The Dark Knight

I just returned from seeing The Dark Knight (or in Hebrew האביר האפל) which has been one of the most intense movie experiences I’ve had in recent memory. If you’ve seen the movie (once, twice, maybe even three times?) then you know what I mean. If you haven’t seen the movie, then I’ll let you experience it for yourself. My advice to you is: Go. It’s a dark, cynical, cryptic, labyrinthine film that left all of us (myself included) a little depressed and feeling a little dirty. But with plenty to chew over. It presents a bleak version of the world – through amazingly brilliant cinema – which, especially in a country currently in the midst of bleak moral and political forecast, is a little hard to swallow. But it owns it. And lives up to it. And delivers, and then some. And so The Dark Knight might just be the best comic book – or even action – movie ever.

Yeah, that’s right, I said it.

Reactions to the movie varied. My internal was one of intense praise, while my external was a bit more ambiguous. I think my during (especially during the break) and post movie reactions are strange. I get into it. But then people interpret them the wrong way. It’s partly an issue of “getting to know you… better.” We’ve all hung out socially for a good few weeks. And while that’s not a lot of time in an absolute sense, time here is camp-time, meaning a day is worth a week. Or more. So there’s been a lot of time to get to know each other. But everyday new things are revealed and exposed about new people. This student likes Dogma films. She’s a lesbian. He hates pickles. Her brother and I share a name. Etc, etc, etc. Tonight, I showed a new part of myself: the quiet, moody, unresponsive self I inhabit after viewing an intense (and also moving) film. It’s the “processing self.” But in a world when everyone is simultaneously treading lightly and forcefully plunging ahead with respect to personal space/boundaries, everything is simultaneously taken very seriously and personally, but also frivolously. I take my movie watching experience very seriously (after 6 years of the Arclight I’m very spoiled on this front), especially of movies I am excited about. I can come off as intense. But not in a badass kind of way. I’m learning, especially with new people, how I’m viewed. What limited conversation means. How interactions, no matter how small, set off a chain reaction in someone’s mind.

But the weird thing about my reactions is that as bleak as The Dark Knight is, I don’t feel depressed or dirty or weirded out. And I don't think I come off like that. On the bus ride back I was arguing with a classmate whether the movie had a positive or negative (or muddled) message about morality and society. He was an English Literature student at Oxford, so he was pretty good at his argument (that the message was negative/muddled) but he didn’t shake me. I think the movie hopes for – and expects – the best in people. Nolan etc. don’t feel society is doomed, but rather we need a push in the right direction.

Maybe that push comes from future Jewish rabbis, cantors, and educators of America?