I don't think we can assume that Harvey doesn't have a choice, so much as he clearly chooses to allow the coin to decide things for him. The importance of the coin in relation to Dent's own pathology is all the more evidenced by the fact that he "forgot" to use his coin right before Batman reminded him to do so.
Obviously, it's a choice to let the coin decide for him, but it's all he has, considering that he's lost the ability to decide for himself. If it hadn't been a coin, it could have been a magic 8 ball. The manifestation of Harvey's
particular insanity is that his life is worthless without the coin. If he couldn't have it, and the security it gave to him, he'd much rather die.
And using other scenes from BF to argue for Harvey's level of insanity isn't feasible, since the film played fast-and-loose with its portrayal of Harvey as it is.
That's a pretty broadly stated outlook on mental illness as a general concept.
It is, but despite there being different levels of insanity and mental illness doesn't change the fact that most are similar in the larger ways. A lot of mentally ill people don't have the sense to discern what's real and what isn't, nor what's reasonable and what is unreasonable. Harvey was insane in a way that the coin was his security blanket. Without it, life was infinitely more frightning and unpredictable. It's a fact that most people (insane or not) don't like to be in situations where they're not in control. Well, being insane, Harvey can't feel like he has any control over his life WITHOUT the coin. So much so that he lost all good sense when he saw the coins fly into the air, causing him to lose sight of the real one. The ONLY thing he could think about was getting his correct coin. There wasn't going to be the remote possibility of him being sensible UNTIL or UNLESS he found the correct coin and sanity was restored. The coin represents a tenuous link on sanity for him. He can be sensible when it's with him. All is right with his grip on reality. And maybe even if there hadn't been the confusion and he'd just missed the coin, seeing it fall, without the others to confuse him, he would have been fine and not fallen, though he might have developed other problems (but that's beside the point). But the lack of security in knowing which coin was his caused him to lose all sense, to the point where he wasn't thinking about if he was losing his balance. All he wanted was
his coin.
But the BF version of Harvey is pretty flawed anyway. His cavalier attitude to the coin's first outcome as being "correct" in Wayne Manor earlier in the film is not congruant with him giving a **** over his coin being confused for others and falling to his death later. So what we're arguing can only be the context of this scene alone compared to what Harvey is supposed to be.
But my larger point: many mentally ill people lack the sense that we have,
because they're insane. In some, the insanity manifests in childhood, before they are even mature enough to deal with it. People who go insane later on have a better chance of remaining sensible enough to discern reality from fantasy, yes, but insanity can eat away that sense after plenty of time goes by.
Knowing that Harvey was going to reach out or become distracted, sure. Knowing that Harvey was going to reach out to the degree that he would fall off a ledge? No. That's not something you can know, even if you suspect it.
Being the world's greatest detective, Batman would certainly know what I'm talking about. We're talking about someone who is insane, here. You can't assume that they're going to be sensible or logical, as that is not present in many mentally insane people. Like I said above, if he just distracted Harvey and made him miss catching his coin, things might have been different. At least Harvey would have known where his coin was. But to remove the knowledge/control of his coin by confusion was to take away Harvey's mental stability and security. So there was no chance of him behaving rationally. Not only did he NOT have his coin, but worse, he didn't even know where it was.
And again, whether Batman knows Harvey might do so or not, he is not responsible for Harvey's actions. Harvey is. Regardless of whether or not he has a "choice" in the matter.
Ask any psychiatrist who treats insanity on the level of Harvey Dent. They'll call you foolish. If someone's insane, expecting the kind of thought becoming of a sane person is itself insane. Like I said, it's like asking a cat to speak English. In many cases, when Insanity comes in, logic and sense leave. And it was that way in Harvey's case. At it's basic level, insanity means your brain is broken. So why expect it to act as if it's normal? You wouldn't expect a car with a cracked engine block to operate at full capacity, would you?
How do you even know Bruce could have caught Harvey? How do you know he had the equipment left to do so, or even the opportunity at that point?
I didn't say he had to save him. I just said that he had to have
tried. Reach out a hand as he starts to fall,
something. I don't expect him to rescue him the way he did Chase and Robin earlier, but for him not to be a cold-blooded killer, I expect either a sensible way to take Harvey down (ie; not do something which will almost certainly cause him to lose all reason and fall), or an attempt to keep him from falling, even as meager as putting out a hand to catch him as he begins his descent.
See, people keep saying "mental illness" like every mental illness in the world presents the same level of difficulty to the person experiencing it. That is just not the case.
Fact. And I addressed that above.
I stand by the following: If you are not controlling someone else's actions or directly harming them, then you are not killing them. Maybe they are, and maybe their mental illness is a part of that. It's pretty much that simple.
You don't have to have a degree in psychology (even though I'm pretty damn sure Batman DOES have one) to know that if he cares about his coin that much, he may not notice he's tipping over the edge when he tries to catch it. The right thing to do would have been to do something that
wasn't going to jepordize Dent's life to take him out of commission. But as I said way above, I think Bruce had his reasons, and that it wasn't
just to "defeat Dent".
Not to sound egotistical on this (even though I know I do), if Batman were real and reading this, he would be smart enough to see what I'm saying.
Did Batman do something that led to Harvey Dent's death after Harvey Dent's actions led him to die? Sure. Did Batman kill him? No.
I don't think it's rocket science (although, now I'm starting to think otherwise...). The coin means everything to Harvey. Shatter his world so severely, he may stop thinking about everything except said coin, and may lose his balance. That'd be like throwing a woman's child in front of a fast, oncoming bus. If they really care about their child, they're going to try and save him/her. And that may very well lead to them getting killed from an inability to think of anything else but their child. It was taking advantage of a weakness. Would you really buy it if Batman did what he did and Two Face just stood there saying "Awwww.... shoot! Oh well"? Someone as smart as Batman,
knowing that Harvey is certifiably insane, and
knowing how badly (as his friend), would be an idiot to assume that someone so insane would have any sense left, when they couldn't even make a decision for themselves on any level. That's an all-consuming obsession. And in spite of what some may think, common sense isn't a naturally occuring thing in humans like breathing is. I would let this slip if Robin had done it. But not Bruce. Bruce
certainly knew better.
