I Believe In The Dark Knight

Internal conflicts. The best stories explore characters contending with them.

Often these internal conflicts and related struggles can be a reflection upon the audience. This is something I realized while recently rewatching Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

As for the movie itself, I think everything that needed to be said has been said: Christian Bale was a stellar lead; the late Heath Ledger actually surpassed all the hype in his performance and Aaron Eckhart didn't get the credit he deserved for his role as Harvey Dent.

Throughout the film, Bruce Wayne sought a white knight for Gotham. Someone pure of heart who could inspire the masses to be something better (similar to what Superman does for Metropolis and the rest of the world). With darkness fueling him as the grim vigilante, Bruce knew he couldn't be that champion but he hoped someone could do for Gotham in the light of day what he did under the cloak of night.

More than that, Bruce sought a white knight to give himself hope. Someone who could inspire him and his cause.

Bruce finally thought he found that counterpart in Harvey Dent. Beautiful, charismatic and righteous, Dent proved to be a viable candidate. He was a man who seemed to have the fortitude to stand up to Gotham's underworld without being corrupted himself. After all, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

Enter the Joker, a man who simply wants to see the world burn and waged a war on Gotham's soul. While Batman was incorruptible even in dire straits, sadly the same couldn't be said for Dent. Ultimately Batman knew that in order to save the work he and Dent had begun, he would have to take the blame for Dent's murder and allow himself to become a fugitive.

The irony is that even though he probably never realized it, what lied within Batman was indeed the pure of soul champion he had been searching for; the white knight he thought he found in Dent. For only a man pure of heart would sacrifice himself without hesitation for the greater good. He would burden himself with the sins of others. In spite of all of his darkness and brooding, Bruce was the best of them. He always had been. Perhaps much to his chagrin, he's far more similar to Clark than he realizes.

The lesson here being that the external solutions we often seek; that semblance of completion, the resolution to that internal conflict, can usually if not always be found from within.

Funny how that was learned from a comic book movie.