jeudi 16 septembre 2010

# The Character of the Joker in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight


The Dark Knight is extremely interesting for a lot of reasons. The attempt of Christopher Nolan to adapt the myth to a recognizable reality for example is certainly one of them...
But the main reasons to me come all from the character of the Joker. He is the only character who understands the totality of the situations.
As far as his own behavior is concerned, he tells Harvey Dent:
"I just do things. [...] I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are." For this reason he can be considered as the quintessence of the artist and his elaboration of dilemmas -one man being killed or an hospital being destroyed, one boat full of innocents or the one full of criminals to be exploded- implying the absolute freedom of choice of the persons exists only to "send a message" as he says in the film while artistically burning a monumental pile of bank bills (French people would probably recall Serge Gainsbourg burning a 500 francs notes live on TV).
The other interesting about the Joker is that he also understands his relationship with Batman, whereas the latter still consider that "criminals aren't complicated". When Batman has the opportunity to kill him and that he does not, the Joker has this poetic statement: "This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object." The fact that those two characters can not destroy each other place them in an infinite combat which is not without recalling great myth from the Greek Antiquity.
As a conclusion I would argue that the fact that those very interesting psychologies are being expressed through a mass media movie is absolutely a great thing and allow a variety of levels of lecture for all, which deserve to be therefore called "democratic".

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