Director: Christopher Nolan
Text Type: Film
Gotham City is rapidly becoming a better place. Under the guard of Batman and with the help of Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent, the popular new district attorney, organised crime is being eradicated. In desperation the mob turns to a psychotic mastermind called only ‘The Joker’ and Gotham rapidly descends into chaos. As Bruce Wayne tries to deal with his toughest adversary yet he must deal also with his internal conflicts and the horrific consequences both his and the Joker’s actions have.
One idea ‘The Dark Knight’ taught me about our world is how easily society can cross from order into complete anarchy. During this film Joker threatens to blow up a hospital if a certain man is not killed, ‘If Coleman Reese isn’t dead within 60 minutes then I blow up a hospital”, despite that the hospitals are all evacuated people begin to try kill him. Other examples like this can be seen in our world, the protests in Greece and soccer riots in Egypt are just recent examples of nonsensical destruction. This showed me just how thin the line between order and chaos truly is and how easily people can cross it when things go wrong.
Conflict is prominent throughout this film; however one thing that stood out to me is the impact of internal conflict with external consequences. Through this film Bruce Wayne struggles to stick to his moral ethics of fighting for the greater good. The impact of this is shown nowhere better then when he must decide between the love of his life or the man who could end organised crime in Gotham once and for all. This taught me that internal conflict is not only important but that the results of it can spill over and change the course of external conflicts. This too can be seen in real world examples; the defecting soldiers in the Libyan Civil War that helped to overthrow Gaddafi’s regime are just one such example of this and the effect they had.
‘The Dark Knight’ was an excellent film.