Many folks have been bowled over by the stunning
direction Nolan sets on the screen and the
brilliant script by Nolan and his brother. There
are also the marvelous performances by an
ensemble cast including Christian Bale who is
remarkable as Batman and Bruce Wayne, while many
have repeatedly cited the amazing performance by
Heath Ledger as the anarchic Joker, and it's all
very warranted. It's impossible to watch "The
Dark Knight" without taking something away from
it.
But
being in the minority yet again,
while all of the aforementioned
elements left me breathless, I'm one
of the few who found the story of
Harvey Dent to be probably the most
exhilarating aspect of "The Dark
Knight." More so than the Joker.
Perhaps it's because of Aaron
Eckhart’s pitch perfect performance
as the inevitable Two Face. Perhaps
it's because it's such a far cry
from the ridiculous portrayal by
Tommy Lee Jones from years ago, but
simply: I was constantly coming back
to the story of Harvey Dent.
He's
the mild mannered District Attorney
with everything to live for who
eventually became a victim of his
own lust for vengeance and
psychological reliance on an
inanimate object he holds so
precious. And in keeping with the
subtle political undertones, Dent is also the
politician who goes rogue to ensure the
terrorist threat is put to a stop even in spite
of basic corruption of his moral code.
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Not even
Bruce Timm could capture the
platitudes of psychosis and Freudian
underpinnings that Nolan was able to,
and due to that, "The Dark Knight"
is much more the story of Harvey
Dent than anyone else’s. We've
known Batman in other fare as the
man avenging the death of his
parents, and the
Joker is a constantly depicted
creature of evil, but Two Face has
never been such a morally conflicted
character on screen before.
In the
final act when Harvey Dent begins to
pick off the mobsters and crime
bosses that evaded the law we're
ultimately as conflicted as the ids
in Two Faces. On the one side, is he
so wrong for avenging the calculated
assassination of his love Rachel
Dawes? But what gives him the right
to play god? Is he just another
murderer like the Joker, or a
twisted monster of tragedy like
Batman. |
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Dent's own
transformation in to Two Face is turned in to a
clearly incidental series of events that took
his dark side and brought it out in to a twisted
being of charred flesh and bulging eyes, while
it takes the Joker and his clearly insane
ideology that lacks any real reasoning, to bring
out Two Face and turn him in to another agent of
the Joker. While Harvey is always under the
pretense that his crusade to murder those who
engineered the death of Dawes, his own blind
rage and twisted moral antithesis can never see
that he's under the Joker's thumb from the
moment he lays eyes on him. But Dent's reliance
on the coin that is, in his eyes, blind unbiased
fate personified, sadly keeps him from truly
breaking down the situation that The Joker has
constructed against The Dark Knight.
Because to Dent
the coin the scars and jagged flesh that
remained from the horrific explosion on half of
his face is what he perceives as the coin being
tossed in the air and landing against his favor.
When his body is split in half much like his
coin, it inevitably becomes his one true deity,
the man reliant on an embossed image in a piece
of currency that's as hollow as any game of
chance.
Dent's own
persona lies within the forced fate of the one
sided coin he depends solely on for his
decisions, and his origin is essentially the
same as Bruce Wayne’s, a fine upstanding young
gentleman whose own tragic fate and loss of a
loved one turned him in to a dark twisted
figure. Except Dent's own ego and superego chose
to split itself in half with Dent's utter
inability to really differentiate fate and base
urges.
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While Dent always relied on the
coin's chance, his lust for violence
and need for justification beyond
all morals and laws eventually
always took over, thus rather than
being able to properly house them in
his id much like Bruce did with
Batman, he's now become nothing more
than a manifestation of his own
flawed ethos.
On one
side is his raw need for violence,
his thirst for blood, and his
willingness to do whatever it takes
to get what he wants. His more
dapper side is the side that keeps
him from completely abiding by his
darkness, it's his humanity often
drowned out by his darker side
that's brought to the surface in all
of its ugliness thanks to the Joker. |
It's truly
realized when he's convinced by the Joker to
take matters in to his own hands. It doesn't
change matters. Dent is still reliant on the
coin, the prevalent King Midas that acts as a
conscious deity on his soul freeing him of the
responsibility of giving in to his own emotions.
When the coin decides, it's what he's ultimately
given in to. Because in spite of all of Dent's
own swaggering and confident crusading, this is
a man who clearly has no idea how to decide on
his own and this becomes his own downfall. The
blackness of his persona wants out, but is only
granted the reign when the coin allows it. The
Two Face is the man and the lust fighting for
control thanks to this coin, forever his
equalizer releasing him of guilt, logic, and
blame.
Bruce Wayne
chooses his fate. If he wants to fight crime
undermining the system, he becomes Batman. If he
wants to be a playboy, he becomes Bruce. Harvey
has no such distinction. He's forever the
indecisive tortured soul who can't quite
understand how to live as both or balance it.
What Dent can never realize by the end is that
the coins aren't making the decisions for him,
because regardless he adds an option for every
side of the coin, and regardless of which side
the coin has fallen, it's still his decision.
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it's clear that deep down somewhere,
Dent knows this.
Because
in the final twenty minutes he is at
a constant struggle with his
monstrous form and human form, one a
representations of the courage of
the crusader and the other the lust
of the demon of vengeance that
presents a sheer over reliance on
the flip of the coin that decides
its punishment. The entire time the
human side of Harvey is one who
feels he is completely and utterly
justified with his blame in
Commissioner Gordon and Batman. Much
like the Joker he also calls for
sacrifice from the two avengers in
the name of helpless victims, and
unlike the joker, his crutch is his
ultimate downfall. |
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The Joker's only
downfall is his confidence in the cruelty of
humanity due to the fact that the marks of a
corrupted innocence are evident on his face.
Though most of his origin is left totally
ambiguous, it's clear that the Joker has
experienced enough merciless violence in his
life time to leave him resolute in the thesis
that humanity, in spite of the evident illusions
of heroism they present, are nothing but cold
heartless animals willing to off one another to
survive. Thus most of his sick joke is
successful.
Dent, meanwhile, depends on a natural law
that is in his mind much more important than the
criminal system he spent his entire life living
by, to which he completely devalues and
dismisses in the end. The memorial dedication to Harvey
in the final scenes.
and the shielding of his new twisted form from
the public is not for Harvey's sake, instead it's for
the sake of Commissioner Gordon and Batman whose
own perceptions of the evil men are capable of
and how easily good man can rot, has forever
changed their stance on crime fighters. Batman's
own willingness to undermine the law to capture
the Joker has also shown him how easily power
can corrupt.
But the shreds
they cling to in the finale is mostly for Gordon
and Batman's own peace of mind because when the blood has been shed and the
terror has ended, they know that the crusade
Harvey lived by was all in vain and a complete
charade thanks to the coin. And they partake in
one last ceremony of smoke and mirrors to keep
the myth of the public defender running for
hope, and
to keep the image of Harvey the hero alive for a
city still reeling from the chaos the Joker
reeked.
Harvey's story is
simply the most gripping and multi-layered of
the variety of character arcs that we confront
in Nolan's masterpiece. His tale is truly
thrilling and gripping with Eckhart's pinpoint
performance measuring the effect of tragedy that
splits between good and evil quite often. You'd
never know it since it's been kept under wraps,
but Dent's arc makes for the best of the film's
offerings and Dent's gradual progression in to
madness leaves him a grotesque killer, really
the deep dormant darker half that's finally
brought to life.
It's quite
literally one of numerous themes in "The Dark
Knight" and yet another master stroke that keeps
me going back for me.
To deviate
slightly, the biggest question has been:
Where do you go
after "The Dark Knight"?
Well, it's pretty
simple.
While the
potential premise for the third film is just as
risky as "The Dark Knight" with some of Nolan's
touches it could be just as urgent a crime
thriller as the second in the series. Now on the
run from the law and in hiding, Batman is still
fighting crime two years after Dent's "death"
but almost like a ghost to evade the law who are
amping their forces and proving to be a deadly
force. Gordon now in his chair must keep them
back while splitting his allegiances to his job
and his confidante.
But Dent (now as
Two Face) breaks free from Arkham Asylum and now
takes the reins of the local mafia where he uses
his connections to grab power. Here he hires two
agents, an assassin named Deadshot, and the
Catwoman. They're assigned to find out who
Batman is once and for all. While Deadshot and
she constantly battle for Batman's head, The
Catwoman is pulling heists all over Gotham and
Batman is trying to stop her and finds an equal
in the female warrior who proves to be quite up
to the challenge in matching his bravery,
strength, and wit. Picture it as "To Catch a
Thief." This forces more focus on Dent,
introduces another realistic
villain/ally/romantic interest in Catwoman aka
Selina Kyle, and we have a third film.
But then that's
assuming we're given more glimpses in to the
psyche of Two Face. |
