The Dark Knight: Why so serious?

MovieReview

I have a love/hate relationship with movies. There are a ton of movies that are not worth watching because of one or two lewd scenes or bad language.

Dark Knight would be worth watching just because it's hugely entertaining -- lots of bang-up action, techno-wizardry, and dry humor -- without any suggestive content or bad language. Yay! Hope it does well in the box-office and gets the message across.

 
Over and above this, the movie is astonishing in it's philosophical complexity -- what is "right" and "wrong", and does truth matter? Is life simply a cruel joke played on some of us while others get the best handed to them? Are randomness and chaos the major players in this game of life? Can we really control our lives or is this a grand illusion we mindlessly perpetuate? And the most crucial of all: Where is the hero?
 
Heath Ledger as the Joker is disturbing -- nihilistic and vicious, driven by an inner madness, pushed over the edge by some experience of inexplicable, unbearable cruelty.
 
He is determined to expose society's comfortable morality for what it is: a facade that is abandoned by the wayside when a little anarchy is introduced. He is bent on disrupting "schemers" who think life has order and meaning to it, and actively recruits people to his view of life.

He is, in his own words, in a "battle for Gotham's soul". Life has no meaning and he is out to prove it. There is no morality and certainly no true heroes. Life is cruel and unfair -- so let anarchy and randomness reign.

Why So Serious?

Here are some quotes from the movie, that hint at these rather "serious" themes: Alfred, Batman's man, referring to the Joker:

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

The Joker:

"The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.." "You'll see, I'll show you, that when the chips are down, these uh... civilized people, they'll eat each other. You see, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve" "Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things... Schemers [are] trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are...You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying....introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair."

Two Face, after being seduced into the Joker's ideology:

"You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair."

So here's the question: Why so much philosophy in what could've been simply an entertaining movie? Why ask such deep dark questions? Is this an expression of intense soul-searching within our culture?

Or as Joker would say "Why so serious?".

See the second post in this series: "Dark Knight: 'Wanna know how I got these scars?"

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