(The original content was originally published on station B in the form of video commentary on September 21, 2019. The following is the original text of the video commentary. Please indicate the source for reprinting)
For this film that has received too many super-saturated acclaim, if you watch it with the seriousness that director Nolan expects, you will find that it is an opera without a melody, a Shakespearean epic, a It is a heavy adult fairy tale in which the hero chooses to destroy himself, a literary book with rich layers that compresses a huge amount of information, and a cruel apocalypse that peeks into the darkness of human nature and the complexity of morality.
Such a classic and authoritative film may give you endless admiration or exhaustion.
"The Dark Knight" broke the dimensional wall between commercial films and art films, and changed our viewing experience for hero films. It creates the least comic book hero, and none of the other superhero movies set up an apocalyptic backdrop to entertain audiences. On the contrary, it seriously tells us what kind of social background can give birth to a superhero like Batman, and what is the real situation of the superhero that is bred. This fundamentally reshaped our expectations for superhero movies, straddled the line between crime dramas and comic book heroes, and sparked a revival of comic noir.
In a few words, let's briefly summarize the plot:
With the secret help of Batman incarnated by Bruce Wayne, Gotham City Sheriff Gordon effectively managed the rampant crime, and the newly appointed District Attorney Harvey was also upright, injecting fresh blood into the city . People seem to see hope for Gotham City's return to light. However, the Joker appeared. He is insane, has no bottom line, and keeps killing people in order to force Batman to reveal himself. Later, the Joker also designed to kill the girl who grew up with Batman's childhood sweetheart, and also Harvey's girlfriend Rachel, and successfully forced the righteous Harvey into the dark abyss, turning him into an evil two-faced man. Later, the Joker was captured by Batman, and after Harvey killed several civilians in a row, he fell off a high-rise building and died. In order to maintain Harvey's previous positive image and establish Gotham City's belief in justice, Batman took all of Harvey's evil deeds and voluntarily took on people's blame.
So, our hero defeats the bad guy, and ends up being a shady street rat. As such, The Dark Knight presents the ultimate battleground of different ideologies in the contest between good and evil, and extends the dark future of a marginalized hero. It doesn't look good, but it's cool.
All the scenes in the film take place in the city. The pictures have abandoned the usual fancy expressiveness of commercial films, and all the shots are wandering in the cold high-rise buildings, full of industrialism-style gloom, coldness and depression. In the reinforced concrete world that lacks natural vitality, the conflict between man and nature seems to have reached its limit, and sin also seems to have swelled to its limit. All those simple thoughts about justice are correspondingly difficult. On the road to the light, there are many obstacles and rivers of blood.
In the first installment of the Dark Knight trilogy, released in 2005, Batman Bruce Wayne is the absolute protagonist. According to the director himself, the core character of the second "Dark Knight" is Harvey, the double-faced man. Indeed, Harvey's character setting can best reflect the film's relative conception of good and evil. However, in terms of the plot, the three characters, Harvey, Batman, and The Joker, together form a solid triangle, supporting the framework of the story. Of the three characters, the most striking and legendary, in my opinion, is the Joker. In particular, the untimely death of actor Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, adds to the legend of the role.
In the character analysis section, let's take a look at the clown first.
The shape of the clown is inspired by the works of the painter Francis Bacon. The clown's gorgeous costume, tattered shoes, stinky hair that can be smelled at a glance, red lips that reach to the ears, and the superb performance of Heath Hedger have jointly created the most popular hero movie history. The villain is super infectious.
In particular, "The Dark Knight" begins with the scene where the clown robs the bank and eats the black, which almost makes us mistakenly think that the whole movie is the exclusive movie of the clown.
The Joker is a true survivalist, skeptic, and anarchist. He opposes all moral principles and legal regulations, and escapes the logical basis of all theories. In this way, high-IQ sociopaths who put themselves outside the social game are naturally lawless, omnipotent, all evil, and invincible. You know he's the villain, he's the villain, but you can't grasp a specific logic point against him, because he's able to shatter all the presuppositions. For example, the common criminal overturns just a building, and the purpose of the clown is to shake the ground under people's feet and shake all the foundations.
To this end, the Joker insists: "My goal is to bring everything back to chaos. I am the representative of chaos. Chaos represents justice."
And, "Crazy is like gravity, just a little push is enough."
Just like this, the clown took the view of "seeing people with evil" to the extreme. He felt that people are evil, society is evil, and all the achievements of civilization left over from history are evil. In order to promote, publicize and verify this view, the Joker has carried out a lot of human experiments with the confidence and superiority of God's perspective, as well as the anger and determination to overthrow everything.
First of all, the clown must break the principle of the gang, and in the process of robbing the bank, the shameless spirit of the black eats the black to the fullest. Later, the clown deliberately designed the police to arrest him, and then blew up the police station with a bomb hidden in the stomach of his subordinates; he also threatened the public that if a lawyer did not die before a certain time, he would blow up the hospital, This successfully set off a frenzied attack on the lawyer by the public. Then, the Joker designed to kidnap Rachel and Harvey, and asked Batman to choose one of them to rescue, but deliberately reversed the address, so that Batman, who originally planned to rescue Rachel, accidentally rescued Harvey. In the end, the Joker even threw a detonator on each of the passengers on both ships, allowing them to blow up the other to save their lives.
Interjection: Does the plot setting that makes the two ships suspicious of each other sound familiar to you? Friends who have watched "The Three-Body Problem" note that the law of the dark forest has come out, and so has the chain of suspicion.
In the last experiment of bombing the ship, the clown firmly believed that people with ugly nature will press the detonator and send each other to the west for their own survival. And Batman firmly believes that people still retain their conscience, and everything will not go as the Joker wants. In the end, Batman was right. This is also the only outcome in the film that the Joker did not expect to succeed. The Joker's only misstep finally pulled the central idea of the film to the side of justice.
One of the two ships was a civilian and the other a criminal. The criminals were always calm, and no one offered to press the detonator. Although there were commotions on civilian ships and a vote was launched on whether the detonator should be pressed, no one dared to do so in the end. So both teams ended up getting along fine.
But let's imagine, if there were not two groups of people on the two ships, but two people, would the results be different? I think there must be someone who chooses to press the detonator without hesitation. This is because the group's choice is different from the individual's choice. When we are in a crowd, our moral inclinations vary accordingly. Because the moral binding force of the group is greater than that of the individual.
Although the entire human society is full of various ominous forces, the whole is still just and good. No matter how many evils in society, it can also play a positive restrictive role. The forces that form such constraints can be hypocritical, archaic, ridiculous, and unbearable. But until a better solution emerges, this force can ensure that all of humanity continues to evolve in the same direction. After all, people are social animals, and the way people connect with each other is not so easy to be abandoned. The morality of society can be shaken and changed gradually, but it will not collapse all at once.
So, Joker didn't win in the end.
One more word here: Is the setting of voting on civilian ships a satire on democratic politics?
There was a conversation between the Joker and Batman when he planned to deliberately get himself caught by the police. At the time, the Joker said to Batman:
"In the eyes of the public, you are as monsters as I am. When all is well, they will restrain you with their ridiculous morals, but when danger arises, they will abandon morals and ask you for help. Wait for your help. After they solve the danger, they will restrain you with morality again, and have been so ungrateful. Therefore, you can never be a real hero. Because, in their eyes, peace is only based on the premise of world peace. ."
The Joker pinpoints Batman's moral dilemma, and every word is truth. However, that wasn't enough to convince Batman to change his stance. Just because he's Batman. He will use his own way to explore the problem, find the problem, and solve the problem. Although his relationship with the Joker is so inseparable. We will discuss this later.
But there's something jarring about the Joker: he's too thirsty for recognition. In the film, the clown tried his best to prove the correctness of his theory to the society and to pull everyone to his side as soon as possible. There must be a deep psychological motivation behind this eagerness to verify the mentality. For this motive, there is no explanation in the plot of "The Dark Knight". The Joker just told different people about the source of the scars on his face. One time he told a gang member that the scars were caused by his father's abuse, and one time he told Rachel that he deliberately scratched his face to comfort his wife who was also disfigured. In addition to that, the Joker tries to tell Batman the third version of the story, but is interrupted.
In fact, don't analyze which story is more believable. The image of the clown has no exact origin story and behavioral motives. The director also deliberately blurred the background of the clown character to emphasize his mystery and danger. Let the clown tell the story of his scars, but also to let the audience experience the spiritual fear brought by the clown, but also imagine the real pain and deep fear on the body.
The image of the clown is a symbol, representing chaos, fear, darkness without reason, and an innate desire for destruction. The Joker in "The Dark Knight" has correspondingly made himself completely invisible. He is just a concept. His story is just an extension of the concept. In the film, in order to break Batman's principle of no killing, the Joker deliberately asks him to kill himself. This self-mutilation method of self-destruction is also to complete the actualization of the concept.
So, this is why, the new version of the "Joker" movie is so worth looking forward to, because it will tell us a true story about the clown, so that we can realize every imagination of the clown.
The Joker in The Dark Knight is less of a character than a primordial force of chaos. He is like the ubiquitous dark matter in the universe, using the bright spots and dark sides of each character as available means, always affecting their choices and destiny.
At a deeper level, the image of the Joker represents the film's reflection on anarchism and terrorism.
To put it simply, the clown is just like the butler Alford said:
"Some people just want to see the world in chaos."
In fact, "The Dark Knight" is the first sequel film directed by Christopher Nolan. Although he left a suspense about the Joker at the end of the upper "Mystery of the Shadow", he did not plan to continue making it at that time. . Later, it was the anticipation of the role of the Joker that made Nolan firm in his determination to shoot a sequel. And Heath Ledger, from the beginning, was the most ideal clown candidate in Nolan's eyes.
Regarding the role of the Joker and the actor Heath Ledger, I have many other ideas, and I plan to do a separate commentary, so I will save my words here, not much to say, and leave a little content for another manuscript.
We move on to the character of Batman Bruce Wayne.
By the way, I was face-blind at one point, thinking that Christian Bale who played Bruce Wayne was Matthew McConaughey who played Interstellar. "The new collocation in is very interesting. Now I feel that I was really blind before, and the two are obviously not alike at all--
Christian Bale is absolutely one of the best Batman, he perfectly captures Batman's fear, trauma, confusion, grace, nobility, loneliness, darkness, justice, and deliberate self-isolation intent, greatness adventurous spirit, and endless moral quest. In this version of Bruce Wayne, every decision he makes has absolute rationality and necessity. So, when Batman took to the streets to experience criminal minds in the first episode of Mystery, I didn't feel sad or uncomfortable because he was out of high society circles, but just saw his desire for self-deportation and the inevitability of its choice.
But instead of becoming an iconic philanthropist like his father, after a wandering life and returning from a ninja master, Bruce Wayne cut himself completely, pretending to be a scum by day In the form of a man, at night, he wraps his body in a stage-like mask and a bit of a middle-class costume, transforming himself into a righteous knight in the dark. This kind of hero image, placed in modern society, is a little exaggerated, a little complicated, a little dramatic, and a little old-fashioned. To the clown, he looks like a stubborn, stupid and ridiculous crusader. Because, even the Joker knows that Batman's heroic image is not the heroic image that modern society needs. Batman behind the mask must be hiding deep contradictions and fears.
Why is such a Batman not what society needs?
Modern society is a legal society. The spirit of the rule of law is the foundation of social civilization. Many ethical disputes can be judged on the basis of law. Legally reasonable or not, it is like a scale on a ruler, providing a means of measurement.
Under this system, a masked cosplay hero who ignores the rule of law appears, no one knows, where is his principle? How should he be restrained? Who will restrain him? Can he be tried again?
This also raises the question: Are there other reliable measures besides legal and social rules?
The answer is none.
In the film, Bruce Wayne, Harvey, Rachel, and a ballerina had a conversation. Several people used Julius Caesar as an example to discuss the rationality of Batman's existence. At first, in the face of chaos and crisis, people voluntarily abandoned the original rule of law and relied on the rule of Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar, without the constraints of the rule of law, eventually lost the principles in his heart and became a tyrant. The emergence of Batman is like another Julius Caesar in the new era.
So, Batman has to force himself to abide by the principles. He is afraid of himself and of history, so he ritually adheres to his principle of not killing people. Otherwise, how different is the way he and the Joker behave?
Joker understands this. Therefore, he finds ways to guide and force Batman to kill himself. Because as soon as Batman suffers a killer, his principles crumble and his philosophical foundations crumble.
Batman sees Harvey as Gotham City's true hero and the light of justice, because he knows that, given the characteristics of modern society, what people need is an upright hero elected by the rule of law, not Fairytale characters with masks. This shows the realism and political correctness of hero movies.
At the same time, Batman is well aware of the importance of faith. People in Gotham City need a symbol, even if the symbol is an illusion, it can become a focal point, or a support point, just like using a fulcrum to pry up the earth, pry people's belief in light. The Joker, and all the darkness and chaos the Joker represents, will never win as long as people's beliefs exist.
And Harvey is the best symbol of justice. Therefore, Batman, who recognized the situation, finally found his correct identity, maintained Harvey's image, and was willing to be a guardian who silently took responsibility for this. His choice, after careful consideration, is based on the deep foundation of sociology and history.
This is the depth of content in The Dark Knight.
Finally, Batman finally said:
"I am who Gotham needs. The truth is sometimes not the best choice. People deserve to be rewarded for having faith."
And Gordon also said:
"We'll hurt Batman because he's not a hero, he's a silent guardian, he's willing to take it all. Heroes, not the ones we deserve, but the ones we need."
And Batman is exactly the hero people deserve, but not the hero people need.
The ending of The Dark Knight tells us what a true antihero is. The last lines and shots are the only highlight moments in the whole film that belong only to Batman. I was really shocked when I watched it, and I got goosebumps all over.
Let's talk about the relationship between Batman and the Joker.
A character's opponent can shape our perception of the character. Just like Sherlock Holmes's shrewdness is inseparable from Moriarty's foil, the Joker and Batman are also like this. They achieve each other, depend on each other, set off each other, and complement each other.
First of all, Batman and the Joker don't show their real faces, one wears a mask to play cosplay, and the other wears makeup and lipstick every day. By the way, does the face of the clown look like you, the first time you learned makeup?
Second, both Batman and The Joker have an indissoluble bond with the word "fear". In the first episode of "Mystery of the Shadows", Batman learned from the master ninja: To overcome fear, you must become fear itself, and then pass this fear on to your enemies. And this is also the theoretical basis of the Joker.
Also, neither Batman nor The Joker behaves under the laws of society. Without the rule of law, where is the bottom line? In this case, once the bottom line is lost, Batman will become another version of the Joker. And in reality, the clown really was born.
So the Joker is Batman's embodiment of his own fears. The principle of no killing is the most important basis for Batman to distinguish himself from the Joker.
Moreover, the birth of the Joker was largely caused by the actions of Batman. Butler Alford once reminded Batman: "You need to know your boundaries" "You push the criminals in a hurry, they jump over the wall, so they go to the Joker, who they are not familiar with themselves." Batman originally wanted To protect Gotham City, his cooperation with Gordon and Harvey is also quite effective. However, from another perspective, Batman's high-profile behavior not only attracted many imitators and caused more chaos, but also forced criminals to go to the hospital and join the Joker's camp. Batman, who hides in the dark, uses violence to deal with criminals. But this unskilled violence hastened the birth of the Joker.
In fact, in the battle between Batman and the Joker, the Joker is the one who masters the rhythm in the film. Almost all of Batman's actions are passive responses to the Joker. The Joker once said to Batman:
" The smartest rule to live in this world is not to follow any rule. And I just want you to break the rule for me. "
In the end, in order to track the Joker, Batman had to use illegal means to track the Joker's location by stealing surveillance footage from across the city. Does this count as breaking the bottom line?
In short, without each other, Batman and the Joker would not have become such classic screen characters.
Here is a brief look at the role of Harvey:
Harvey, an idealist with a heroic complex, is a silly gamer who likes to flip a coin. He maintains justice as if he were maintaining a sense of superiority. However, this sense of superiority is too simple and too rigid, so it is vulnerable and easily broken.
After Rachel's death, a stimulated Harvey's faith in justice collapsed. After half of his face was burned, Harvey refused to receive a skin graft because he had completely accepted his darkness and said: Why should I cover up the real me? I am actually a two-faced person.
Harvey is a man of faith. Previously, he believed in justice. After blackening, he believed in the fairness of randomness brought by coins. Harvey, who is too superstitious, is destined to become the Joker's defeat. Because he has never believed in himself like the clown.
In the hospital, the Joker said to Harvey:
People feel reassured when they know that they are strictly following a plan, no matter how dire the plan. But just introduce a little confusion, add a little panic, and people are instantly revealed.
So, I am the representative of chaos. And chaos means fairness.
These words made Harvey understand that the justice he worked so hard to maintain was actually based on a fragile illusion. This illusion is a thin shell constructed by people's cowardice and vanity. It has no foundation and no connotation. It is full of pretended justice and vanity and vanity in social situations. And what hides under the shell is the deep-rooted evil.
Therefore, Harvey finally decided that no justice or fairness is as reliable as a random coin toss. This is the ultimate, undisturbed justice and fairness.
Harvey, a two-faced man, has gone from the extreme of justice to the extreme of evil, and neither of these extremes is the real him.
However, I personally think that although Harvey's performance is wonderful, his aura is still a little weaker than that of the tense clown. In fact, in addition to Aaron Eckhart, Matt Damon, the Hulk Mark Alan Ruffalo and Ryan Phillippe have also Almost played the role of Harvey.
Of these big guys, whose performance are you more interested in?
Then we'll look at the other characters in the movie:
"The Dark Knight" is a male-centric film. Women don't have much of a flash in the film, and only Rachel has the most scenes.
The role of Rachel exists primarily to serve as a symmetry between Batman and Harvey. After all, the two men not only love her, but also sympathize with each other, and both recognize each other as a real man and a real hero.
As for who Rachel loves the most, I don't need to analyze it too much. Can't she be a righteous scumbag and accept both men?
However, at the beginning, Rachel did not agree to Harvey's marriage proposal, but she seemed to have some lingering feelings for Bruce Wayne. But after Harvey admitted that he was Batman in place of Bruce Wayne, Rachel felt that Harvey was taking the blame for Bruce Wayne, so he was very angry and did not want to talk to Bruce Wayne. Finally, in the letter, Rachel tells Bruce Wayne that she actually loves Harvey. Regarding Rachel's series of changes, my understanding is that what Rachel wants to choose is actually the real hero in her heart.
Katie Holmes, who played Rachel in the first film, was unable to star in the second film due to scheduling issues. Rachel McAdams (Rachel McAdams) and Emily Blunt (Emily Blunt) were originally chosen to succeed Rachel, but in the end the role fell to Maggie Gyllenhaal. In fact, Maggie's image is really a little like Katie in the first part.
As for housekeeper Alfred (Michael Caine) and company boss Fox (Morgan Freeman), they are two moral models of integrity, kindness, and reliability. None of them directly participated in Batman's battle, but provided technical and emotional support for Batman's actions behind the scenes, which is a very safe role. The two are like moral guides, and their presence adds to the weight of the good guys in the film.
As for Gordon, he's a sheriff caught between different forces with important secrets. In addition to taking on a connecting role, Gordon is primarily responsible for the "crack" in his heart when he receives bad news. Gary Oldman (Gary Oldman) this uncle is very cool. But if the actor is replaced by Jim Gordon from Gotham, I might consider talking about him a little more~
In addition to excellent character settings, "The Dark Knight" also reflects super-high film skills. In addition to being good at showing the darkness of human nature, Nolan is also well versed in the aesthetics of Hollywood movies. Most of the film's footage was shot with a 35mm widescreen camera, which has a wide viewing angle and captures a great deal of rich night scene detail. The opening scene of the clown robbing the bank was filmed with a 65mm IMax camera.
Also, compared to CGI technology, Nolan prefers live shooting on location. The scene where the truck in the middle of the road was overturned was shot on location. The hospital that the clown blew up in the film was also temporarily built and blown up. The locals thought a terrorist attack had occurred during the filming. In the whole film, my favorite is the scene where the clown blows up the hospital, and then the scene where the clown sits in the car and looks out, which is super cool.
The scenes of Batman standing on the Sears Tower in Chicago and the building in Hong Kong looking around the city were shot by the actor himself standing on the top of the building, with no stand-ins and no special effects. The scene of Batman flying over the eaves to hijack the Chinese boss Liu is very similar to 007, and at the same time has a bit of John Woo's Hong Kong film flavor. Especially the appearance of Guan Xige is a bit broken.
In addition, the density of pictures and information in "The Dark Knight" is very high, the rhythm of the story is also very uniform, the overall structure is very neat and rigorous, every scene, every line, every detail stalk, there must be a response. For example, when Harvey first appeared, the coin in his hand was a hint for the subsequent plot; the scene where Batman was bitten by the dog released by the Joker was also the same as when he was bitten by a dog during his first action in the upper "Mystery of the Shadows". The scene corresponds to, and so on. Everything forms a perfect bracket.
Moreover, every line in the film has a very high gold content, there is not much more than one sentence, and a lot of less than one sentence. However, I don't find any of it funny. I don't know how you feel, anyway, people like me who have such a low laugh point and eat American-style funny memes are completely untouched.
There is another interesting news about the "Dark Knight": There is a city in Turkey also named Batman. After the release of "The Dark Knight", the mayor of Batman Huseyin Kalkan sued Nolan and Warner Brothers, saying the release of "The Dark Knight" had a negative impact on his city.
So, what does this story tell us? This year, the debris can be mixed with the city, and you are still online every day hahahahaha - -
In short, the film "The Dark Knight" has a lot of room for interpretation. It expresses reflection on terrorism, judgment on power-loving government officials, thinking on democratic politics, discussion on human rights, and even bats In the end, Xia traced the clown's behavior by hacking into the public network, and some people thought it was a satire of big companies' telecommunication monitoring of the public. But I think that although the interpretation space of the film is large, there is no need to interpret it too much. In fact, the whole movie is telling us what an adult superhero should look like. It should be a hero with depth, a hero who understands forbearance, a hero who does not give a high-profile interview to the media, a hero with a deep sense of responsibility, a hero who understands the complexities of politics and society, and a hero who is willing to be marginalized. Only in this way can we truly match the society. What can match this screen hero image is the audience who can be sublimated together with the hero after watching the movie seriously.
So, it can be said that "The Dark Knight" is the godfather of superhero movies. It tells us not a specific message, but a feeling, a reflection.
Finally, I want to ask, after watching the movie, do you believe that human nature is inherently evil?
In fact, it is not a bad thing to believe that human nature is inherently evil. Conversely, by getting this right, you have the opportunity to become a better person. By understanding evil, we can more accurately distinguish what is good.
(Original content, please indicate the original author when reprinting)
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