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"Why so serious?"
Last night I went to the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight" It was perhaps the most beautifully dark, amazingly morbid and sensationally wonderful films I have ever seen. A pretty high order but when I think back on it I can only add more adjectives relative to the ones above. It was beautifully acted (Heath Ledgers Joker will be remembered for years to come) and written (a taut plot with amazing characters and startling twists and turns.) The visual style and sounds and everything was perfect. Oh yes and the depravity, you mustn't forget that. This film was dark, it gave a wonderful (if horrid) picture of man and where his depravity can lead. But perhaps more than the film I was startled by the audience in the theatre. There were moments in the film where I could barely help but avert my eyes away from some fiendish act being portrayed, But to my dismay and horror these were the parts the audience lived for. People would burst out in laughter as The Joker (a raving sado-masochist) would pull of antic after antic and watch wide eyed in delight as the body count was raised by another ten. At these moments I could barely watch and everyone else seemed transfixed in a state wonder and delight. This was sad to me, It reminded me that we don't need a "good film" to show us a perfect picture of man in his ungodly state, we have so many reminders all around. I walked out of the theatre perfectly aware of mans depravity but also not without a sense of wonder in a God who can take us in this state and make us like him. Imagine that.
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2 comments:
The problem with making a film dark and terrifying is that it terror only has an effect on people who are unaccustomed to it. There are two ways to deal with this fact. The first is to use it only in small doses, so it always has an effect. The other is to use increasingly more, so that each story is a little more terrifying but just as effective as the last one.
The problem with this second alternative is that it spins both artists and audience into a cycle of increasing morbidity that ends in the Colosseum. I'll bet you'd laugh at the cheesy violence in old black and white films, the same way some people laugh at The Dark Knight. If the cycle continues, there may eventually be nothing so horrific that people don't laugh at it. And then we won't be human anymore.
hmmm that's really truly David. I noticed the same thing throughout the movie. It's interesting..haha I have a whole rant on the movie on my blog and hadn't seen yours til today.
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