Watched The Dark Knight again..TL;DR post

And, after what I've experienced the last 12 years of my life and how the world has broken down around me I see why it is likely top 10 movie of all-time.

When i first saw it in 2008 I loved it, but the depth of its meaning was lost to me. Maybe because I had not yet met the devil and danced in the pale moonlight as I would in the subsequent 12 years since.

The character of Batman and The Joker, in my view after seeing it again, was enlightenment that very few others likely saw their first time and why the movie meant so much to them.

The Joker was a good man once before. We will find this out assuredly when the self titled is released later this year. The world around him crushed him. While attempting to live his life and protect what he loved it all crashed down. Broken and beaten he began to see the world for what it was in his own eyes. And I, after losing almost everything and finally my health (a rare form of colitis that cannot be treated with any medicine) i often feel that pull. It is dark and it is lonely. The urge to crack never dies. It can only be tamed. You don't fit with any crowd, even the crowds you once relished. You don't fit at church; anywhere. You begin to be labeled a recluse and your family thinks you are undone.

For the joker he used his belief all men are innately evil and vile when the cards are dealt against them to his advantage. The pain he endured; the anger he channeled made him invincible. Death didn't own him because he didn't fear it. Living was his fear. Living the life the world demanded. He was going to show the world they were tricked. That chaos was needed to bring about the reality that all is am illusion.

His pass to Batman was that he was being used by those he swore to protect and he would be cast aside as sure as he himself was. They were mirror images of each other. Both broken; both lost to violence and tragedy.

For Batman he still held hope that what he had endured was not for nothing. That there are still people who cared and although they may not understand how life can beat them senseless without them seeing it coming doesn't mean they will become the evil that they experience--they aren't at their base level vile and violent. That was his hope.

I'm sure many here who read this post will hurl their own shallow remarks. It is fine. I actually relish it. I believe as the joker did. The world is sick. It is vile and it doesn't care if you are a good person or evil; it is only an act whether knowingly or unknowingly and irrelevant in the end; it doesn't care one shite about your life or your death. And to that I say touche. Neither do I. Every time I see a good deed I realise it is for their own self worth. And if it is for a split moment in time a truly selfless act it is only fleeting and their true base self will resurface in short order. And, if they are ever confronted with something that tests the depths of their self worth they will crumble to bits like everyone else around them.

The illusion of life is truly tragic. Few every see it. Tragedy and those who have been broken to their knees see it and they begin to become something they never knew was there.

Just as with both Batman and The Joker they become different and never fit in while being ostracized and the empty condolences you mock with as empty of a grin.

The depth Nolan went to portray it all is breathtaking and beyond belief that he pulled it off. I guess he knew only few would grasp its depth. I am thankful I was one of them.