'The Dark Knight' and the Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

I can still picture the first time I sat down to watch this film. I was ten when it first came out and the buzz that the film, and its dearly departed villainous actor, generated was not before seen. I had been warned that it was "scary", that I "wouldn't sleep" for a few nights after seeing it, that it would "go over my head". And so I waited. I wasn't a comic book kid, nor was I even film-obsessed. My obsession with seeing this film didn't make sense. But then I watched the film.

I was a perfectionist as a child, in certain ways. I can hear my mother disputing that sentence with case study after case study, but it is the truth. My homework always had to be perfect. My Chelsea jerseys always had to be perfect. The work I put into learning my singing lines for choir always had to be perfect. I've somewhat changed my stance on this, but it was obsessive for a time. And it is for this reason that I find myself continuously coming back to 'The Dark Knight'. Not because it is perfect. I learnt later than I should have that a relentless pursuit of perfection in my maths homework or jerseywear wouldn't get me anywhere more quickly or more efficiently. But I still pursued perfection all the same. Just like 'The Dark Knight'. Just like a piece of art cannot be perfect. However, that does not mean one can't get rather close.

The film opens with a bank robbery. I remember taking a breath when the robbers first enter the bank, but I couldn't take notice of any other instances of inhalation. The film had me. Its attempts to get as close to perfection as a film can had me living within the film's framework. When one of the robbers asks "he's out, right?" when referencing the bullets the bank manager has shot, I found myself assuming the same as the robber. I thought my knowledge of what was going on was perfect. The film's relentless pursuit of perfection underscores itself time and time again by putting us, the viewer, in the same situation in which the characters find themselves.

I don't want to bog myself down in reviewing the acting or anything like that. Heath Ledger has had enough written about him that to add on top of it would do him and his work an injustice. He is the unstoppable force that becomes the immovable object. Some men do, truly, just want to watch the world burn. The film's score is incisive and perfect for building tension in a film that threatens continually to spiral out of control. It is always reaching for a moral climax that never, really, comes. The film's lighting is perfect, the darkness of the world and its characters that is contrasted with the brightness of a "regular" Bruce Wayne scene. The brightness seems fake, mirage-like for a film with such ethical complexities throughout. The bright scenes must be dreams. The world Bruce inhabits is not the real world. The world that Batman inhabits, that is real.

How this film elevates itself to a masterful work of art can be encapsulated in one particular shot. When Rachel is narrating the letter she wrote to Bruce, and Batman is standing in the midst of a burning building, is the single most artistic moment I have seen in a big Hollywood film. It is a painting that would rightly own its place in any National Gallery. The film is filled with oddly humorous moments, as well, but they rightly disappear the further the story proceeds. Humour would ruin the film's pacing once the commissioner and judge are killed. There are so many technical elements to this film that augment it. But they aren't what concern me too much anymore.

Harvey Dent is the "white knight" riding in to save Gotham from the Clown Prince of Crime. Batman operates on that murkier level of morality where uncomfortable conversations need to be had but tend not to be had. The film manages to create juxtapositions and contradictions wherever it can find them, both amongst characters and within the characters themselves. All its main characters manage, in some capacity, to blur themselves either into becoming circumstantial heroes or villains. Once Dent enters hospital and his quasi-Parousia occurs, no moral or ethical ground is stable in this film. Social experiments with prisoners, coin tosses with a gun in your face, a city-wide cell phone tracker, the entire second half of this film presents tests and conundra aplenty. Every character ends up on their own crusade for what they now believe is right. But what they believed to be right at the beginning of the film is radically different to what they come to believe is right. And in these conundra we the viewer too encounter a paradoxical experience, almost documentary-like. We morally, ethically, philosophically experience what the characters do.

The film boils down to a fight between good and evil, except in a world where good and evil are fluid, interchangeable and, even, wrong. If the world were perfect, these would be clear, finite sections of society. The film has few distinct divisions in this regard. The Joker is evil. Batman is good (mostly). Harvey Dent is good, and then Harvey Dent is evil. It is astounding how good a piece of art has to be in order for it to provide radically different interpretations. I used to believe that Harvey Dent was the key tragic figure of this film. Whilst his story is indeed catastrophic, the evil that men do does indeed live after them. If the only morality in a cruel world is indeed chance, then Harvey is the ultimate gambler. He cannot simply be just its tragic figure. He must also act as the real villain of the film. He shows how fickle human beings can be. The whole film does, truly. Harvey is the complete villain of the film because he could, feasibly, be any one of us. That's what makes it so oustanding. A film that is as complete as this one while still being so incomplete, now that's a film at the top of the tree.

I have no doubt whatsoever that somebody was deeply underwhelmed by this film. I can say with the same certainty that someone has before turned off the antiquated drub that is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or Beethoven's Fifth. Somebody somewhere saw The Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and wanted to high-tail it away from them. Art is, by its definition, subjective and imperfect. As a living entity, it is incomplete. Just like a human being. Nothing in this world that is real is perfect. Sure, 'The Road Not Taken' is a great poem, but it's not perfect. Sure, a meal at NOMA in Copenhagen or Central in Lima is probably an amalgamation of the best plates of food one is likely ever to eat, but they're not perfect. But would they make you feel perfect? Elevate you in some way? Maybe. 'The Dark Knight' has elevated me before, and it still does each time I choose to revisit it. Find your elevator.