The Dark Knight Batman Comparison

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Sitting in an interrogation room (judging by the one-way mirror on the opposite wall) made of brick the Joker and Batman are in a room face to face looking across a desk. A mirror behind the two characters who each have some darkness to them. The shot takes place in The Dark Knight. The director, Christopher Nolan, uses this scene to show the relationship between the two characters in the frame. It also gives us insight to each character's personality.
After an hour and a half of intense action and plot development, the joker is brought into custody. The recently promoted Commissioner Gordon comes into interrogate the joker to find out where Harvey Dent is being hidden. The scene opens with an over the shoulder shot towards Gordon entering …show more content…

The frame is on the Joker who is completely surrounded by darkness. Then all of a sudden, the lights flash on. With the focus still on the Joker's face, you can see someone standing behind the Joker. By sharing the same half of the screen, Nolan is showing them sharing the same world. Both facing the same direction. The direction that was directly opposite Gordon; which is implying that the two people are both social outcasts, therefore they are similar. Batman smashes the Joker’s face on the metal table to show physical dominance. The upward camera angle (that is now wider than before), on him as he moves to the other side of the table, as well as the camera pointing down at the Joker, all shows that Batman has the high …show more content…

From this small and observant angle, we can presume that the Joker is trying to read him to gain equal footing. Then as they begin to converse, nolan uses close ups on each person to show them as equals. Nolan plays with screen direction in the next parts of the interrogation to manipulate our thoughts, and to make feel like the Joker is right. Then he goes to a shot from behind the joker, putting Batman on the right side of the screen which is the side of the screen that the antagonist is usually on. The Director is blurring the line between antagonist and Protagonist making it so that we don’t know who’s right and who’d wrong between Batman and the Joker. Batman begins to see the logic in the Joker’s twisted ideology, and the Joker begins to win the scene. Therefore, the power is now with

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