Great Scene: “The Dark Knight”

“And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It’s fair. You live. You die.”

Some scenes just surprise the crap out of you. Then later, when you think back on it, you realize how well conceived it was from a story point of view, how perfect it was. In the movie The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent, a paragon of virtue, loses the love of his life Rachel Dawes directly because of a trick the Joker plays on Batman. When the Joker shows up in Dent’s hospital room, there to recover from burns he received the night of Rachel’s death, we have no idea what the Joker is doing. Why the hell is he here?

In thinking about it, we realize that the Joker knows how crushed Harvey would be at losing Rachel, how much fury and anger he would have, how deconstructed he is. As it turns out, it’s the perfect time for the Joker to work another of his crazed schemes — by putting a pistol in Dent’s hands and pressing the barrel of the gun into his (the Joker’s) forehead, literally putting Dent into a position where he can kill the man responsible for Rachel’s death, the person he loved more than life itself. But then the Joker says this:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

As we are able to delve deeper into the Joker’s world view, even though it’s exposition, it’s riveting — and a great scene.

For more articles in the Great Scene series, go here.