I believe in Harvey Dent

This post has been percolating in my head since July. If you haven't seen The Dark Knight by now, well, you probably aren't reading this blog, because you live in a time when the film wasn't released. Even Afghan tribesman fighting the Taliban have seen a bootleg dvd by now.

Some themes from The Dark Knight

The Hard Decisions
Making tough decisions is a constant theme throughout The Dark Knight.

- Society is strong enough to make tough decisions together, but falls down when individual people have to be relied on. This might be controversial, but stick with me. The people on the boat made the right decision to blow up the other boat full of prisoners. In purely rational terms, the prisoners had contributed less to society than the other boat. Gotham would have been better off with the boatload of civilians surviving. However when it came time to blow the detonator, no one would take individual responsibility. No one would make the hard decision, even though society had already democratically deemed it correct.
- No one had taken responsibility in Gotham for many years. Batman, Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent were the only ones prepared to make the tough decisions to go after the mob. It was working. But the Joker took things to a new level by killing people until Batman revealed himself. It was working too. Until Dent made a hard decision himself and took the decision out of Batman's hands. He knew Batman was too important to Gotham to be brought down in this way, so he took the risk that the Joker would kill more people in order to give Batman a better chance of bringing the Joker down.
- After Dent turned into Two Face and killed five people, Batman and Gordon knew the truth could never get out. It would destroy the criminal cases Dent had brought and devastate the people of Gotham, who had come to believe in Harvey Dent. So Batman made the hard decision to take those murders on himself. In order to protect Harvey Dent's reputation, and thereby the people of Gotham, Gordon had to end his friendship with Batman and tell the city he had killed a couple of crooked cops and a few mobsters. It was the right decision for the city. But a hard one for Batman.

The Truth Hurts
People need to be protected from truths that will keep them from living their lives productively.

- The citizens of Gotham could not know the truth about what happened to Harvey Dent as it would shatter their growing faith in humanity. "He was the best of us". And he fell. It meant that if Dent couldn't stay incorruptible, no one could. Batman and Gordon chose to conceal the truth in order to preserve the good work Dent had done.
- Bruce Wayne could not know that Rachael was going to turn him down and marry Harvey. Alfred chose to conceal the information from him in order to protect him. Rachael was one of the last links to his childhood. He didn't need to know that she had rejected him.
- Harvey Dent chooses to conceal Batman's identity and place himself in danger. Maintaining Batman as a symbol, invincible, was more important than bowing to the Joker's demands.

Democracy
An interesting one.

- The people are shown as being able to make hard, unpopular decisions when presented with the chance for a vote. However decades of taking no responsibility left Gotham horribly corrupt. When it comes down to one person having to make a tough choice, the decision gets left unmade.
- Harvey Dent talks about how in Roman times when the city was under threat they would suspend democracy and put control in hands of one man under the threat was over. They did this so he could make the hard, unpopular choices that lesser men would refuse to take responsibility for. Batman does this at the end of the film, when he takes responsibility for Two Face's murders in order to protect the city.

The Outsider
Can make the decisions no one else can make

- Batman is the outsider. Due to his position, he can make tough choices about the direction of the city. He was prepared to take on the mob, and he won.
- However he realised that the position of Outsider is not tenable long-term. Eventually people would come to resent or fear him. "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villian." Batman wanted to see Harvey Dent rise up within the system, as the Insider, the one going about it the right way, to replace him. He wanted to see the system triumph, rather than the individual. In the end, it did, although not without some deception.



There is a lot in the film. It's definitely not a traditional Hollywood message. I find it very interesting. I'm glad it did so well. Hopefully it will send a message to other filmmakers that intelligent movies, with awesome action and great performances can be incredibly profitable and artistically rewarding.

I think it's how superhero movies should be. They should reflect and comment on society, using an outsider as a fly in the ointment, to provoke reaction and change.