The Joker and the Mule
After watching ‘The Dark Knight’ in the wee hours of the night, I was stuck with one thought – a feeling of depression of ‘did the fascinating joker deserve to be in the claustrophobic world of Gotham?’. Was he not worthy of inhabiting universes and parauniverses of Asimovian Science fiction world – much like the great ‘Mule’ of the foundation series. It was a pity to watch joker grow bigger and bigger dwarfing Batman, Commisioner Gordon, Harvey Dent and the ‘Gotham City’ ultimately nipped out , cut to size, for a movie running for 3 hours has only that much space – A sheer insult to the amazing portrait. This thought spoilt my feeling of awe for the spectacle that is ‘The Dark Knight’. Please dont read this as a diatribe on the Nolan Brothers gritty update on the fantasy comicbook ‘hero’ Batman. Rather it is a tribute to the ‘anarchist’ villain they have conjured up as ‘The joker’.
Off course Joker serves up every thrill that a hollywood super villain is supposed to provide. He even embraces the stereotype of earlier ‘Batman villains’ when he barges into a party in progress to make an attempt on the life of Harvey Dent. He is able to barge in to the secret meetings of underworld dons – much like what Jack Nicholson’s joker did in the Tim Burton’s movies – no plausible explanations are provided in this supposed to be more ‘realistic’ and gritty version of Batman. In either cases, the directors were pretty sure that the sight of such a ’spectacle’ as villain is enough to numb/awe those portions of our miniscule human brains that have been asking countless ‘whys and wherefores’ in so many movies. And to the credit of both Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger – their directors were aptly justified in their assumption.
However the character of a villain like Joker transcends actors, movies and belongs perfectly in the domain of literature where their thoughts, feelings and actions are able to find the space and freedom. Unfortunately Batman is ‘just a comic book’ and is much too action oriented to create a literary awe in us. It is here that the Nolan brothers deserve their justified credit. They have writtenthe ‘Joker’ in a way that he is able to grow into an ‘enigma’ – a character without motivations that any normal human being can understand – this makes the whole plot ’simply unpredictable’. However the necessities of the medium prevent the Joker and company from becoming an odyssey and in the end when I saw the joker hang – humiliated, I felt that it is not the character – but the film itself that is hanging – suspended from an incomplete orbit of character arc development as if the butterfly never came out of the cocoon.
In contrast Issac Asimov creates a ‘Mule’ in Foundation series – a character as much a freak as the joker, yet is able to consume two full parts of the novella and reaching a great height without ever falling, holding off the ‘Seldon plan’ and the formidable second foundation till his physical expiration. Asimov presents him as a greater enigma, an entity whose history no one knows or whose psychology no one ever conquers. While Joker is a self proclaimed instrument of anarchy, Mule is an agent of supreme order established through strange mutant powers of one individual. Much like the Joker, mule is able to drop in and out of hostile places with utmost impunity – however those appearances are easily verifiable and elaborated at length in the novel – a luxury that a 120 page screenplay couldn’t afford the ‘helluva character’ in The Dark Knight.
Both the joker and mule are shown to be people with tough youth and childhood that leaves their physical and mental constituents scarred and altered. Both stop at nothing less than complete conquest of the world they purvey, the sad thing being that Joker has to stay content with the conquest of Gotham alone, while the Mule has the whole galaxy to conquer and rule. Another travesty that cuts the journey of the joker short.
So what is the end result of this post – less about cinema, merits and demerits of The Dark Knight and more about one character? It is a plea to write the story of Joker as a novel, complete the progression and background his character, while retaining the same enigma he is to his adversaries. So that he may be compared against his character cousin – the legendary Mule from the foundation novels by Asimov.
And what about the Dark Knight? well it was fine till the scene where Rachel dies and the screenplay that had a lot of time till that scene failed to show any emotion from Bruce Wayne/Batman and when the Subash Ghai style convicts Vs Civilian ship blow off match social experiment happens, I found the bat that was flying at a good altitude making a hurried and hard landing in terms of impact and interest. For once I agreed with the nominations this year with respect to TDK. However joker is one helluva ride for whatever scenes he occupies and three cheers for the late Heath Ledger and the Nolan bros.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
hmmm.. good write up….
but for me The Dark knight dint work…. it was easily the most over-rated movie this year…. nothing path breaking or outstanding… one more of the ordinary movies….
yes…. the joker is a great character sketch….but then again joker is just one among the many villains in Gotham…
Yes!!
somewhere in a corner of my mind I kept thinking that the character of joker seems familiar…but I was unable to connect the dots..alas…the mule…thank you…
Somehow, the scene, in which joker was hanging, didn’t bother me that much…he was not defeated…not that I would like him to win…besides joker was more than just a person.
I think Joker, Mule and Batman has a lot in common in terms of their troubled childhood and disturbed youth. Difference is in the way they channeled it.
Interesting article.
the hanging scene was the last time we saw the joker cuz heath ledger died and no new scenes could be shot
@Abhay: I sincerely hope that another actor is not painted and brought in as the Joker for a future installment of Batman. Frankly Nolans should move out of Batman ASAP – not that they are not doing good stuff – but they are being held from doing greater stuff because of this ‘Am I a vigilante or a parallel police?’ guy.
@ jaiganesh…
finally an article to match the genius of Joker. Both in term of the character and the acting. For me Joker was the ultimate villian, his mannerisms, his modulation, his “logic” was was so fascinating .
But the joker empahises a preety valid point, that in this world only the topsy turvy survive!!!
@vikrant
The Mule never shows himself to anyone except a handful of his close converts. The Joker thrives in the frenzy created by his public appearances broadcast by the sensationalizing media – however their aim is to overwhelm the psyche – in different ways. There is a parallel to the Foundation series in the Batman saga- even if it is laid out in a much smaller scale. In the foundation series of novels, HAri Seldon and the second foundation have a plan for the Foundation and galaxy – to bring in order and to prevent chaos. In Gotham, we have Batman, Gordon and Alfred putting in a plan to lift Gotham out of Chaos and corruption. They take pains to pave way for a leader, symbol of inspiration in Harvey Dent – much in the same way the second foundationers do with their minimal intervention to keep the foundation alive. This is a marked departure from the original vision of Batman. Always it was the Batman who was the public face of justice in Gotham. Nolan brothers have seemingly moulded the vigilante night roamer’s story to a social engineering project much like Asimov. Were they inspired by the Foundation series? I dont know – but they sure have made their case to helm the Foundation series of novels that provide ample scope for their directorial skills – much better than what a Batman can provide them.
@shreyansh
Thanks…
While complementing Joker’s mannerisms and quips, what about his scars – I thought that was a pretty cool things to misdirect and obfuscate the nature of his scars – to add to the enigma of his character. In one scene he says that his father carved his face and when he talks to Rachel – he mentions that he carved his face himself to empathize with his disfigured wife. No one knows and in the end it came to no one cares. It is rather sad that this being a movie, such enigmatic details could never be explored fully at the cost of ‘action’. I was happy though that the makers never put in a back story for Joker and his disfigurement.
@ Jaiganesh
The thing about the scars is a good point. Actually i wont be suprised if we make a “MYTHO” charatcer of joker.The character has many layers, its multi-dimensional, that its difficult to pin point- where the villionous streak ends and where the Philosopher starts. His “speech” to Dent in the hospital, wasnt the one you would hear from a negative character.
But the most fascinating aspect of his character was that his “presence” dwarfed everone else and his each line made you think about “way of life” and the eternal debate of ” Good vs Evil”.
I am writing a script of how the story unflods post the same debate in the ships and what would happen if joker lives on. Long Live the Joker!!!
@Shreyansh,
Just give the mother with the child the remote – she wouldn’t flinch a second before switching the remote on . one of the weakest scene in a Nolan movie where characters dont stop making practical and dark choices