The Dark Knight

Philip French's review of The Dark Knight in yesterday's Observer, for me, captured the disturbing issues raised by the film.

French notes that the Joker's:

"objective isn't to aggrandise himself financially or socially. It is to undermine society, to destroy all concepts of conventional morality. He plays people off against each other. He creates social situations (a public choice between blowing up a boatload of convicts or a ship of ordinary citizens, a private one of a man choosing between the death of a son or a wife) that make a mockery of altruism."

By contrast, "the upholders of law and order are a dour collection" and "the film is unquestionably dominated by the Joker." As a result, the jury is out on whether the film's resolution is consistent with what has preceded it and whether the movie is able "to bear the increasing moral weight imposed on it." The sense is of the overwhelming power of evil and its effect on the upholders of law and order as, to confront this menace, "Batman is reduced to torture of the sort Dick Cheney and the CIA have embraced and to a massive extension of public surveillance."

What French does not comment on though is the theme of sacrifice and substitution that runs throughout the film. It is this theme that sets up the possibility of a sequel and which may become the most interesting development emerging from The Dark Knight.

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Evanesence - My Immortal.