We watched “The Dark Night” last week (at the Weirs Beach Drive-in on Lake Winnipesaukee, NH). The last drive-in experiece I had was when I was Eli’s age (11), and we watched “Son of Flubber” with Ed McMurray.

This was somewhat different.

There was the typical (for postmodern movie-goers) blurring of the lines between good and evil. The Joker was a likeable character (especially when blowing up Gotham General Hospital). And the Batman was scary. Sure, he always managed to throttle back his anger. But barely.

The Joker wasn’t after money. His character is akin to the Satan (Zatan) in the book of Job. He has a jaundiced view of humanity and he detests hypocrisy. Or it might be better to say he delights in exposing it (it’s his ace in the hole, because he always figures on the failure of humanity to live for something other than our own skin).

Meanwhile, the Batman struggles with the overwhelming burden of cleaning up the streets alone. Not that folk don’t want to help him (in the DA’s office or in homemade Batman suits); he simply prefers working alone.

So his failure is inevitable.

He fights on two fronts. The first is the exhausting task of taking on the world’s evil and his need to give that work to others (not share it, but pass it on). But the second presents him with a Gordoan knot: to fight evil, he believes that he must become evil. So he faces the final adversaries of irrelevance or annihilation (isn’t that what becoming that which he fights boils down to?).

Either way, evil triumphs.

The Joker is both right and wrong about humanity. We are driven by selfishness in even our goodness (he delights in presenting people with “the lesser of two evils” dilemmas, like demanding one person be sacrificed so that many others may live). Yet some human choices (self-sacrifice and the refusal to kill enemies) stymie him.

He repeatedly tells the Batman that the two of them need each other. You wonder if the Joker’s need of the Batman involves his enjoyment of a good challenge. While he never believes the Batman will prevail, he’s in no particular hurry to be done with the fight. Like Batman, the Joker would lose his identity without a worthy adversary.

In the end, Hollywood pays clumsy homage to the “common man” in the style of Spiderman. The Batman cannot enjoy his victory over the Joker, because the fight was someone else’s to lose.

So the Batman chooses the only available option: sacrifice for the good of all. And the role the people will play?Crucify him.

Bo