Time Capsule: This, a year after it came out, is David Denby's criticism of the enormously popular Batman: The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight itself will vanish with enough time because everything does. But the backdrop of morality behind it is something more important, if not more lasting.
Reading Appiah's The Ethics of Identity, the author reminds me we are constantly building our identities; and of the various places we take our identities from, movies are one of them. We tell the narrative stories of our lives and we look for them for ideas for building our identities.
Moreover, watching movies is fun! For me, I like reading the reviews, too, often times without even seeing the movies themselves. I like the joy of knowing without actually doing the immersion of seeing the movie (and to some extent giving myself to a movie). So sometimes I'll read the review and later go to that movie; and other times I'll read the review after I see the movie.
I read this one before I saw it the first time. I can't remember if I had seen Wall-E at the time, but that review matches the movie and really isn't that controversial. (By the way, Denby defends the movie against other critics who think Wall-E attacks the American way of life; but come on, who could hate Wall-E? Except I didn't like how it used the 1980's movie short circuit as inspiration for creating the robot Wall-E himself...Denby also champions Wall-E about morals while knocking The Dark Knight for missing out on its own morals.....hmmmm).
I ended up seeing the Dark Knight twice. It's a long movie, and like Denby says, it's violent. One guy does have a bomb sewn into his stomach, but I didn't think it was that violent physically. I thought it was violent emotionally. Denby also recognizes Ledger's performance as brilliant, and I agreed both times. I remember being enthralled by the way that the Joker has two different stories for why he has the "smile" scars (which I much later found out are common among some gangs). In the movie, he says that his wife killed herself at the party, and that he had an abusive dad; and my point is that they are obviously contradicting and so it's a good show that he's a psychopath.
What was Denby's big problem with this movie? Denby seems to put up all of which he knocks down: the killer performance by Ledger sort of ties with Denby's bitching about Christian Bale; the soundtrack is too intense; the intensity of the movie is one huge climax; only half of the actors can act the movie appropriately; and that the plot moves abruptly. But these, especially in a thriller, would usually be triumphs (on the Wikipedia page, it says Ebert gave this a rave review). You could check out Denby's positive review of the much less acclaimed Will Smith movie "Hancock" which was another summer superhero movie which he wrote a couple of weeks before, which has stark contrast at least to the ambition of the Dark Knight script.
I think Denby's ultimate conclusion about the movie that
"The Dark Knight” has been made in a time of terror, but it’s not fighting terror; it’s embracing and unleashing it—while making sure, with proper calculation, to set up the next installment of the corporate franchise."
is the really important point for Denby. This movie has morals, but these morals are corrupt. Denby says that this movie is a hyperviolent spectacle, and he's worried about the ramifications for our culture. He poses the Wall-E movie as a morally on-level movie.
I also use another magazine, n+1, (which is a sister magazine to the New Yorker; some of the writers from the New Yorker also write for n+1); which had a big argument that wrote something similar, if not on the exact same train of thought as Denby. The n+1 article, and I'm sorry but I don't remember the author's name, said that the Dark Knight actually encourages the war on terror, and takes the neoconservative standpoint; and I don't know if that's exactly right.
Thought terminating cliche (people new to this blog: look it up on the search bar): There's a fortune cookie that said "It's a good thing that life isn't as serious as it seems to the waiter." I can't help but be thankful that not all of our identities come from the movie; but also that maybe it's just cool to watch the movie and not have to think too hard about all this stuff (at least as I'm watching it).
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