suspicion at the dark knight (spoiler warning)

In Afrikaans we have a nice way of saying how I experiences The Dark Knight. I’ll give you a direct translation as well, but it just doesn’t sound the same:

The Dark Knight was net té… te veel, te lank, te donker, te evil, te onrealisties, te veel twists, te goed om waar te wees…

The Dark Knight was just too… too much, too long, too dark, too evit, too unrealistic, too many twists, too good to be true…

Ok, so the joker is a very good personification of evil, that Ben Witherington has warned me about. Batman do amazing things, but driving a motorcycle at an amazing speed, head to head with a truck going at top speed itself, and then swerving under the truck between the wheels… just too much.

Wiring a whole hospital with explosives that not only blow it up, but does so in such a way that it falls perfectly, as if some demolition expert did it in order not to harm the building next door, and doing all this without anyone noticing… just too much

I don’t care for unrealism, but don’t like when a movie presents itself as realistic, and in a wat batman does, by not giving any superpowers to the hero, but still being unrealistic.

But may biggest problem with The Dark Knight… is that it left me suspicios of justice. I loved Batman Begins, I found it inspiring. I don’t know a lot about the hermeneutics of suspicion, but what I know seem to resonate with me. I approach a lot of things in life suspiciosly (others naively). But somehow suddenly realised tonight that I don’t want to become suspicios of the possibility of justice in this world, I choose to have faith that we can fight for justice. But Dark Knight challenge this.

What remains? Racheal dies. Dent becomes corrupted. OK, so Gordon and Bruce remain, and yes, the Batman always act correctly, as the Joker tells him, but in his perfectness I even wondered whether he gave me hope… and for some reason I didn’t find hope in Batman.

Looking back there is one glimmer of hope in the movie: On the ferry with the criminals, when the criminal throw the detonator out of the window, saying: “I’m doing what you should have done 10 minutes ago”. That was a glimmer of hope, things can change. But even in that, the story was actually saying that you cannot trust anyone, because, although the free citizens didn’t detonate the criminals in the end, they still handled it worse than the criminal ship did. Who says that people without records will do things better than those with criminal records? And yes, I know that it’s a valid question… let’s leave it at that.

OK, so looking back. The Dark Knight is a good movie, good effects, brilliant acting, but sadly, it’s not really inspirational, but if you want a picture of evil, then this is the film.

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