Insanity, by the textbook definition, is the repetition of the same thing over and over again with the expectation of different results. By this definition, the Joker is not insane. His attacks are never exactly identical and the outcome is actually not at all his concern. He is the catalyst, the uncontrollable element delighting in the randomness of the chaos he creates. Therefore, one cannot call him insane. However, he is most definitely, irrefutably mad and madness is quite possibly the more terrifying of the two mental instabilities. You see, madness is that little flaw within us all that is part of our genetic makeup as human beings. It is that little voice that gnaws silently, and sometimes not so silently, at the edge of our reason, telling us that all of this around us is fragile and weak and meaningless, that the rules we try so hard to keep in place to protect us from the "bad people" and make us "normal" actually do more harm than good at times. If we are lucky, we go through life successfully ignoring that voice, that flaw and are able to live our lives peacefully, but not all are so lucky. It is a powerful force, madness, and those who cannot withstand its siren call are overwhelmed by it, drown within it and reemerge as the vicious darkness that terrifies us so acutely. But is it madness itself that drives people over the edge or the attempt to live by and enforce the rules we instinctively know are abstract and futile that eventually dismantles the armor we are taught to build around our souls to keep the madness at bay? Is it the loss itself we experience when we realize the rules we have upheld have failed us? Is it the desire for revenge? Is it a primal hunger for the power we have knowingly denied ourselves for the utopian ideal that is known as "the sake of the greater good"? The Joker is one character which has succumbed to his madness and revels in it, but THE DARK KNIGHT proves that everyone, even the "best" of society, have their breaking point.

Indeed, when it came to portraying a city filled with citizens on the verge of their breaking point, there was not one flawed performance in this film. From the mobs of terrified people demanding justice and protection to Batman himself, there was not one actor or actress I witnessed that was not able to tap into that unspeakable aspect of their beings so that the fear, the anguish, the pure rage expressed on the screen did not reach through and mercilessly thrash the audience with its honesty. This cast became Gotham City. Not the Gotham City of your childhood comic books and not the plasticized Gotham City of the 1990's films. No, this is the true, damned soul of the city, stripped entirely of all of its glamour and legend down to the rust and screams and an unspoken hate. It is a Hell on Earth, a place in the world where even the purest soul eventually brutally dies with blood on their hands. And yet, you see it in their eyes, these cowering, growling clusters of Gotham denizens, the ember of hope in a hopeless world. It is heartbreaking because, as the audience, you know that the war between such criminals as the Joker will never end, that the world will continue to breed worse and worse creatures to prey upon the weak. You know that their battle is in many ways endless and useless and pitiful, and yet that ember glows, though dwindled to a fleeting pinpoint of light from its past fierceness.

It is hard for me to mention, in detail, only a couple of performances in this review for, as I aforementioned, the entire cast of THE DARK KNIGHT was stellar and deserve accolades of immense proportions. Each actor has caused me to sit and contemplate, not only the story of Batman in a whole new light, but also such philosophical meditations as the fragility of society and the human psyche. For a mainstream DC Comics movie to move me in such a strong way is truly beautiful. I could write pages and pages discussing the intricacies of this film and how each and every person should go and see this film on the big screen in order to absorb the true profundity of its message. However, this is a film review and not a thesis, so I must mention to you a few of the many, many highlights and allow you, the next viewer, to make your own conclusions and revelations upon seeing it.

The first performance I would like to mention is that of Christian Bale. Christian Bale's Batman is unprecedented. It is breathtaking to observe the self-constructed dichotomy between the worlds of Bruce Wayne and the avenging vigilante Batman, which Bale has pinpointed so acutely, and to watch the crumbling of that wall separating the two personalities. As if it were their own emotions, one feels his exhausted struggle between the maintenance of the ultra-suave guise of the billion-dollar trust fund baby and the lonely barely-controlled rage of the superhero he truly believes he has become. You witness him begin to question his own conviction, his own sanity and at times you fear he has begun that downward spiral into madness. While you can't help but cheer him on in his moments of spectacular heroics, it is undeniable the destruction he causes in his all too human attempts at justice. And, when the Kevlar suit comes off and the bruises and cuts are revealed the cheering turns to apprehension. Bale has taken an iconic superhero character such as Batman and reinvented him in a disturbingly realistic way. Indeed, this year has birthed a new breed of such movies that have taken childhood fantasies and cynically twisted them into works of pure cinematic genius.

And at the heart of all of his impenetrable darkness stands Heath Ledger's Joker. For months now the world has been inundated with tales of how legendary, how mind-bogglingly brilliant his performance in THE DARK KNIGHT is. Many had already decided that it will be impossible to cast another actor in this role for no one will ever be able to portray a more demented, more complex Joker then as did Ledger. However, until you are sitting in the theater watching the film and realizing that you have utterly forgotten that it is Heath Ledger behind the smeared makeup and knives, that he has immersed himself within the character so completely that his own identity is nowhere to be seen upon the screen, do you truly understand what these earlier statements had meant. In previous Batman movies, the Joker has always been a somewhat campy character, colorful and maniacal in his humor towards death and destruction. However, no other actor, not even Jack Nicholson, ever truly understood who and what the Joker is and his darkness, his madness, his highly intelligent fascination with pure chaos. Ledger somehow understood all too intimately the true soul of the character, tapping into his own internal madness and mold himself into conscienceless force of nature around which the rest of movie spins out of control like a hurricane. Indeed, it was a performance that brought tears to my eyes by the end for I realized it is true, that there will never be another actor that can play this character again without paling miserably in the light of his predecessor. The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT desired to deliver to Gotham City a "better class of criminal" and, indeed, that is exactly what Heath Ledger has given the cinematic world. We shall all raise a glass to toast his memory.

There are few films that successfully transcend superficial intent of the original script, that move beyond the mere desire to entertain the audience to reach for and obtain cultural iconism. These few become the new bar by which all other films are then measured. Director Christopher Nolan and the cast of THE DARK KNIGHT must be commended for raising that bar for the cinematic world once again. This movie is not simply another "superhero movie". It is a brutally intense commentary on the fragile "civilized" world we humans have created for ourselves and how perilously close to its destruction we are at all times. Yes, that is a not exactly a new observation of our existence here on Earth. However, this film takes it to the very edge of sanity and allows us to dangle off the edge just enough to see how much worse it would be if we completely fell over into the abyss. Genius. Pure genius.