The Dark Knight of the Soul - Theolgoical Engagment with the Dark Knight Trilogy

[SPOILER ALERT   ***DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY AND WANT TO DO SO WITHOUT KNOWING THE CHARACTERS AND STORY LINES THAT ARE CENTRAL TO THE PLOT.***]

Many thought-provoking and engaging pieces have been written exploring the social ramifications of Christopher Nolan's Batman films in terms of political commentary and engagement with American politics, and especially the war on terror. I will leave the political commentary to the experts, but I do want to engage the theological undertones of the movies.

One of the most powerful elements to the narrative construction of the Dark Knight trilogy is the way in which the story engages and wrestles with questions about human nature itself. While there are plenty of explosions and action scenes, the real genius of the movies is not the fantastic special effects, talented casts, or the superb fight choreography and chase scenes. The conflict in the story is not so much about controlling the buildings of Gotham, the money of Gotham, or even the politics of Gotham, so much as it is a battle for the soul of Gotham.

In the first film, Batman Begins, we encounter Bruce Wayne who is plagued by his anger and guilt over the murder of his parents when he was a child. Perhaps the most telling testimony to how great this film gets is that it more than recovers from the fact that the man who killed them is actually named Joe Chill. Wanting to rid the world of injustice like his own, Wayne eventually travels to China where after some strange turns of events he is welcomed into the League of Shadows which is lead by Henri Ducard and Ra's al Ghul. Being trained to fight "600" attackers, Wayne is developed into a powerful vigilante. It is only once he is inducted into the League of Shadows that he learns that the group intends to destroy his home town of Gotham city because of its corruption. In fact, they say later that they originally try to destroy Gotham financially by creating a broad gap between the wealthy and the poor (their plans to destroy the fabric of society by creating disparate classism were overcome by wealthy families such as the Waynes' charitable and civic minded giving and sharing--yeah... political commentary may be involved in that). With this having failed, the League then decides to destroy the city the old fashioned way--by physically killing them with poison. Unwilling to allow Gotham to be destroyed, Wayne declares that Gotham still has good people in it.

To protect the city of Gotham, destroy the drug trafficking of the organized crime bosses, defeat the League of Shadows, and protect his love interest, Rachel, Wayne creates the Batman alter ego. In one of the most intriguing lines theologically, Rachel tells Wayne who has made a fool of himself publicly, "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you." After Batman saves Rachel later, she asks who he is under the mask and he repeats the lines to her again, "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you."

The League of Shadows is an objective force of "justice" that arbitrarily determines who is wicked and who is not--who should be destroyed and who should not. The League of Shadows sees nothing wrong with executing the entire population because they deem the entire population to be corrupt. Notice that the League of Shadows believes they are good because of who they are underneath, and cannot conceive of how their own actions reveal who they are--the villains. Batman, on the other hand, protects the people of Gotham because there are good people there. Yet, Gotham is a hive of criminal activity, a hotbed of organized crime, and full of not-so-innocent people. They need the Batman so much that even Rachel recognizes Bruce can't be Bruce until the Batman is no longer needed. For now though, there indeed is a battle for Gotham's soul.

This becomes particularly evident in the second film, The Dark Knight, which was seen as much darker than the first film. In particular, people were shocked by the darkness of the main villain of the second film, the Joker. The Joker is a maniac who takes over the organized crime of the city through chaos. Interestingly, he repeatedly frustrates the organized crime bosses of Gotham because he sees their crime as inconsequential and shortsighted. Unlike them, the Joker is not out for money or even power really. Rather, his particular motive seems to be making a philosophical point about human nature. The Joker wants to prove that the difference between good people and bad people is actually an illusion propped up by the niceties and structures of modern society. He surmises that when chaos undoes these structures every person reveals themselves to be selfish, self-serving and evil. In a chaotic environment, people stop trying to the good thing. In theological terms, the Joker espouses a profound total depravity. Thanks to socially conditioned structures, people put up the facade of doing good, but instinctively will do evil when these structures are removed.

Perhaps the best example of this in the film is in the scene toward the end of the film when two ferries have been packed full of people escaping from Gotham--one boat is filled with "innocent" civilians, while the other is filled with convicted prisoners. Each boat is loaded with explosives, but the detonator to each boat is held by the people in the other boat. The Joker threatens them that both boats will be blown up at midnight if one has not already blown the other up. He then leaves them about 25 minutes to decide what they will do with the lives of the folks in the other boat. Will self-preservation force them to willfully and knowingly eradicate the lives of the passengers on the other boat?

Added to this conundrum is the dialogue of the scene in which the passengers on the "innocent" civilian boat start to clamor that those convicts had their chance and now they're locked up for good reason. Why should we innocents die protecting the guilty? The convicts on the other hand seem ready to dispense with the civilians--after all, aren't they the morally compromised people? Eventually the "innocent" civilians take a vote which overwhelmingly favors blowing up the prisoners to save themselves. Yet even after counting the votes a voice of dissent speaks softly but clearly, "But we're still here." The prisoners--the guilty ones--had not yet detonated the civilian boat, so how could the "innocent" civilians justify their actions. Meanwhile, a prisoner on the boat of criminals has taken the detonator from the warden and thrown it out the window removing the possibility of saving themselves. By 12:00, neither boat has killed the other, and the Joker has been located and contained by Batman so no harm comes to the boats. But more crushing to the Joker was not losing a fight to Batman, but seeing that his anthropological suppositions failed.

Still, even the Joker is willing to cede this battle, because he is confident that he has won the war. By taking the white knight of virtue--Harvey Dent--and turning him into a villain and killer, he has won the war for the soul of Gotham. Startlingly, although Batman defeats Two-Face (Harvey Dent's criminal persona), even Batman believes that if the city of Gotham is shown Dent's true failings--his compromised virtue--then the city will despair and give up trying to be good. So he supresses the truth about Dent, takes the blame on himself for what has happened, gets rejected by the people of Gotham, and perpetuates a false myth about Dent that eventually carries Gotham's politicians to virtually eradicate organized crime from Gotham's streets. Still, this conclusion to the story reveals that the Joker was more right than the boat incident revealed. Ultimately, only a lie could keep Gotham good--the chaotic truth would undermine their goodness.

The Dark Knight Rises in many ways doubles down on the depravity of the previous film. This film introduces a new villain, Bane. Bane is similar to the Joker in that they are both bad guys, they both care little for personal gain, and they both question the very moorings of social community. But in many ways, Bane's character represents a distinctly different position from that of the Joker. Whereas the Joker wanted to prove that instinctively everyone is evil, Bane's anthropology seems much darker. Bane locates the meaning of being in the ability to freely cause suffering in others.

Bane is an anarchist. His understanding of law is that it oppresses--hence his speech outside the prison calling for the liberation and release of all those convicted by the "Dent Act." In the speech he calls for freedom from a system that monopolizes control of the privileges of justice to the socially and fiscally mobile. Like Joker, he is undressing the social structures that make distinctions between the good and the bad people, but his motive is not to prove that all are bad. His motive is to show that good and bad don't really matter--only freedom matters. Bane believes that anarchy--the right of the people to have no ruler--is the only true form of freedom.

But Bane is no lover of freedom for freedom's sake. He knows full well that the lack of law and order will decimate people and bring out their depravity. Bane has no plan to enable a new, free Gotham where the have-nots share equally with the haves. Bane intends to blow them all up with a nuclear warhead regardless of what they do. You see, Bane's anarchy is not an ideological expression of higher being; rather, as the self-proclaimed true expression of the League of Shadows (trained then exiled by Ra's al Ghul himself) he is showing humanity that it has no right to even exist.

Through the lens of his experience in the pit prison, Bane comes to learn that hope only exists to make the suffering of life more painful. His life inside the pit was taunted by the hope of escape, all he had to do was climb the wall and he was free. But after he was out of the pit, he was not free. His life outside of the pit was entrapped by a new hope that he would become being a part of the League of Shadows. But this hope proved painful too as even after mastering the training Bane was then exiled by his master. For Bane, hope was always a tease, never a reality. Hope was illusory. When he calls the people of Gotham to freedom, it is not to give them liberty, but to give them hope. He gives them hope so that he can destroy them both in mind and body.

Bane locates the meaning of his life in causing suffering in others. An odd comparison could be made the rat Boticelli Remorso in the book The Tale of Despereaux (not the movie, please). Remorso says that the meaning of life is in causing others suffering. Bane may not say it, but he lives it.

And yet, here is where Nolan's trademark complexity and genius is best displayed. In spite of his twisted understanding of hope and suffering, Bane's whole life is in one sense altruistic. He has forever been protecting the one truly innocent thing he had ever seen--the baby girl born in the pit prison. He fought for her protection enabling her escape, and for his altruism he was maimed and disfigured and forced to live in agony behind the mask that would dehumanize him forever--"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask." Now exiled from the League of Shadows, Bane still exists to serve and protect the little girl from the dungeon. It is actually her plan to destroy the city. It is her bomb. She is the daughter of Ra's al Ghul avenging her father by carrying out his plan to destroy the people of Gotham for their corruption and evil. Bane serves her out of devotion to her.

Of course, all of this is somewhat obscured by amazingly fun and visually stunning films. It might be hard to look past the costuming, cars, and explosions... the super-villains, henchmen, and bat -gadgets... but somewhere in the midst of all of this is a narrative raising questions about the very nature of humanity, morality, and being. It raises some wonderful questions, if we are brave enough to try and engage them. I don't know if Batman can save your soul, but there is certainly more here than your typical Hollywood blockbuster milking the cash cow (... I'm looking at you Matrix trilogy). Thanks to Christopher Nolan for writing that actually matters. Thanks to God for movies that actually mean something. That's rare these days.