Reply #5: A friend in Finland gave me his view of it.

[TexasObserver]

I haven't seen it yet, and probably won't until it comes out on DVD. My Finn Friend said:

"I thought the movie was highly political.

I thought the Joker represented how America sees terrorism and fear: faceless, irrational, crazy and unpredictable. Also, I thought they had put a lot of "terrorist rhetoric" into Joker's lines, about American hypocrisy and how easily civil order can be brought down if you don't play by the rules.

Batman represented America's way of handling this terror, he's the traditional man-of-action figure who ignores the constraints of bureaucracy and just does the job while the rest of the world does a circle jerk at the UN. But when the Joker starts wreaking havoc, Batman is forced to question his ethics and bend the rules to justify the ends, kinda like America with a lot of things that's been going on after 9/11.

I guess Harvey Dent symbolized American idealism or something. The movie showed how fickle that idealism is if pushed to the limits by a faceless terror, and eventually the terror peels out the ugly side of America."


He's a solid thinker, so I value his POV. I'll make my own evaluation of the film when it comes out on DVD. Like V for Vendetta, I think it helps to understand the graphic novel, the traditions of same, and the likely attempt to make it relevant to today's conditions.