This week in the class of Film Study, I learned about even more about the dramatic sense of film and more specifically applied to the Dark Knight. As is known to all, the Dark Knight is a film that came out in 2008 that primarily dealt with the story of a comic book hero, Batman and his exploits versus two of his more famed people from his extensive rouges gallery, The Joker and Harvey Dent, otherwise known as Two-Face. During this week I also learned how to compare the dramatic elements of this film to an earlier iteration by another director Tim Burton, as opposed to the director of this film, Christopher Nolan.
One element that was discussed was the overall mise en scene of both movies and how they differed. This is a very obvious difference because one, The Dark Knight, is a much grittier iteration of the Caped Crusader compared to the campier iteration of the World’s Greatest Detective. However this is not as campy as the Adam West iteration of Batman during the 60s. That invented the concept of campiness as it relates to superheroes. Another iteration that takes the character of Batman in a different direction is the animated television show staring Batman and aptly called “Batman: the Animated Series”. In this series, Batman is seen as the true crusader and hero of Gotham with a clear moral compass however less so than Superman who is a completely different superhero who has his own iterations.
An element that contributes to this idea of overall mise-on-scene is the costumes. More especially the costume of the Joker throughout both Batman and The Dark Knight. In Batman, the Joker always has perfect makeup and his suits always looked perfectly pressed. His hair is almost always good-looking. This overall gives the impression of a villain, yes, but also a professional man with a plan. However in Nolan’s interpretation of the Joker character, the Joker’s makeup looks crude done, like it was self-supplied, and progressively gets worse and smear throughout the course of the film. An example would be when he is in the holding cell and being interrogated by Batman and Gordon. Also his clothes look a little less formal and expensive looking and his hair is almost never perfect.
Another element that contributes to the overall mise-en-scene of the acting of the different actors especially Christian Bale in Dark Knight and Michael Keaton in Batman as Batman. In The Dark Knight, Batman is seen not as a man who wants to be Batman and willingly goes out to fight crime but a man who does it because he feels he has a duty and he wants to repay that duty, no matter the cost. This as opposed to the acting of Keaton’s Batman who is a man who is the Batman because he wants to. He does struggle with what it means to be Batman and never struggles with the reality of being Batman. This contributes to the almost campiness of Batman and how the movie fails to explore and doesn’t dare to try and find the deep psychological pressures of being Batman has on a person. Dark Knight on the other hand does this perfectly.
Each iteration of Batman has their own interpretation of The Caped Crusader and as such fits their own personal stories around this character. However, whether they be animated or live-action, serious or not, each of these iterations shows the Crusader of Gotham against the scourge of evil.
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