Another twitter account I enjoy is that of the British actor, Michael Warburton, which consists mostly of movie clips, many good-natured or humorous. This clip is neither. A memorable scene from The Dark Knight, the finest of superhero movies; thought provoking in every aspect, challenging all notions of means vs ends, of where one follows the rules and when one breaks them, and leaving it for us to decide. Heath Ledger is so unsettling and disturbing as the Joker because there is a grain of truth in much of what he says though it is surrounded by rot; you can see how a skilled manipulator operates. I noticed that three times during the film the Joker describes the incident resulting in his facial disfiguration, and each time he tells a different tale. He tells the tales to gain sympathy but he is only doing so to manipulate emotions; consistency is not important. As the Michael Caine character says elsewhere in the film, "some men just want to watch the world burn". The question for the rest of us is what do we do when faced with those people.
Other memorable lines from this scene:
"I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve"
"You have all these rules, and you think they'll save you"
The last brings to mind Anton Chigurh's question in No Country For Old Men, "if the rule you followed brought you to this, what use was the rule?".
“When the chips are down, these uh, these ‘civilised’ people will eat each other.”
— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 8, 2022
THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)#HeathLedger #ChristopherNolan
pic.twitter.com/u59kqQKyAM
For a more upbeat Warburton tweet and a palate cleanser, here is Aretha Franklin from 1964, before she found commercial success after her 1966 move from Columbia to Atlantic Records.
ARETHA FRANKLIN
— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 9, 2022
EVIL GAL BLUES (1964)
pic.twitter.com/KUIE3sHfN4
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