The Dark Knight of the Soul

Disclaimer: I stole the title of this post from Batman and Philosophy and I think you should buy it and read it. 

After I watched Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight last night, I had a hard time going to sleep. Over the years, I've put some effort into learning about what works so effectively in the film, hoping to glean some storytelling tricks to try to improve my craft. Many years ago, I listened to this podcast about the Hollywood Formula and I found it really enjoyable and enlightening. A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon this video, which reignited my interest in the film. Every year, I review the Hollywood formula with my students, about half of whom have seen The Dark Knight and can get a lot out of what we're talking about. Every year, discussing the film makes me want to rewatch it, and I finally found the two and a half hours (!) needed to do so.

It really is a great movie.

Thinking of the two aforementioned analyses about the film kept me engaged in the familiar story in a new way, which was exciting. Sometimes, analysis can dull the edge of an enjoyable story--the "you're overthinking it" accusation's basis. That can sometimes be true, but I believe that part of the reason that films, poems, books, and music become "classics" (less in the ancient Greco-Roman style, though there's something about those works that pertains here) in part because of the depth of their meanings. Those meanings can't be sounded without analysis. When the analysis becomes shallow, the worth of the work dries up. I personally believe that the Harry Potter series continues to yield worthwhile analyses--pointing it in the direction of a modern classic--while series like Twilight provide little additional intellectual fodder.

The Dark Knight is a modern classic in terms of its strength of plot, characterization, style, and pacing (though not without its flaws), and there is a lot that I can learn as a writer if I want to hit the same sort of emotional strength that The Dark Knight conveys.

Discovering What Matters

Figuring out what actually matters within the story is part of what I'm taking away. The Dark Knight is very well plotted, with small details included at the beginning. I'm thinking of Gordon asking Detective Ramirez how her mom is doing in the hospital when we first meet the detective, providing us a touch of foreshadowing of her corruption when the hospital sequence occurs, and culminates with her confessing the mob got to her "early" because of the hospital bills. Though I've seen the film a number of times, this was useful to me because I could see--knowing the story--the deliberate choices the Nolans took when writing the script.

Another detail that's small but more overt than Ramirez is the placing of the joker card in the judge's file in an early scene. This is ominous to the audience, but irrelevant to the judge at that moment. Later, when she blows up, her car was loaded with joker playing cards, tying together--symbolically--the earlier warning. My takeaway with this one is that, if I want to write a similarly powerful story, I need to be willing to push away my tendency to write incredibly tight points of view. That is, an omniscient narrator can enter into any character's head, describe what's there, or even remain aloof of it all. This is not the type of narration that I'm accustomed to reading, let alone writing, and I resist that decision. The other option I have is to incorporate more POV characters, broadening my story from the two or three main characters that I tend to rely upon whenever I'm writing my stories. We actually enter Judge Surrillo's POV two times in the film--one, when she first sees the joker card in her docket, and the second when she opens the manila envelope and reads the message there. Cinematically, this is a familiar trick. From a writer's position, this is a little harder to pull off. In order to create a similar effect (without using the omniscient narrator), I would have to create a chapter or two establishing the character, giving her time to notice the things that I needed the audience to notice. This takes time, eats up word counts, and can sometimes lose focus on the greater plot that's happening. I'm not sure how to square this circle, but I'm certain there's a way to do this.

Lastly, the decisions and conversations at the beginning of the film reemerge at the end. Batman first appears on-screen to bust up a mob drug deal with the Scarecrow (in order to quickly resolve a loose-end from the first film). During the violence, Batman gets attacked by some Rottweilers, leading him to reinvent his armor (which, I have to say, I don't much care for in an aesthetic sense. I realize what they were going for, but I prefer the cowl/cape combination from the first film more). The dogs show up again as an implied description of what happened to their owner, Chechen. They are guarding their new master, the Joker, at the end of the film, again attacking Batman. He's almost overpowered by them, but his new armor is enough to pull him through and he tosses the animals down the elevator well (the no killing rule only applies to humans, apparently). This provides a purpose to the earlier experience, plus closure because it comes full circle.

I should say that one of the things that I remember the most about Oedipus Rex from my one time reading it as a senior in high school is how the story relies on ironies. Every aspect of the play, every piece of the story is connected. This is expanded into additional details for a modern audience, but it's a classical contribution, and one we still love even now.

Character Connections

This is where the Hollywood formula was really strong for me. If you look at the cast list on IMDB, you'll see that The Dark Knight is filled with characters. But it's really only about three of them. This falls in line well with the protagonist/antagonist/relationship character concept. The movie is really about Harvey Dent, Batman/Bruce Wayne (with Bruce Wayne being the secret identity of the Batman), and the Joker, though, by the end, Commissioner Gordon keeps saying, "The Joker attacked the best of us", as if implying he's one of the three Important Characters. He's a strong--even essential--secondary character, but he is only that. He's fairly static, save his obvious discomfort with the idea that, as the only honest cop in Gotham, he's the one being burdened with the conspiracy to preserve Harvey Dent's legacy. 

Focusing on the Main Three, though, there's a lot to unpack within the context of the film, which is less useful here. Not only is it done better in the podcast (I'd encourage you to listen to it), but the application of the lesson here is what I'm trying to parse out. The thing is, I write intuitively and, though I've become a much bigger fan of outlining--insisting, now, that I outline on index cards before I get more than a few chapters in--I don't necessarily view my story in a Three Act structure, a Seven Point Plot structure, or even a typical Five Act structure. While I could probably break my stories down in that way, it's always a retroactive, reactive exercise. I don't sit down and say, "I want my characters in this position by the end of Act I, here by Act II, and all dead by Act III." 

It's obvious, however, if I want a story to have the same sort of tight, controlled feeling that The Dark Knight has, that I will need to be more focused on which role my characters are in. The secondary characters aren't what matters--they'll appear in the story as needed, the way Gordon, Alfred, and Rachel do--though they can even be useful in continuing the story's forward momentum or providing additional emotional avenues. I think that's part of why I don't feel the same tightness in my writing: I tend to feel that every character who spends time on the page needs to have their own lives, described in a way that makes them seem like additional protagonists. That type of writing is worthwhile--an excellent example of fully realized secondary characters can be found in Terry Goodkind's Soul of the Fire. I should add that the secondary characters do contribute to the overall plot of that novel, so it's not a perfect example, but in terms of making a story tight and streamlined, Goodkind's method is not the one to be emulating. 

And that's the final takeaway here: I am, through my readings, trained to be sprawling, deliberate, and, in many ways, subtle. I write things into the beginning that will matter later on, but it gives my books a very slow-to-start feel. I raise questions in the minds of readers that will linger for chapters upon chapters, sometimes only getting to the answers in unsatisfying, off-handed ways--often in the final few pages as I desperately try to tie up loose ends. 

If I want to write something with greater punch, I need to be more up front and immediately engaging. The James Bond series and many of the films by Mamoru Oshii follow a similar set up as The Dark Knight in that all of them begin with a large, action-packed, dramatic opening that hooks the readers, builds into the greater story being told, and helps establish the competency of one of the main characters or sets the stakes. My stories don't tend to do that, which is strange considering the fact that I write mostly fantasy, which is well-known for its heavy reliance on action and spectacle. Perhaps I don't write more action-oriented beginnings as an attempt to subvert the genre expectations, but I don't know if I'm a talented enough writer to pull that off. 

Part of my reason for that is because we don't know the characters, so we don't care if they're in danger. There's no sympathy. Enter The Dark Knight again: We don't care about the Joker--because he's the villain (though not the antagonist), because he starts the show off doing horrible, callous, cold things, and because, until the reveal at the end of the heist, we don't even know what he looks like--so we can learn things about his character that help us to understand what our protagonist is up against. The Joker is brilliant, careful, manipulative, and quick to improvise as needed. Because we're not expected to root for the Joker, the fact that we're dropped into the middle of a heist gives us an action-based hook without need to worry about emotional baggage. 

I need to remember that.

Imperfect Doesn't Mean Not Worthwhile

The Dark Knight has some flaws. Batman tries to be proactive, but ends up spending much of the film reacting to the Joker. Batman is his own kind of brilliant, of course, but it's always in the chase. Think of what he does to get Lau out of China: He conceives of a plan, uses his resources, and secures the target. But he does that in reaction to Lau's choices. 

This happens throughout the film, and it definitely weakens the character. Fortunately, the Nolans gave him a storyarc, the fragility of his human side being exposed by his relationship with Rachel (who isn't the relationship character). This provides the growth that both Batman and Bruce Wayne need for the story to feel successful, but, again, Batman is always sprinting from place to place, trying to solve the problems as they arise. I can learn from this misstep (though how you'd write this story any other way, I don't know) by figuring out how to give my protagonist a stronger active stride, rather than a reactive response.

Also, there are some coincidences that are simply baffling. Did none of the school bus drivers notice one pulling out of the bank? What if they had put the Joker back into cuffs instead of letting him goad an officer into attacking him? Did Joker's plan really rely on detonating a fat guy in the holding cell? What if he never got to a phone, or was standing in the wrong place? How was he the only one who survived the explosion? When you're in the moment of watching the film, these all pass through as part of the logic of the piece. But in retrospect, they can be quite bizarre. I need to determine how to make plans of both the antagonist and the protagonist feel possible and rely as little as I can on coincidences. 

Pacing

At the risk of making this piece too long, my final thought is about pacing--and this relates to the last comment on flaws. Despite the fact that the characters are tightly interwoven, there are extraneous parts to the story that don't advance the plot and detract from the world that the film has established. Perhaps the worst part of the film is when Batman somehow uses a drill to remove a brick from the wall (how did he cut the back of it with that drill?) and then using science-magic and, for some reason, a mini-gun, determines the fingerprints off a fired bullet. It's unnecessary--a clue could have been more easily arrived at. While I know that Sherlock Holmes can get away with impossibly tenuous deductions--and that's part of the fun--the detective side of the Batman was feeling shoehorned in with that sequence.

For me, I need to remember that everything I show is advancing the plot, moving things forward, expanding the characters, and tightening the interconnection of the Main Three characters.

Maybe then I'll write a story worth reading.