line to a Gotham cop "you see what someone is really like in the moments before their death" is just one example.
One highlight of the film is its photography some of which is quite simply stunning - I was privileged to watch it in the building in Hong Kong featured in the movie, and for those who like dramatic cityscapes there are some exhilarating images.
One final thought is the role of Batman - here we have the superhero who is willing to be misunderstood and takes the massive evil of the city. The price, however, is that he is pursued, hounded, considered an outcast and a lawbreaker - echoes of Isaiah 53. The citizens do not recognise their protector and consider him anathema. There is at least a faint glimmer of the one person who took evil and did not hide behind his mask but revealed himself to all who had eyes to see.
1 comment:
I didn't like it so much, but then again I tend to find action movies fairly boring. I wonder whether critics and viewers would rate the film equally if they did not view it in the light of Heath Ledger's death.
What do you think about the controversy about its 12A classification? The problem is that superhero movies want to appeal to an adult audience by using more mature themes, but at the same time kids want to see them too and they are often at least partly marketed for them. I would personally prefer it if they were less violent and there was less soul-searching - if I want to see a serious movie I will not choose Batman.
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