We last touched on how groups are treated in Gotham. Democratic decisions are not to be trusted. Individuals are. Individuals are the real heroes. Not the waves of vigilantes Batman inspired, but Batman himself. Not the police as a whole, but the newly appointed Commissioner Gordon. Not lawyers, but District Attorney Harvey Dent.
Harvey Dent is an interesting take on an old character. “Harvey 2 Face” has been treated many times before, and every time has had one thing in common: his face was scarred. It was a bastardization of his face, a role he not only fully grasped, but reveled in. Nolan’s Two-Face is not scarred. In “The Dark Knight”, half his skin isn’t just wounded, but entirely missing. This is a visual metaphor for what Two-Face really is. He isn’t an ordinary man, twisted and evil; he is a good man, even a great one, exposed for the monster he really is. Towards the beginning of the film he even says so. “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Batman is the same, but his inner self isn’t exposed by a horrific event. He dons a mask to show who he really is. Who is he really? That’s a question he spends much of the film grappling with. His failure to save the woman he loves throws this into sharp perspective. True, he’s been successful at stamping out crime, but a side effect is to inspire untrained and dangerous vigilantes. He had the best intentions becoming Batman, but the consequences of his actions were well beyond what he imagined. Contrast this with the playboy persona of Bruce Wayne, a teetotaler and man-slut. In public, he must act the boor. In private, he can let out who he really is. If the Joker is Batman’s soulmate, Harvey Dent is the other side to Batman’s coin.
Commissioner Gordon takes an interesting role here, too. In nearly all other treatments, Gordon has a tiny role. He’s rarely more than a plot device. In Nolan’s take, he is much more fully fleshed out. He has a family, whom he’ll do anything to defend. He has a career; he didn’t start out as commissioner. One thing that Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne have in common is two sides, a public one, and one they hide. Gordon is the same. He’s willing to fake his own death, he allies with Batman, a creature entirely outside the law, he allows Batman to interview the Joker entirely alone, allowing him the chance to do very dangerous things. He blames Batman for crimes he knows him to be innocent of, for the public good. Gordon, like Dent and Wayne, maintains 2 personas. Finally, we come to the most interesting character, the Joker.
The Joker does not have 2 personas. He is barely even a character, more akin to a force of nature. He never worries his plans might go awry. And his goal is always the same, chaos, wherever he goes. He causes chaos in the criminal world, as we see in the first scene. He breaks the one rule criminals have. When I first saw it, I thought, why is the Joker killing his accomplices? He doesn’t care about the money. Then I realized, that was the whole point. He did it for no reason at all, just to sow confusion and chaos. He lies to Dent, saying he never has plans, that he’s like a dog that chases cars but would have no idea what to do with one if he caught it. That’s clearly a lie. He plans things down to the most minute detail. He does it to get Dent to go crazy, and focus his blame on Batman and Gordon.
So what we are left with is a single character that’s honest about his intentions, and he’s the most vicious and cold-blooded monster to ever walk the streets of Gotham. This is why groups can’t be trusted. In an anonymous group, one can let his or her inner self run wild. One can be as selfish and dangerous as possible. One can let out his or her inner demons. In the climactic boat scene, the groups don’t have any other goal than to save their own skins. But when it comes time for a single individual to take action, when it comes time to shed the anonymity, they act for the public good. The message here is clear. Do not trust groups, and only trust individuals when there is evidence to back it up.
Bruce Wayne/Batman, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, public and private Jim Gordon all contrast themselves to the Joker in terms of both what side of good and evil they are on, and their duplicitous nature. That only leaves one other major character, Rachel. We’ll look more at her next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment