Saw “The Dark Knight” on Saturday. Un-flippin’-believable. Jack Nicholson who? Everything you’ve heard and seen about Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker is true, and just try to get the movie out of your head after seeing it. Just try to fight the temptation to see it twice or three times. It’s superhero genre meets “Silence of the Lambs” meets the “Saw” franchise in a playground fight that would make psychologists squeal with delight.
<SPOILER ALERT! Do not read further if you don’t want to know the movie plot>
The movie makers, Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathon, added a plot twist that at first seemed gimmicky, but as the scene moves further you realize it’s art masterfully imitating one of the moral dilemma of fighting terrorism.
The Joker’s planning to blow up one or two boats full of people, and Batman’s at his wits end to catch the sadistic madman. Using sophisticated sonar devices, Batman employs his reluctant top business lieutenant (Luscious Fox as played by Morgan Freeman) to listen in on every phone call in the city, trying to pinpoint the Joker’s location. Fox objects, saying it’s morally wrong, but agrees to do it “just this time,” and then he will resign.
Honestly try to watch this scene without struggling inside yourself about whether this - and by extension the secret wiretapping program deployed by federal terror watchers - is an acceptable way to fight crime. The audience not only wants Batman to find and apprehend the Joker, they need him to because the movie by this point has drained us emotionally and worked our adrenaline into overtime. A lot of good people have died prior to this point in the movie, and if we’re finally going to reach the end of this masterpiece of popcorn cinema, Batman has to find and capture the Joker.
The film begs the audience to play a game within each of us at several turns, putting into our minds difficult moral and ethical questions with no clear answers. The movie thrives off this, and few tempt such sub-conscious debate quite like the wiretapping scene, which I suppose is the point. Those who oppose the Bush administration’s wiretapping program will probably find themselves more uncomfortable by this scene than those who support it, and certainly the real life circumstances of fighting terrorism make this battle between right and wrong much more complicated than the movie makes it, but it’s a challenging scene nonetheless.
If you’ve seen it, what do you think?
