Recently in The Dark Knight Category

We've been discussing (with regard to "In the Cut Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)" what kind of film grammar Christopher Nolan was using (it's traditional narrative continuity editing -- most of the time). One of my key questions was: Is it, "as the filmmakers have said, more concerned with realism -- photographing real objects, including actors and miniatures, in real space? We can see how it does what it does. The question is: What's the result? How do these stylistic choices enhance or diminish the impact of the movie?"

Just came across this 2005 interview with Nolan (by Sean Axmaker, for GreenCine), talking about his approach to reviving the Batman movie franchise. In a word? Realism, according to Nolan:

For me, the exciting opportunity was that you had a studio with this phenomenal character, wanting to re-introduce the character to the big screen and looking for a fresh way to do it. I felt I had never seen a superhero story tackled with a real degree of reality, of seriousness, in a way, and Batman, to me, as the most mortal, the most ordinary in terms of abilities, of superheroes -- he has no super powers -- he's the natural choice for trying to tell a superhero story in a realistic manner. I just felt that would be something I've never seen before and something that would be really fun and exciting to do. [...]

It presents enormous physical challenges for the crew, particularly because I insisted on doing things for real rather than employing visual effects, so there was a tremendous amount of stunt work and so forth. And I insisted on doing everything main unit, not using any second unit action crews. We wanted the whole film to have a consistency that applied to the action set pieces as well as to the character scenes.

In "In the Cut Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)," I sought to pinpoint any and all possible reasons for the confusion I've always felt while watching part of an action sequence in "The Dark Knight." Some dismissed it as nitpicking (which is their prerogative), that criticism should be limited to looking at a movie in real time. But I felt I should go beyond the familiar critical generalizations ("Adjective!" "Adverbly adjective!") and try to locate precisely what I found disorienting and understand why I found it that way.

A few others, unfortunately, became confused about what I actually said or did not say in the 19-and-a-half-minute video, so I thought, for the record, I should publish a transcript to make it easier to reference. (Then I can just send links to those who misunderstand or misrepresent.) I don't write out a script for these essays -- I watch the movie, record what I want to say and then edit my remarks. So this, to the best of my ability, is an annotated transcription (with certain passages in bold for emphasis) of the narration in the finished video:

TITLE: "It's quite easy to over-cut a sequence: make it visually exciting and lose track of what is happening and who the characters are....

-- Lee Smith, editor ("The Dark Knight," "Inception"), interviewed in The Australian, October 30, 2010

[More from that interview here.]

NARRATION: The thing is, what he's talking about there is, I think, one of "The Dark Knight"'s most painfully obvious shortcomings. Its visual grammar is a mess and sometimes that results in scenes that are just incoherent.

So, when I saw that quote about action from the editor of "The Dark Knight," I thought maybe I should go back and take a close look at one of the movie's most famous action sequences and look at it like an editor, and try to figure out what information was being conveyed, shot by shot, and what it was that maybe I was missing...

Click here to watch larger video on Vimeo.

Annotated full transcript of the video here, for easy reference.

In the Cut: Piecing together the action sequence
Part II: A Dash of Salt
Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco (Bullitt, The Lineup, The French Connection)

The first of a three-part video series on action sequences at Press Play is a really detailed, shot-by-shot analysis of a famous chase in "The Dark Knight" that has always confused me. Others told me they had no problems following it, but the closer I looked at it, the better I understood what puzzled me.

As I say in the introduction over at Press Play:

When, for example, we're shown someone gazing intently offscreen and there's a cutaway to something else (that appears to be in the vicinity), we assume (having familiarized ourselves with basic cinematic grammar over the years) that we are seeing what they are looking at.  But that's not always the case. Why? I don't know. I find many directorial choices in contemporary commercial movies to be sloppy, random, incomprehensible--and indefensible.

This essay takes a long, hard look at roughly the first half of the big car and truck chase sequence from Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight," set on the lower level streets by the Chicago River.  It stops, starts, reverses, repeats, slows down... taking the sequence apart (and putting it back together) shot by shot. The idea is to look at it the way an editor would--but also as a moviegoer does. We notice lapses in visual logic whether our brains register them consciously or not. I found this sequence utterly baffling the first time I saw it, and every subsequent time.  At last, I now know exactly why.

"In the Cut" is presented by Press Play, Scanners and RogerEbert.com.

UPDATE: 9/12/11): Part II is now here. This quotation comes near the beginning:

Realism, as usual, is simply a fig leaf for doing what you want. Virtually any technique can be justified as realistic according to some conception of what's important in the scene. If you shoot the action cogently, with all the moves evident, that's realistic because it shows you what's 'really' happening. If you shoot it awkwardly, that presentation is 'realistically' reflecting what a participant perceives or feels. If you shoot it as 'chaos' (another description that Nobles applies to the Expendables action scenes)--well, action feels chaotic when you're in it, right? Forget the realist alibi. What do you want your sequence to do to the viewer?

--David Bordwell, Observations on film art (September 15, 2010)

(tip: Matt Rosen)

The corporate logos are deep blue and black: Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, DC Comics. Then, out of a silent explosion of blue flames and black smoke, the familiar Batman shadow appears. Cut to bright afternoon daylight. The camera glides with surreal smoothness above a recognizably real American cityscape, over the rooftop of a large, squat building toward a cluster of shiny glass skyscrapers. This is not the forbidding, neo-Gothic Gotham City we expect to encounter at the beginning of a Batman movie, a densely stylized urban forest of inky comic-book noir. It's almost like Phoenix at the start of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho": Anywhere, USA.

And that may well be the idea: The camera closes in on a colossal mirror, a wall of tinted windows in the side of a building. What are we looking for? How much closer can we get before something has to happen? (Where's the helicopter? You'll catch a glimpse of it at the far left, just at the moment your eye is distracted by an exploding window near center frame.) For a fraction of a second we may wonder about the fate of the people inside the room, and the pedestrians on the street below who are about to be showered with bits of glass. But before that can quite register we're on the other side of the blown out window with a pair of clown-masked gunmen. This is part of some diabolical plan... which turns out to be a bank robbery in progress. (See other notes on this shot, and the rest of this sequence, here.)
Turns out, the building we've just passed over is the most important element in the shot; the glass wall is just a means to an end. Smoke and mirrors...

Jonathan Lapper of Cinema Styles, who's also a valued contributor in comments here at scanners, takes me to task for my recent analyses (or over-analyses, if you prefer) of clips from "The Dark Knight" ("Is that any way to review a movie?"). I'll answer that question myself: No, and I wasn't claiming to be writing a review of the movie. But here's what Jonathan wrote:

Telling me the school bus escape doesn't make sense doesn't tell me "The Dark Knight" is a bad movie. It tells me that particular scene doesn't make sense. In the meantime, I've learned nothing about the rest of the film. I've learned nothing about the themes of the film. I've learned nothing about the story, the characters or the plot's development. In short, I've learned nothing except that the critic publishing the piece knows how to pick a scene out of a film to suit his or her purpose. That way lies sophistry. And that's no way to review a movie.

Ouch. I have to say, if that's what I had pretended to be doing I wouldn't have approved of it, either. But I feel my method and intent have been misinterpreted (largely because I think I botched the approach myself), so I'd like to try, at least, to set the record straight here (as I also did in Jonathan's comments):

(Again: This post is entirely self-serving. If you want to go through this with me once more, please click; if not, please don't.)

Above, this may be the best view of all: You can see exactly how the camera is mounted for the shot. The set-up is indeed designed to camouflage that there is no actual hole in the "bank wall." I didn't know exactly why it was done this way when I originally saw the movie, but I had a hunch. Again: It's not a debacle, it's not a Crime Against Cinema, it's a directorial (or budget) choice. Take it for what it is. Then again, it's also a failure of imagination. They can do wonders with opticals and CGI these days (see the astonishing, virtually invisible Digital Domain work on "Zodiac"). Watch the "Zodiac" footage. Or build a bigger/deeper add-on set. Why settle for less?

Here you see one full take, and some of the vehicles returning to positions afterward.

After the jump: Better glimpses of the flats used to extend the building and provide the "hole" in the exterior wall of the Gotham bank...

I've been trying to imagine a conversation about a movie that would include the argument: "Well, you only point that out because you liked the movie." Or, "You wouldn't have noticed that if you didn't already like the movie." In response to all the stuff I wrote last year about the many moments of brilliance in "No Country for Old Men," I don't recall anybody saying, "Well, you wouldn't have liked that if you didn't like the movie."

But that's more or less what some are saying to me about "The Dark Knight": "You didn't like that because you didn't like the movie." I can understand where some of it is coming from: People feel defensive when they've enjoyed something and somebody else criticizes it; maybe they don't want to examine that experience closely -- although that has always been the purpose of this blog. The closer the better. I didn't expect to win friends and influence people by attempting to get specific about why I found "The Dark Knight" a lightweight entertainment, but also a letdown. It may seem like I'm just trying to justify my dislike; you might otherwise think I'm trying to discover the source(s) of my dissatisfaction. I don't think that's dishonest, or a waste of time, but if you do, please feel free to skip to a post in another category!

I also put people on the defensive by "going negative" prematurely, which added injury to insult. Maybe I let that silly "Love TDK -- or else!" threat get lodged in the back of my brain and it's been subconsciously gnawing away at me for the last month, I don't know.

Cameron Smith writes:

I was working on a detailed response to the entire "What's wrong with this picture" line of inquiry when I realized a very easy answer... it's cropped! I reviewed my Blu-Ray version of the film and was amazed to see that it is very clear that the bus leaves the doorway of a bank, thus explaining the wood and dust. The bank robbery (like many scenes from the film) were shot in the IMAX format and aspect ratio (1.44:1). The 35mm print of the film (and DVD release) cropped those scenes to match the 35mm footage from the rest of the film (2.35:1 aspect ratio). The Blu-Ray release presents the IMAX footage in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio which reveals more of the original IMAX footage. While this may not invalidate your argument, I would argue that the cropped 35mm presentation of the film would lend itself to being more confusing. Having viewed the Blu-Ray version a couple times, I did noticed that the scenes filmed in 35mm (2.35:1) felt better composed than the IMAX shots, as Nolan had to frame them for multiple aspect ratios.

JE: I just checked the Blu-ray version and you're absolutely right. There's more wrong with that picture than I had suspected. I hadn't seen the IMAX or Blu-ray versions -- and my computer doesn't have a Blu-ray drive, but I'd actually bought a Blu-ray disc and just took a look at it. Thank you (and I mean this sincerely) for actually looking at, and paying attention to, the MOVIE itself. This does temper my objections to the shot (since the framing isn't as tight in all versions of the film), but I still think it was a poor idea to start in so close on the bus in the first place. Clearly this is another reason why. Too bad regular DVD viewers are going to be cheated further. To think, some people don't think it matters where the edge of the frame is. It does!

UPDATE: Now, here's another example of what I'm talking about, a video taken on location during the filming of the shot in question. Director Christopher Nolan made a directorial choice -- not, I have argued, a particularly exciting choice, but he chose his shot for the movie. I assumed he started so tightly on the bus because he was trying to fudge an incomplete practical effect (the bus emerging from the bank). The guy who took this footage, from a window on the other side of the street down the block, shows what the scene looked like. If that doesn't matter to you, if it's just "nitpicky" in your view, then fine. Move along. You have an eye for the camera's optimal movement and location or you don't, and that's true of viewers as well as directors. Perhaps something at the scene prevented the camera from moving further to the left? Every time I've seen it (and I've often fallen in love with movies I didn't connect with the first time) I've felt "The Dark Knight" was riddled with off-putting, perplexing choices like this one. It just so happens that two forms of independent evidence (location video and cropping) have popped up to give us a better view of this particular example. But remember: I chose it as one specific example. I am not saying that this shot, and this shot alone, "ruined" the movie, fer cryin' out loud. Together with a hundred more examples, however, I think it shows why the filmmaking is less compelling than it might have been.

MORE ANGLES from the location shoot here.

NOTE: Reader Cameron Smith has noticed that this shot has been cropped for the DVD version of the film. See his explanation here.

"Dark Knight Quiz #1: What's wrong with this picture?") asked you to consider all the elements a single shot -- the culmination of the film's bank-robbery opening sequence -- and explained what you saw in it, what information it was conveying (and how), and what it implied about the Joker's planning of the bank robbery itself.

This last point is essential because the sequence itself continually asks us to figure out the plan. That's the fun of watching the robbery unfold: This isn't the kind of classic heist movie like "Rififi" or "Le Cercle rouge" where we're in on the meticulous preparation with the robbers and where the suspense and satisfaction comes from knowing what's supposed to happen when, and how they improvise when it doesn't.

As "The Dark Knight" begins, we sense there's a crime being committed, but we don't even know what it is at first. The fun (and I know there will be those who say you can't examine how fun is created, but we'll hope those people aren't wasting their time reading a film criticism blog) comes in putting the pieces together as the crooks go through their paces. The Joker (we suspect, but only learn in retrospect) is introduced from behind, standing on a streetcorner where he is picked up by two other chatty masked henchmen.

There's the question of the silent alarm that, mysteriously, "goes to a private number" instead of 911; the 5,000-volt-protected vault; the armed bank manager who laments the lack of honor and respect in the modern criminal element; the systematically diminishing number of masked participants (and beneficiaries) in the robbery itself; the use of the grenades used to control the staff and customers; the arrival and departure of a bus...

UPDATE: In the Blu-ray extras, director Nolan speaks of this entire sequence, all shot in IMAX, as "The Prologue," and said he considered it vitally important to setting up the scale of the whole movie -- hence the importance of the opening helicopter shot, the swooping down onto the roof of the bank, the crash of the schoolbus through glass double doors (built inside the building itself)... and, of course, this shot that crowns the segment.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself (I can tell from the initial comments, I'm probably already in way over my head), let me directly address (as I have in some comments all ready) one of my primary concerns with "The Dark Knight" and movies in general. And that, simply, is that, as I always like to say, if it's in the movie, then let's talk about it. If it's not -- that is, if you're coming up with some scenario or motivation or explanation that a particular image or sound in the movie does not address -- then you can't pretend it's part of the movie. Because, manifestly, it isn't. That's the difference between Ain't-it-cool fanboy speculation and actual movie criticism, based on what's on the screen, not what's in a previous draft of an unpublished comic somewhere....

So, when I asked ("Dark Knight Quiz #1: What's wrong with this picture") for you to consider one of the key shots in "The Dark Knight" (the "punchline,", if you will, to of the opening sequence), one of the things I wanted to get at is the movie's conception (or, at least, the audience's conception) of the Joker as a supernatural being. I've found that discussing "The Dark Knight" can be like discussing Intelligent Design -- in all the worst ways.

NOTE: Reader Cameron Smith has noticed that this shot has been cropped for the DVD version of the film. See his explanation here.

Although I enjoyed certain aspects of "The Dark Knight" (especially the gorgeously real Chicago cityscapes, which I thought stole the movie out from under even Heath Ledger), I have confessed I couldn't tell what was supposed to be going on from one moment -- often one shot, or one line -- to the next, and, for that very reason, soon stopped caring. Now that I've been able to go through it several more times since its release on DVD and Blu-ray last month, and have cross-checked the movie itself with the screenplay for clarification (it's available as a .pdf here, For Your Consideration), I'm able to better understand exactly why. And it's not just me. Now, at last, we have the means to really look past the phenomenon directly at the picture, and to understand how it works. Or doesn't.

Let me start by asking you to examine one simple, minor early example that has to do with narrative logic and, perhaps, setting up the audience's willingness to suspend disbelief in a comic book universe rendered with hyper-realistic visuals (even, occasionally, in IMAX): Please watch the shot above, the final piece in the opening sequence, showing the Joker's escape from the "mob bank" robbery and giving us our first "overview," if you will, of the scene. The Joker has backed a school bus into the lobby of a bank, filled it with mob cash, and then makes his exit.

After the jump is the script's description of the shot. But before you read it, please leave a comment with your account of the shot AND your assessment of how the Joker planned this getaway. Pay special attention to the timing (dust/debris, busses, traffic signal, arriving cop cars). Ready? Begin.

If I say that I'm not much of a fan of comic-book or superhero movies, it's not because of the source material but because of the movies made from them. Comics fans haven't been as ill-served by the movies as video gamers, but I've noticed that even some of the most fervent appreciations of "The Dark Knight" carry an undertone of defensiveness, almost as if surprised that the filmmakers would treat this "crusader in tights" material seriously, instead of as camp. (Let's just not mistake "serious" for "dreary" or "pedantic.")

"The Dark Knight" has been praised as "the best superhero ever made" -- or even "the first great superhero movie," but even if I thought those things were true, they sound like backhanded praise to me. How sad would it be if it took until 2008 for somebody to claim they'd seen "the first great horror movie" or "the first great comedy," to name a couple other still-disreputable labels? As I've said, I don't think "TDK" is an exceptionally strong or resonant movie, but it never occurred to me to think less of it because it's about characters named Batman and the Joker.

The way I look at it, a metaphor is a metaphor. Batman or the Joker or Spider-Man can become cinematic metaphors as rich and evocative as Achilles or Nosferatu or Carrie or Jesus. Why not?

Success is no longer its own reward. At least not according to some partisans of "The Dark Knight." Fame, critical approbation, unimaginable riches, pop-cultural impact -- they are inadequate achievements. The picture must be showered with year-end awards consistent with the all-consuming Batmania of last July, no matter what else was released in 2008. Dammit.

Alarmed by what he deems insufficient obeisance to director Christopher Nolan's movie in annual honors announced so far (LA & NY crix, Golden Globules), Josh Tyler at CinemaBlend has been moved to issue movie critics an ultimatum: "Ignore 'The Dark Knight' at your peril." Actually, he issues several ultimata, in various forms, including this one, vague but menacing:

In any year, but especially in this, a particularly weak year, there's nothing out there which compares to "The Dark Knight." It must transcend your petty big box office biases since it has already changed the way we think about movies forever. It's more than the best movie of the year, it's one of the best movies ever made. Snub it and there will be consequences.

Yikes. So much for the integrity and diversity of critical discussion -- but what might those consequences be? Perhaps... death?!?!

Has "The Dark Knight" signaled a change in the way superhero movies are perceived by the mainstream? Will it "legitimize" a so-called "disreputable genre" (if comic-book superhero movies can be said to comprise a genre)? Has it become to signify a desire for larger acceptance by comic fans, or a crossover hit that aficionados feel can only be fully understood by those well-versed in Batman mythology?

In his indispensable new essay, "Superheroes for sale," David Bordwell takes on the new (tidal) wave of comic-book and superhero movies, examines their historical reputation, their development, reasons for their popularity, critical attitudes and misconceptions, comic-book acting styles...

First -- well, first go read it. DB says he came away from both "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" "bored and depressed. I'm also asking questions":

Dark as night and nearly as long, Christopher Nolan's new Batman movie feels like a beginning and something of an end. Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind...
-- Manohla Dargis, New York Times

If [Director Christopher Nolan] occasionally stumbles upon an indelible image (aside from... a scene where the two-wheeled Batpod does a wall-assisted 180-degree turnaround gave me giddy shivers) it's quickly subsumed by his more frequent tendency toward Cusinarted spectacle. The human drama in "Batman Begins" held my attentions, so I wasn't so much bothered by the fact that its action scenes were murky, bordering on incoherent (this seemed intentional to some degree, even though I think it was, ultimately, a failed artistic choice).
-- Keith Uhlich, The House Next Door

Nolan's direction is so relentless that the climaxes never feel climactic. At the same time, I realize that relentlessness has been the formula for blockbusters since "Star Wars," or at least "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and these blockbusters keep speeding up. They've probably just sped past me. In other words, relentlessness won't be a problem for 99.9 percent of the audience. It is, in fact, what they came for.
-- Erik Lundegaard, MSN.com

If "The Dark Knight" felt too long to you, or even if it didn't, is it possible that it might have felt shorter if it were longer?

As I was leaving a matinee of "The Dark Knight" this week, I heard a little kid behind me say, "Well, we know there's gonna be a third one." This kid looked to me like he was 8 or 9 years old -- maybe even younger. And he unmistakably felt the "Empire Strikes Back" cliffhanger vibe that concludes the second in this series of Batman movies. The Joker is left suspended in mid-air (though, sadly, he won't be back), Commissioner Gordon gives a big speech over the closing montage about the importance of the heroes we need (and the ones we deserve), and Batman rides off into the dark night. The movie does have an ending but it's still an open-ended ending.

Of course, a serial cliffhanger is one thing, but the strategy of some movies is to deny us the satisfaction of resolution...

It wasn't very far into "The Dark Knight" that the feeling first took hold of me: All this movie needs is a script and a director and it could be really, really great!

By the end I'd had a good time, and I already know I'd like to see it again. Maybe, I've been thinking, it's kind of like a good album that's been haphazardly sequenced, with a few lackluster (or even bad) songs and occasionally dumb lyrics, muddled arrangements, or klutzy production choices. But, you know, after a while you're willing to overlook the parts that don't work in order to enjoy the parts that do. At first exposure, those rough spots stick out and even hurt. Later on, you just accept them, get used to them, or even choose to ignore them.

Two and a half weeks into its theatrical release, is it still a sacrilege to believe, for any reason, that "The Dark Knight" is less than the greatest whatever ever? I sure hope not, because I wanted it to be great as much as anybody else. So, I front-loaded this post with my tempered impressions of "The Dark Knight" only to contrast them with the consensus opinion, which is, you might say, considerably more enthusiastic.

Ty Burr of The Boston Globe, one of our best newspaper critics in my opinion, wrote a provocative, nuanced piece about the response to "The Dark Knight" ("The 'best movie of all time'? Who wants to know?") in which he described being at a memorial service when "word got out among the teenagers and college kids that there was a movie critic present. One by one, they came up to me and asked the same question, with almost the same wording: Is "The Dark Knight" the best movie of all time?"

(Part 1 of these ruminations about "greatness" in art can be found here.)

I've been hearing from some disgruntled comic-book and superhero fans that they think critics have a prejudice against the genre. Or genres. I think there's a distinction to be made between comic-book, graphic novel and superhero movies (though, obviously, certain pictures overlap categories). So, I thought I'd do a little (and I mean a little) research to see if I could discern a trend. I did, and it was a pretty clear one.

So I sampled a few titles at RottenTomatoes and MetaCritic. Not that these sites should be considered the ultimate authorities on such matters, but they do give some indication of a movie's critical reception. Here's what I found: