The Dark Knight
This is not a review of a movie.
The idea of “insight” has been revisiting my mind lately. I read an article about it somewhere, about a month ago, and I’ve been thinking about it since. The word has made me pause wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, and has forced me to pay attention to exactly what it is that I am currently committing myself to. The word reminds me that no matter how trivial I think my current actions are, no matter how little repercussions I think they might have, they are still, after all, commitments.
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is two and half hours long. I think it needs that much time for the cement to cure and harden. If the movie were shorter, there would be an imbalance of too much action versus too little thought. There would not be enough time to examine the repercussions.
The movie’s storytelling style isn’t typical of a superhero movie, where the beginning and middle serve to build up pressure for the big battle in the end. Instead, the movie introduces a purpose, acts according to the needs of that purpose, and then takes time to reflect on what action was taken. Just as in real life, each action has consequences. Just as in real life, most of them are not heroic.
Last night, while listening to a presentation on the Internet, I heard someone boldly say, “America lives in a state of anesthesia.” Most blockbuster movies are just that way, relentless and consuming, building a momentum that doesn’t yield to any moment of pause or reflection. The momentum is the drug, the ignorance the anesthesia.
The Dark Knight did not give me the drug I was looking for. It did not give me the mindless action or the prescribed storyline. It did not tell me whom to root for, and whom to boo against. It did not force feed me the meal that I too often expect.
And so I hungered during the movie. I hungered for sameness. I hungered for an easily digestable understanding of the characters’ motives. I hungered for the Batman to be the hero, for the Joker to be the villain. I hungered for an easy way out.
The movie kept reminding me that when there is insight, there is no easy way out. It is much harder work to think, act, and then reflect, than it is to simply act. It is much harder work to not follow. It is much harder work to be alone in your convictions.
Throughout the movie, the Batman is trying to undo his own importance. A week ago, my spiritual big brother said a similar thing about his job. “The more easily replaceable I am, the better,” he said.
Many ideas have been running through my mind lately. Sometimes it takes time for the cement to cure and harden.