The Dark Knight

If superhero films reflect collective fantasies regarding the current state of the world, then this summer’s batch—Iron Man and its advocacy of military hardware as a tool of upright intentions, The Incredible Hulk and its belief that rampaging fury can be harnessed for positive purposes—has been a particularly comforting one. No such uplifting reveries, however, are dispensed by The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s majestically bleak vision of our modern age as dissolute, fragile and teetering on the precipice of anarchy.