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Rating: Reinventing such a structured myth as Batman was certainly not an easily tackleable challenge. While in the comic realm, the hero created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in that distant 1939 had soon lost his "dark side," the famous and never-too-celebrated Tim Burton in 1989 gave him those neo-Gothic components that did not psychologically distinguish him from his antagonists, who were as lonely and sad as he was. When in 2005, Christopher Nolan decides to start from scratch, he has to create a new genesis, wiping the slate clean of the past to invent a new masked avenger, which will prove to be resolutely more adult.
Nolan knows well that Good is never separated from Evil, and it is with this basic concept that he decides to focus the entire film on the temptation of Evil and the dangerous allure of Revenge, feeding it to a scarred and unhealthy Joker, who will leave a mark in the history of cinematic "villains" thanks to an absolutely masterful performance by the never-too-mourned Heath Ledger.
He is the damned soul of the film - narratively and philosophically - and he is the antagonist capable of exploding the contradictions that everyone carries inside. Starting with the three guardians of justice trying to oppose him: Batman/Bruce Wayne (once again the excellent Christian Bale), and then the incorruptible cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the ambitious district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).
In the all-out fight the three have engaged, not without mutual conflicts, against the prevailing criminality, Joker enters by surprise, offering himself to the underworld as the only one capable of stopping the night vigilante. Soon, however, his engagement will become just a simple excuse that will lead to an all-out conflict against the established order and all humanity, trying to push the latter to the extreme of its own selfishness and wickedness, while the three positive characters are forced to reckon with the limits and meaning of their actions, continuously put into question by a desire for revenge that will end up overwhelming almost everything. In this way, the film is colored by continuous echoes (every man hides a potential monster or killer within himself), which end up materializing in the face split in two halves of prosecutor Dent after the explosion from which Batman saves him while he wanted to rescue Rachel, the woman loved by both: on one side he retains his hopeful and positive face, on the other, the fire has revealed the cruel and vengeful being that lived in him (and consequently in each of us). This visual choice is comparable to that of the same Joker, who finds in that unfinished make-up, with smudged lipstick that doesn't cover the outlines of the mouth and scars and the face paint that doesn't cover the wrinkles and imperfections, the perfect embodiment of the ambiguity and moral indeterminacy that identify him, and chaos, violence, sadism, and human bestiality become the core of the character's philosophical concepts, shouting his theories to the viewers, hitting them in the face with the painful echo of tangible, truthful reflections.
Nolan then spares nothing of the evil that is already palpable for us in our reality, making us overlook the purely ludic nature of the film and immediately associating it with everything in America that is related to 9/11. For Joker, terms like Killer or assassin or madman (well, mad indeed) are not used, but the word "terrorist" is often used; sadistic videos of a hostage threatened with death are used; interrogations are not only formal but include abuses and power misuse. Faced with such a context, the political world of Gotham City can only scream that vigilance is the price of security.
The Dark Knight is not consolatory, it is a punch in the teeth. Everyone loses, there is no consolation, the very figure of the hero is demolished and ridiculed by Joker himself, who mercilessly spares the enemy's life, telling him, «we're two freaks, we're the same. I can't kill you, we complete each other». This is the key message of the entire film, and it turns out to be such a strong truth that it blinds. And if at the end the message of a child and the behavior of the people crammed on the two ferries seem to launch a message of hope and trust in human behavior, Nolan brings us back to the harsh reality and to how dark it is what we harbor within each of us.
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