Narrative Issues: The Dark Knight
Overall grade: A. It's well-done and thought provoking. I have some questions about the story, but they're questions I can engage with, not ones that frustrate me. Spoilers follow...

I'm not going to try to summarize The Dark Knight's plot. It's a long movie, and fairly dense. To me the interesting thing about this movie is that the two most obvious focal characters, Batman, and the Joker, aren't really the ones upon whom the story truly hangs.

The real main character of this movie is Harvey Dent, who becomes Two-Face.

Here's the thing: the Joker is a cipher. His madness is brilliantly portrayed by Ledger, but he's not a person. He's more of a force of nature. He has no past and he has no goals other than chaos. He doesn't change over the course of the film: he is just the embodiment of a raw terrorist: truly mad, and wanting nothing but destruction for its own sake.

Batman, similarly, is who he is: a vigilante who exists in order to make choices that men of conscience, like Harvey Dent, can't make. Batman will sacrifice the privacy of thousands of people, and he will sacrifice the woman he loves, for what he sees as the greater good. (The only thing he won't do is kill, but it's hard sometimes to see why not.)

Harvey Dent, though, is a good man, trying to work within the system to root out corruption and destroy the mob. But because Batman saves Dent, and not Rachel (the object of both of their affections), Dent descends into madness and concludes that the universe is just blind chance. Batman and the Joker both think in terms of abstractions: the Greater Good fighting against Chaos. Because of this, ultimately, they are both emotionally invulnerable. Dent is a casualty of their fight because he reacts like a human being.

The most problematic scene in the movie occurs when Dent is confronted by the Joker in the hospital. The Joker hands him a gun, and Dent knows full well that this is the man who is ultimately responsible for what has happened to him. But, apparently, he lets chance dictate the outcome, and they both walk away. I can buy that Dent has lost his mind, and I find his retreat into letting a coin flip take responsibility elegantly frightening. But only in comic books are psychologies so clear cut.

I'd like to go back and re-watch this movie, and try to look for a taxonomy of how the characters react to terror. The Batman has only his one rule, but other than that seems willing to do anything to stop the Joker, even if his own morality is compromised. Dent at first tries to take the moral high ground, but eventually abandons choice entirely. The citizens of Gotham sometimes allow themselves to be manipulated by fear, but sometimes overcome it.

And in the end, it isn't the truth that gives people hope.