Ghosts of Gotham.

My heart skipped a beat when I heard that Christopher Nolan gave Heath Ledger a copy of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke as a point of reference for the direction he wanted to take the Joker. Alan Moore's representations of madness are the most haunting, accessible, and seductive within the genre of comic writing and literature in general, and I will take my copy of From Hell and beat anyone to death who disagrees.

What I like about Alan Moore's grasp of insanity as a phenomenon is that it seems to consist of two parts. The first, naturally, being obsession--over a person, an object, an idea, or maybe a partial or complete collection of all the above. The second part is a little more subtle, yet represents a significant shift in how one perceives and interfaces with reality. The most rational of human beings are not slaves to ideologies, concepts, or symbols; rational men and women use these intellectual materials as a means of navigation through the social and physical spaces they manifest. Irrational people become slaves to ideologies; they do not navigate through symbols, but slavishly follow the cues of a canonized few and sacrifice much of their agency. They suspend their personhood and become mutations of the symbols they worship. What makes the interplay between The Joker and Batman so powerful, is that they are both, by this definition, completely mad. Ultimately, Batman should always be thought of as the one inmate Arkham allows outside of its walls, simply because he keeps herding all the other criminally insane back to it.

The Dark Knight, contrary to what everyone may be telling you, is not without it's flaws. However, it's flaws are insignificant when taking into account the bravura performance by Heath Ledger as The Joker, the justice the script does to the comic medium as complex morality tale, and the fact that Katie Holmes wasn't in it.

I really enjoyed Christian Bale's performance as Batman in Batman Begins; however--and I can't be sure if his performance seems less than stellar in this film simply by contrast of Ledger's--his Batman in The Dark Knight seems labored. It's the voice. Actors who portray Batman have to utilize two voices: Bruce Wayne's and Batman's. One is light, congenial, vaguely unctuous, while the other is deep, dry, and angry. Kevin Conroy's voice acting work in Batman: The Animated Series is the high water mark for this kind of performance; his Bruce Wayne was warmer and his Batman had less gravel in the larynx. Batman does speak more in The Dark Knight, so it may be that his usual laconic nature disguises how much Bale sounds like a breathy, male phone sex operator who has an ice pick stuck in his trachea.

My second qualm is with the Harvey Dent character, which seemed hastily constructed and his narrative arc verging on tacked on. While I understand Nolan's desire to express the creation of Dent's alter-ego as a fusion of Batman and Joker's identities, I didn't feel Two-Face was emblematic of much internal conflict. Once Harvey is disfigured, he simply becomes an agent of rage funneled through chance. Some amount of duplicity seemed sacrificed, and I simply didn't see the tortured Two-Face psychology that I was familiar with. I wish the transformation of Harvey Dent into Two-Face would have been included, but his criminal activities only alluded to. This would have still communicated The Joker's masterwork, and it would have given Nolan more time to flesh out his character. I'm also a little disappointed that the Rachel Dawson character created some competition and tension between Batman and Dent. Originally, Jim Gordon and Batman loved Harvey Dent dearly, and his fall from grace was an event that caused them both much personal pain and deepened Batman's already immeasurable sense of guilt. I felt this could have added more depth to Batman's struggle with the meaning of his identity and obsession, not to mention highlight all of the Joker's own observations about their relationship.

Regardless, Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, and the script that wisely denies him an origin story, is a dream. From the buzz I'd heard of Ledger's performance, I was prepared for a dark and sadistic take on the character at the sacrifice of Joker's comic nature. I just wasn't sure how a performance that was "truly terrifying" could be simultaneously funny. Watching the film in the theaters, I realized that all the laughs were uncomfortable for the audience but they were there, and slowly coaxed out of them. My theory is this, the more comfortable you are with dark themes and disturbing realities, the funnier Ledger's performance will be. Also, the more likely it will be that you'll end up like me, laughing hysterically before everyone else in the audience is, but serving an important role by informing the rest of them that it's OK to chuckle. The Joker is the ultimate embodiment of the Horace Walpole quote "life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."

Batman, being the other side of that coin, feels too much and has to force order upon the world. This is what makes him a different sort of hero: his ideals are informed not through high ethics, but through an emotional pain-based need to institute martial law and fascist order. Briefly, he thought Gotham's rule of law had finally returned, and that he wouldn't be needed anymore, and could go back to a normal life. Or, at least, the ghost of Bruce Wayne thought that. The reality, which both Rachel Dawson and The Joker know and articulate, is that Batman is more "real" than Bruce Wayne. The latter occupies an atrophied and distorted portion of his psyche, which is more facade than man. All of Bruce Wayne's public image is catered to concealing his secret identity; Wayne doesn't exist anymore except as a drunk, a womanizer, and thoughtless entrepeneur recklessly living off the largess of his father's fortune and the genius of his corporate cohort. The only time he is genuinely interfacing with reality is while he is under cape and cowl. This, I suppose, is the real tragedy of Batman and all his villains. Once Gotham's lawless, brutal nature is revealed to a person and what they love most is taken from them, they essentially die. But they come back like poltergeists, to teach warped lessons to the still living, succeeding only in propagating their kind. I've always wondered if this was why Gotham has been represented as having a visual style close to 1930s, yet having a technologically modern-to-futuristic underlying quality. Half the city seems populated by ghosts and criminals of an older era, while the rest seems populated by your average fellow from Manhattan. The whole city is trapped in alter-egos, past lives, and reckless technological progress.