by Chris March

What is it about The Dark Knight that has swept the globe up in such a frenetic stir?

You might coin it the "Titanic" of comic book movies. You might tally it up in the record books as the first summer blockbuster to fire on all eight cylinders in a long, long time. You might call it Heath Ledger's brightest (or darkest, if you wish to be literal) hour. You might even call it a bluff of brilliantly orchestrated marketing.

But you know it goes deeper than that. Director Christopher Nolan and his gang have gouged open some deeper wound; woken up some slumbering slobber monster. You need more than a good movie with good actors and good marketing to become such a nuclear bomb. So perhaps to find the answer to "what is it about The Dark Knight," we need to take a look at ourselves before we start talking Oscar nominations, box office records and sequels.

(Oh, and if you're tired of hearing people gush over this movie, or haven't seen it yet and don't want to stumble over any light spoilers, you probably should stop reading. Like, now.)

The Dark Knight. Such could not be a more fitting title. Structurally speaking, yes, it is long, and it is dark. And with every twist, turn and parry through the movie (over 2 and a half hours worth), the film blooms into something too ripe and frightening to take as just a snap of the fingers for entertainment sake. This ain't Spiderman 4, folks. It's a cinematic thunderclap, and it’s made to shake your whole world up.

Nolan has made a few decent films in the past, but never before has he woven such a poem. It flickers and shines, like giving birth to a star in the middle of the darkest reach of outer space. And that's certainly what this movie is. Every shade of light, every script line, every gesture, grimace, smile, and kaboom is part of some sublime equation coercing into this new wild zeitgeist of life in 2008. Even surrounded by such madness, death, and loss (tragically, on screen and off), The Dark Knight is as alive as big screen cinema can get.

While highly entertaining, it's rather uneasy and will likely saw the ends of your nerves off. Referencing the title again, it’s the story’s unseen corners which make it so rattling. Nolan never shows what fills the Joker with such unhinged chaos. You don't see what Rachael Dawes doesn't see in Bruce Wayne. You don't see why Batman refuses to kill The Joker when you think he deserves it. You don't see why justice has to fight 10 times harder than chance does. You don't see why you fall in love with the bad guys, or why the characters you fall in love with have to die. You never see the speeding trains railing towards you, oh, but you hear them coming, like nails on a chalkboard. And that’s how tense you will feel the whole movie through.

The movie is about crooked love crashing around terrible bends. And about politics running full-sprint through a marathon with broken legs. It's the sun and the moon eclipsing, together, and you can't help but look directly into its dark burning center and see for yourself that we all have two sides to us. The light. And the dark.

And that's the beauty of it.

“This is what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object,” The Joker tells Batman while hanging upside down from a skyscraper.

Truthfully, the movie isn’t about Batman at all. Not really. It’s about us; the world’s superpowers, the world’s outcasts, the vengeful and the avengers. All crusading to stay alive while killing our demons at the same time. And how it’s uglied and scarred the best of us, changed us and criminalized us, made us dark and cornered.

We’ve all become two-faced, equals parts Joker and Batman in one way or another. A comedy and a tragedy. Or maybe that’s just how brilliantly Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, and Christian Bale played their characters respectively, but still…

No words ring louder from the film than Harvey Dent’s press conference. “The night is darkest just before the dawn. But I promise you… The dawn is coming.”

With hospitals blowing up and rescue workers fighting to save every life they can, you can’t help but think about all the wrinkles of now. And the chain reaction of everything that has happened since September 11, 2001. Terror threats, eroded freedoms, war, murder, death, global warming, fear, Paris Hilton, the fall of Britney Spears, super hero movies pwning box office records, declining economy…and the list stretches on.

You can't help from thinking about our government when Batman unveils his new ultimate spying device to Lucius Fox. "I must find The Joker," he scowls, like a hungry wolf. But even at the cost of Gotham's liberty and freedom? In a flash of light, you suddenly see very little separates super heroes from George W. Bush and government policies. Clearly, there is more of us in The Dark Knight's Gotham City than back issues of DC Comics.

We need air. We need light. It’s been so dark for so long now. Hope has all but become a flicker in many parts of the globe. Truth has become a question, not a statement. And where have all the cowboys gone?

But when Dent says the dawn is coming, something eclipses inside of me. It’s not a goofy line in a silly comic book movie. It’s convincing foreshadowing. In real life. In 2008. In America. In Pennsylvania. In Pottstown, Douglassville, Birdsboro, Reading, Philly, wherever I may roam. At that moment, I truly believe in Harvey Dent.

After she saw The Dark Knight, my mom said how depressing of a movie it was. “Too much death.” But I see it differently. That’s what the night is about. It dies every day when the sun breaks through the dawn. Though it’s uneasy and dark, The Dark Knight is the greatest glimmer of hope we’ve gotten for the future in a long time. The night is just a reminder that we’re alive. The light will always be coming back around, no matter how dark it gets.

And it’s hard not to get caught up in the current of hope that seems to be rebuilding an empire right now. Take the most obvious example, Barack Obama. “Change we can believe in.” Whether you like the dude for president or not, you cannot deny that his campaign has stirred up some new wild hope in the people he’s reached.

I can't believe I haven't seen anyone do this on the internets yet.

And as for the movie, when was the last time so many far-reaching people got together behind one common event. Certainly all these people are more than comic nuts. The 21^st century has been all about individualism and struggling to find new ways to define your freedom. For an overwhelming majority of people to be behind this movie says something about us. It says we can still be together, think together, share with one another. It’s been a long time since something like that has happened.

Perhaps we’re ready to rebuild our crumbling castle. We’re ready to believe in each other again. Could it be we are standing at the silver lining of a new golden era?

About death? Ha! Sorry mom, and anyone else who felt that way about The Dark Knight, but it's about coming back to life.

Don’t believe me? Watch the scene again where everything comes to full fruition, when The Joker’s unstoppable force hits Gotham City’s immovable object. Not Batman, but the crowds of scared citizens and crooks held for explosive ransom on their own respective tankers on the river. They turn the Joker’s orchestrated fear away, instead of on each other as so many of us have for a long time now. The tide, it feels, is turning.

“These people just showed you they are ready to believe in good.”

So am I, Batman. So am I.

…

Oh, and want to know how I got these scars?