I was at a Christian retreat camp this weekend, and at the Sunday worship, the leader led us in a baptism renewal service. As part of the service and according to tradition, we would denounce sins and the devil by facing the west (a direction that symbolizes darkness), and then turn around and proclaim our acceptance of Jesus by facing the east (symbolizing light).
On paper, this ritual sounds quite meaningless: why would it matter where you face? But I found the action very moving. It’s as if our choices of good and evil are not mere rational, moral, and spiritual choices. It’s physical too. It’s what we do, where we face, and where we go as well. You turn around, and you feel your peers turning with you in unison. You look up. And you can’t help but notice a bit of light peeking out from the East.
* * *
I saw The Dark Knight at IMAX last week, and I guess I was impressed as everyone else, but I couldn’t help but feel an unexplainable sense of disappointment with it.
Perhaps it was the hype? Or perhaps it was my high expectations?
Sure, the Dark Knight does a great job of exploring the nature of evil:
Is evil in the Joker’s bestial appetite for chaos? Is evil in Harvey Dent’s hopeless, perverted sense of justice? Or perhaps evil is when we say that our lives are worth more than others’? The movie is full of questions like that – plus it’s well-acted, and the action scenes are gee-golly awesome. So I guess I’m supposed to love it.
But I don’t. At the end of the day, for all of its ruminations on evil and terror, it’s still just a comic book adventure. Sure, it dives down further than other comic book movies, but it does not lift up. Batman is not the light to Gotham’s tunnel.
Exiting the theatre, I felt a knot in my chest. I had gone for an exciting ride, and I saw some semblance of a hero in action, but the victory felt cheap, incomplete, temporary… Hopeless.
My friend looked over to me and said: “Oh, that was pretty good. I wonder how they will do the next one?”
Extended reading:
[Wikipedia] Batman: The Killing Joke
[Becoming] Darker than The Dark Knight
[Ben Witherington] The Dark Knight’s Dark Night of the Soul
July 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
You are right, the whole movie is exploring — “evil is when we say that our lives are worth more than others?” — our desire to live.
I also have a sense of incompleteness about this movie right after I left the theater. After I think more about it, I found unlike other hero movies, Batman was not the one who resolve the conflict and terror. And for most of the part, batman was very passive and helpless. However, the movie suggested that the “people” are the ones who resolve the conflict, or I should put it “our desire to love one and other” resolves the conflict. When I think more about it I felt more sad because isn’t it what we are lacking in our real world? I mean the “world” as our whole human race.
After watching Ironman and other hero movies, typical hero movies suggested that justice and fairness (which 2 face + Batman are seeking) are built on law,order and power. “Our desire to love one and other” is always lesser mentioned (because it sounds corny…). The Dark Knight suggested that when law, order and power are at the edge of the cliff, what’s left in us is this weak, corny and seems “not trustworthy” desire. However, it’s this desire that resolve the conflict and terror at the end.
The movie also questions the way human wants a “figure” to represent justice and fairness, (like most of the hero movies, USA as a super power etc…) and at the end Harvey Dent is restored as such figure, however, in a corrupted way. A way that we know is not resolving.
Isn’t it God’s original purpose for us to love one another? Isn’t it Jesus’ purpose to show us free from the “law” and to love one another? This desire is always very week and overwhelmed by our desire to live.
The Joker is a very good character to study and I found it very theologically evil.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:50 am
“Sure, it dives down further than other comic book movies, but it does not lift up. Batman is not the light to Gotham’s tunnel.”
That’s exactly how I felt when I said “We don’t need a superhero, we need a Savior”.
In that case, I like the movie in much the same way as you dislike it — it shows us human vulnerability and helplessness.
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