Hee hee ha ha ho ho hi hi!!

Knock Knock!
Who's there?

Knock KNOCK!!
Who's THERE?!

KNOCK KNOCK!!!
WHO THE *!$**# IS IT!!??

Silence.

Silence who?

Shut up and you will know!


I know better than tormenting my audience with such humour but I like to take things to a crescendo and then end with a low note. That my friends was a classic example. Now why would I want to do such a thing? That is because there is no climax for the joke teller when he has to tell a conventional joke. He knows the only outcome is that people are going to laugh but when he tells a joke (if you can call it that) like the one above he gets to see a variety of expressions. Starting with curiosity, restlessness (on the last KNOCK), surprise, disbelief, disappointment and anger. I love these expressions more than just seeing a blissful mirth on the recipient's face. Of course there are other jokers that like to see much more than simple expressions. They like to see confusion, trauma, anguish, pain and sheer terror. The one of the most well known of such sadistic Jokers is the The Joker from the Batman comics.

I was watching the Dark Knight the other day. Ledger's performance is mesmerizing. He creates such an embodiment of evil that its going to be very difficult for anyone else to recreate the manic chaos he creates in the movie. Its interesting to note that he was given "Batman and the Killing Joke" graphic novel as the reference. If you read that, you will realize the movie personification of the Joker has fewer dimensions to his character and has no emotional department in his upper floor above the neck compared to the Graphic novel. Essentially the Joker is what he is because of "one very bad day". That's why he says the Batman and he are very similar as the batman is also a result of one very bad day i.e day when his parents are murdered.

Incidentally the idea of keeping the Joker a very evil character devoid of any emotions whatsoever was director Nolan's idea. He wanted the emotional burden of the movie to be carried by Harvey Dent (Eckhart). So in actuality the movie is focused on the origin of Harvey Two Face and the emotional turmoil his mind goes through rather than that of the Joker. He is the main guy who swings from an extremely moralistic righteous path to the path of chaos and crime. And Why? Because he has one very bad day. He loses his sweetheart Rachel Dawes and his face literally in that one day. That said however the whole movie is about how the Joker is trying to prove a point. The point being how one very bad day can drive an average or even a more than average stoic man to insanity. How the binding of rules is nothing but a pathetic attempt to cling to rationality. He is trying to convince Batman more than anyone else and uses Harvey as his guinea pig. In the Killing Joke he tries to do the same to Commissioner Gordon in a much more brutal fashion but ultimately fails.

While Batman Begins showcased the origins of Batman extraordinally well the Dark Knight showed him to be a more or less regular superhero. I love Batman because he is the most complicated superhero. To start with he isn't a superhuman at all. He is a just a mortal who is walking the thin line between normalcy and insanity and juggling challenges of his orthogonal superhero life at the same time. He is a billionaire extraordinaire by day and a masked vigilante by night who beats the criminals to pulp with his bare hands. He is a chaos within himself but he tries to channelize the chaos towards goodness by having principles and ethics. He has left in him a small spark of sanity that acts like a light at the end of the tunnel. The light is guiding him in his life but the reality is that he is never destined to reach the end of the tunnel. So he is stuck in perpetual chaos but uses the light at the end of the tunnel as a goal, a taget for him to reach and to keep himself sane. There have been numerous situation where the Joker and others have driven Batman insane but he has managed to crawl back to sanity. He has seen both the worlds but yet he is frustrated by the fact that he doesn't fully understand the Joker. He actually has no clue about what the Joker is thinking and he doesn't realise that there is no point knowing what the Joker is thinking because the Joker's behaviour is chaotic beyond comprehension. Alfred in his infinite wisdom tries to make Batman understand that its impossible to get inside the Joker's psyche without going mad. The Batman series has some of the best character development for a comics. Every character has his or her own distinctive private and intellectual space. Bruce Wayne and Batman are two completely different characters even though they are the same person. The comics have been very particular in keeping it that way but the movies (not only Nolan's) have made that distinction a little fuzzy.

While I really think is that Health Ledger was a good choice for that role and has done ample justice to it but there could have been others who could have added much more shades to the Joker. Jim Carrey and Adrian Brody could have been great too. Adrian Brody is unbelievably talented and his persona very closely resembles the Joker in the comics as a bit more vulnerable earlier and I am sure he would have played the insane part as well as Ledger. Jim Carrey on the other hand is a natural as a lunatic and if used well has the potential to deliver surprisingly powerhouse performances. For all said and done, history has been written and I am waiting with baited breath for the next Batman cinematic installation due in 2012.