“We burned the forest down.” -- Alfred Pennyworth, The Dark Knight

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The Dark Knight is the best American film of the decade. It tells a story that is engaging, entertaining, relevant and while posing a string of difficult, gut-wrenching ethical dilemmas. It is among the great American films that couches its cynicism in optimism. Like the greatest of American films, it has heroes who are, at times, deplorable people, and it offers statements about contemporary society that straddle a line, one horribly pessimistic, the other quite bright.

Technically the decade doesn’t end until 2011, but since we celebrated the new millennium a year early in 2000, I figured I would write about what I considered the best film of the decade. Upon posting a link to Roger Ebert’s best films of the decade, my friend Kim, a film critic for the Tulsa World, asked me for my list. After giving it a half-hour’s thought and reviewing what I’ve written in the past here at CBK.com, here’s my list, in no particular order save for the first two:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
3. Kill Bill 1 and 2
4. Before Sunset
5. Hard Candy
6. 28 Days Later
7. Gangs of New York
8. United 93
9. Gladiator
10. Walk the Line

Other films I considered for this list included Inglorious Basterds and Punch Drunk Love. Also, I enjoyed Indies like Juno, Storytelling, Red Belt and Interview. They’re all good – but great?

Now, though, let’s talk about TDK.

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The quote above regarding burning down the forest comes as an answer given by Alfred to Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. Early in the film, Alfred tells one of those stories that doesn’t seem to have a point – when he was in Burma ages ago, there was an issue with an interloper hiding in a forest who was mucking up the business at hand. The point of the initial story is that the interloper, who’d been stealing prized stones from the powers that be, was discovered to be leaving them by the wayside. Like a bank-robber setting his seized cash on fire, there was no way to understand how or why the thief was doing what he was doing.

Alfred uses the story to explain to Wayne that some men are nihilists – they seek havoc and chaos for its own sake, play by no civilized rules and, therefore, cannot be counted on to behave the typical expected in warfare. Later in the film, Wayne asks Alfred how they handled the interloper who wasn’t playing by the rules, and his answer is chilling and prescient: “We burned the forest down.”

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It would be a confession were it not a published fact, but a few days after 9/11, I wrote a column for The Daily O’Collegian that I often regret, and am conversely often proud of (I tried to find it so I could link to it, and there’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back). For my newer readers, the context is that I was a graduate student at Oklahoma State University, and I wrote a daily column for its paper. Like most Americans, 9/11 was the most psychically traumatic acts I witnessed that didn’t involve me or a loved one.  

My column – I want to say it was published on 9/13 – was that we should burn Afghanistan to the ground, the logic being that it was an Al-Qaeda stronghold. I received a horrifying reaction – most readers who bothered to email me about it (this was well before the glorious days of comment-enabled online fun-time) told me I was a terrible person, or – at the very least – trying to induce genocide.

My point – and I freely admit was not elegantly stated – that facing any enemy willing to do what Al-Qaeda had just accomplished, you burn down the forest they’re hiding in and leave it to future generations to decide whether or not the collateral damage was worth it. Right or wrong, good or bad, when hit the way we were hit on 9/11, the politics of politeness cease and – again – you burn down the forest. Mine is not a politically correct view, but if my strategy had been employed, I submit we would not still be waging 19^th-century battles with 21^st-century tools in Afghanistan (and Pakistan and Yemen and everywhere else it seems).

Many of you reading this will find this abhorrent, both morally and ethically. For a moment, I do not blame you, and although there are times at cringe at some of the things I said, I still stand by the ultimate point: burn the forest down.

As the weeks, months and years unfolded after 9/11, we learned many things. For a start, we learned that almost all of the active perpetrators of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. We learned that almost all of them were well-educated, well-heeled and well-financed (sort of the same as being well-heeled, yes). Forgotten by many was that our interests had repeatedly been attacked by Al-Qaeda, notoriously the World Trade Center in 1993 and the USS Cole, but they weren’t the only ones. America spent the 1990s treating radical Islam in general and Al-Qaeda in particular as a law-enforcement issue; no fan of Bill Clinton, I suspect if he saw 9/11 in the future, he would’ve taken a much different route.

What we’ve learned, as a public, since then, is that there is no level Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists will not sink. Regarding the latter, the people of Israel have know this for years – there’s a reason fanatics don’t light themselves on fire on their commercial airliners. Regarding the former, there’s a reason why the Bush Administration did not treat AQ and Islamic fanaticism as a law-enforcement issue, but as a national security issue. We are now, upon seeing things done differently, coming to understand why the mythical Bush Doctrine was right.

Like The Joker in The Dark Knight and the film’s protagonists and public at large, I don’t think, after 9/11, Americans were prepared for an enemy that decapitates journalists on video in order to send a message. More troubling, I still don’t think we’re prepared for such an enemy.

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The Dark Knight serves as a metaphor of sorts for that reality, and for what the public is willing to accept not only from its enforcers, be they law enforcement or military, and – more importantly – from its villains. Though many things to many people, The Dark Knight is an expression of what we will and will not allow in civilized society, and what we’re ultimately willing to do about the evil that occasionally forces itself upon us in spectacles so public they cannot be ignored.

Batman is the only “comic book” character I’ve ever really gotten into, at least of the superhero variety. I have been obsessed to a non-nerdy degree with Bruce Wayne since childhood, primarily because he didn’t have super powers. He is a mere mortal and uses his family’s fortune to fight crimes the police can’t or won’t fight.

The Dark Knight, the second in the again-reloaded Batman franchise, is a parable about American and its War on Terror. The horrifying part about this parable as it relates to America is that our leadership do not see current events as terrorism, nor do they see any morality in waging a war against it. I am aware that Pres. Obama’s press secretary finally used those dreadful world “the war on terror” when discussing an Al-Qaeda-trained, Islamic extremist who failed in detonating an explosive device contained within his underwear. Well, he didn’t fail, the detonator did.

The Dark Knight is among a string of testosterone-fuelled, critically acclaimed, box-office-busting megafilms that have been embraced by Conservatives. Like Ironman and Gladiator, the film is jammed full of metaphors about the war on terror, fighting tyranny and never, ever backing down from a fight, no matter how superior or insane one’s opponent may be. The Dark Knight is far superior to both of those otherwise excellent films. Aside from its technical mastery, as a story, it is gripping, complex, surprising and ethically blurry without being ethically neutral. Stories like this have captured Man’s attention since we began codifying such stories – there is more of The Aeneid in The Dark Knight than there is Batman Forever.

If you haven’t seen TDK – how that would be possible I’ve no idea, since I think most people have seen it twice – the central question is one of ethics. Batman is an effective crime-fighter because no one knows his identity, thus villains can’t go after him. Batman is not above the law, though – he’s a vigilante and he’s wanted by certain parts of Gotham’s law enforcement community, to say nothing of its criminal element. The Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger in one of the greatest performances ever turned in by an actor on any project anywhere at any time) has threatened to kill people daily until Batman reveals himself. In short, Batman and Gotham are put in a corner: either their most effective crime-fighter is neutered, or The Joker will continue killing people.

What follows from this proposition is a repeated poking, prodding and ultimate struggle with Aristotle’s Nicomechean Ethics, loosely meaning that most of us agree on the basics of right and wrong, but once we’re in agreement, where do we go from there?

[That is an intentional exaggeration of what Aristotle’s concept was, but this is a film review, not a second-year course in Aristotle. –CBK]

The Dark Knight dwells in this territory of right and wrong for much of its narrative, culminating in a bizarre, sadistic and ultimately in/humane setpiece regarding a ferry full of convicts and a ferry full of civilians being given the option to blow up the other’s vessel. While the fantastical parts are in fact sadistic – it’s not a pretty proposition either boat is given – its larger theme defined by its outcome (realistic or otherwise) speaks to the sense that, in civilized society, even our convicts do not behave as nihilists when z’rubber meets z’road.

In the last decade, the world has had to alter its sense of what evil actually is. World War II’s great villains – Hitler, Stalin and to a lesser-publicized but easily in the same category Japanese-committed atrocities – were all giant, Statist operations. The enemy we fight now – just like the enemy in The Dark Knight – does not appear to operate from any code. Yes, “radical” Islam is the foundation for this madness, but I tend to believe it goes much, much deeper than that (every 15 seconds or so, an article is published in a psychology journal dealing with this aspect, so I’ll not dwell). Our enemy is nihilistic to the core – perhaps AQ-ops believe that they are going to be with Allah, and while I think the radicalized form of Islam that we refuse to acknowledge as-policy is the root of this problem, at times it seem to be more convenient (though make no mistake, the first profile is regional citizenship and religious affiliation).

The Dark Knight was the best film I saw in the last 10 years for many reasons, but its application to modern times is its most relevant reason for being a great film. Technically, it’s masterful, but so was Avatar, a film I saw in the best possible conditions, and I was bored stiff. Its story – for its tension, its fluidity, its clarity – is masterful. Its characters, from top-to-bottom, are complex, absent cliché, and well-thought.

It’s by far the best-film I’ve seen in the last 10 years produced in the last 10 years.