Complex plots and movie fun

Dead Man's Chest ends bringing the whole host of plots it's raised to unsatisfying conclusions. Not unsatisfying in that they don't end, but that the endings are not what we would expect. We'll need to break down each story, and it's conclusion, to see what I mean.

1. Jack Sparrow is fighting to save his own life. Resolved when he thinks he's stolen Davey Jones' heart, only to find it's been stolen from him.

2. Norrington is fighting to regain his old life, resolved when he steals the heart from Sparrow, and at the expense of all the other characters.

3. Will's primary goal is to save his father, and he loses his chance due to Norrington stealing the heart, leaving no way of using the Black Pearl to fight Davey Jones. Incidentally, he also wants to make Elizabeth happy, but that's taken a back seat while he worries about his father.

4. Elizabeth has found, and saved, Will, but now has to worry about her own skin. Here earlier techniques of pretending to be helpless no longer work, so she betrays Jack, as he foreshadowed earlier. Her guilt over this comes to be a block between her and Will.

5. Beckett gets exactly what he wants. He claims the heart of Davey Jones, giving him the ultimate leverage over the ultimate power of the sea.

It's fairly clear that the characters we're sympathetic with are in a bad state, and their antagonists have won. This is a classic ending for the middle movie of a trilogy, especially in the fantasy genre. Think Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, where the Empire wins. Think Lord of the Rings, where Gollum spells out his plans to betray Frodo, and Gandalf has won one battle, but now is beginning a much larger one. The difference here is the scope. Whereas most fantasy movies have 2 or 3 plots moving along, there's no less than 5 here. This is a level of complexity that most movie goers simply are not prepared to deal with. It's incredibly ambitious. The filmmakers knew this. They knew that the plots were hugely complex, and would be hard to swallow. To help absorb all this, audiences were also treated to fantastical action sequences. I can't recall any other 3 way sword fights. Davey Jones and his crew look amazing for such extensive computer effects.

So now with all these plots going, all these frustrated good guys sitting around unsure what to do, and these bad guys with the means of taking over the sea, what does the next movie hold? Well, the first thing it has to do is bring back Jack, and the Pearl. The last movie in a trilogy needs to resolve everything in the good guys' favor, so Jack has to come back. Will needs to resolve his relationship with his father and Elizabeth. Beckett needs to get his comeuppance, Norrington needs redemption, Jones must be defeated. The plots become so complicated you practically need a flow chart to keep track of changing allegiances and betrayals. And in addition to that, we need epic action, and good old fashioned movie fun, so we can accept it all. We get all this in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, At World's End.

Plots and Symbols in Dead Man's Chest

I mentioned last time how Jack Sparrow begins to behave as puppet master. That is certainly holds true. Jack has 2 maguffins he's chasing, Davey Jones's key, and Davey Jones's chest. Of course, that's just to get what's inside the chest, but he spends the bulk of the movie trying to get both these elements. He sends Will off to get the key, and incidentally temporarily settle his debt. He has no intention of leaving Will on Jones's boat, but he needs to get the chest in order to get him off. That opportunity presents itself when Elizabeth finds him on Tortuga. He uses her desire to save Will to find the chest.

Now, in each case Jack uses Will and Elizabeth's love for each other to get what he wants. They don't give him the full story either, but Jack is clearly manipulating those around him for his own ends. However, on board Davey Jones's ship, the Flying Dutchman, Will finds his father and makes a promise to free him from Davey Jones, by stabbing Jones's heart. This is where the story of parts 2 and 3 start to get complicated. So now we have 2 characters, both of whom we're rooting for, both after the same goal, with completely different intentions. It gets more complicated, as Norrington comes back into the picture, another character we're sympathetic with, who wants the chest for himself to regain his old life back. It's around this point when the two pirate we've been following since the first movie, the bald one and one eyed one, have to spell out exactly who wants what. The first time I saw this I couldn't help but laugh. It seemed to be a joke on the part of the screenwriters. They're acknowledging the complexity of the story, and are giving us a simplified version of what's going on.

Now, the longer that these characters spend with Jack Sparrow, the more they begin to behave like him. It's spelled out when Elizabeth in on the Black Pearl with Jack, complaining that she isn't married but is ready to be. Jack tells Elizabeth she'll behave selfishly, out of curiosity, and Elizabeth tells Jack he'll behave honorably, again out of curiosity. Will doesn't spend as much time with Jack in this movie, so his intentions tend to stay much more open and obvious. Norrington spends more screen time with him, so we tend to see him behave more like Jack, hiding his true intentions and goals until the very last minute.

Let's look, for a moment, at a little symbolism in the movie. This is a Disney movie, so we're not going to see outright sexual or violently gory action, but we are going to get plenty of symbols for it. The violent symbols are first. There's plenty of swordplay, plenty of stunts, and a fantastic three way fight scene on a runaway water wheel, but never any blood. This is a payoff for all the complexity that the audience has to absorb. Giving us too much plot, or too much action tends to wear out an audience. Dead Man's Chest seems to resolve this problem by stepping up action when the plot gets too complex, then plot when the action gets overwhelming. The sexual symbols are slightly more subtle and pervasive. Jack and Elizabeth share some very pointed dialogue. The whole conversation about marriage has little to do with holy matrimony, and everything to do with penetrative sex. When she holds the compass she keeps finding it pointing to Jack at unexpected times, often while he's playing with a phallic symbol. This is most noted on the ship, after their conversation. Jack is staring out his telescoping telescope, and Elizabeth surprises herself by her true wants changing. We'll see it again later when she's sitting cross-legged on the beach, and Jack mentions that she's sitting on what she really wants. Her, "Beg pardon?" is classic here. It is not much of a stretch to bring this back to sex, how she wants to be penetrated, pure and simple. The problem is another symbol, this time Jack's. His compass doesn't work. Not only does it not point north, but since he has no idea what he wants it doesn't work at all for him. Again, not to harp on the obvious, but this is a phallic symbol. Jack's penis doesn't work, and the movie is as much about his saving his own neck from Davey Jones as it is to regain his own sexuality. Why did he lose it in the first place? We'll come back to that question.

I bring up the symbols not out of a sense of shock value, but to get a better understanding of all the layers going on in this movie. There are no less than 5 major characters in this movie, all of whom have different motivations, techniques, and are distinct characterwise. They all have stories that have a beginning, rising action, a climax, and falling action. Beneath those layers are the symbols that expand the surface plots. And all these elements come to a head in the dramatic end of the film, which is also the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End.

Pirate of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest Begins

Pirate of the Caribbean, parts 2 and 3, really need to be taken together as a single story in order to best understand them. I'm not going to address Pirates 1, The Curse of the Black Pearl, because Todd Alcott already did an excellent analysis of it here, but also because the story moves so far away from it's beginnings in the next two movies.

Pirates 2, Dead Man's Chest, starts out not long after Curse of the Black Pearl. Elizabeth and Will are getting married, Jack is off pirating, and Norrington is missing in action. The drama starts immediately as, just before Elizabeth and Will's wedding, a mysterious man comes to arrest the pair, as well as Commodore Norrington who, the governor tells us, has resigned his post and vanished.

The man we meet, Cutler-Becket, is a strange man. On the one hand he seems to be a government official. He comes carrying warrants, he commands soldiers, he's dressed as a military man. But he states that he's working for the East India Trading Company. I'm not familiar with the history of the British Empire in the Caribbean, but the East India Company seems to be a quasi-governmental institution which gives it's employees government level power, without government level restrictions on it's use. This is a theme we'll see mentioned here and there in these two movies. It's a dangerous institution, and seems to act only for it's own benefit. At any rate, Becket releases Will with the promise of a full pardon in exchange for finding Jack Sparrow, and trading for the compass we first saw in Curse of the Black Pearl. He leaves immediately.

Now we see Jack Sparrow, escaping, via coffin, a dangerous island that looks to be a prison of some kind. His crew is getting antsy. They'd endured storms and attacks, with no treasure to show for it. Jack has been in this position before, when he was last captain of the Black Pearl, and was mutinied against. He quells the rebellion in his crew, and sets about finding out what his next step is. He's accomplished his first, finding a drawing of a key, but doesn't seem to know what to do next. His compass is no help, changing direction whenever he looks at it. We'll find out later that the compass points in whatever direction of what the holder really wants. The reason it isn't working for Jack is because he does not know what he wants. This asks the question, why? Why doesn't Jack know what he wants? We'll come back to that question. But it's about now that Jack finds out he's being hunted by Davey Jones, and an old friend, Will's dad Boostrap Bill, is working for him. This leads Jack running panicked, to the first island he comes to, an island of cannibals.

Now, this scene on the island is fascinating. It's beautiful, adventurous, dangerous, and exciting. It's wonderful to see, but what actually happens here? From a plot and a story perspective, not much. Jack loses half his crew, but conveniently enough the half that seemed to want to mutiny, and Will finds them and gets onboard the Black Pearl. I could write another post about this scene on it's own, but I'm more interested in why it was included in the movie in the first place. There's a lot here that we simply don't understand. Why was Jack made the chief? In the first film, before Jack and Elizabeth meet, he's talking to some soldiers, and he mentions that he's made chief of some group. Now here we see him actually chief. What are the odds that Jack becomes chief of two aboriginal tribes? We never find out how, or how Jack learned their language, or what happened when the crew explored the island. We do quickly see Will find them, and rescue the crew, giving Jack time to escape as well.

This scene could have been done other ways. Will could have found the ship at Tortuga, much as Elizabeth would later. The crew could have attempted to mutiny and Will might have saved Jack and the loyal crew. But instead we get this beautiful, but ultimately pointless scene. We never get to see this tribe again. I don't know, but I think it simply was for the beauty. We're meant to see the enormity of the Pirates of the Caribbean world, in a way that's simply fun. It's entertainment for the sake of entertainment. This is a huge risk on the part of the filmmakers. Sure, the scene is fun, but if we're not given anything serious to show for it, they risk losing the audience's interest. Fortunately, we get back to the drama quickly. We'll see more as Jack begins to play puppet master of his friends, Will and Elizabeth.

The Last Word on Adaptation

So why all the sprawl? Well, the answer to that is right out in the open. It's in the title itself. The film is called Adaptation. It isn't just the adaptation of nature. It isn't just Charlie Kaufman's adaptation to his role as screenwriter. It isn't just Susan Orlean's adaptation from New York journalist to adulteress, drug user, and attempted murderer. Even though all these things are true, the answer is much simpler. It's about adapting a book into a movie.

If I had to boil what this movie is about down to a single word it would be, "writing." Normally movies have a difficult time being about general subject. Brokeback Mountain is not about homosexuality, it's about star crossed lovers, a story older than Romeo and Juliet. Million Dollar Baby is not about euthanasia, it's about what a champion will do to win. Lord of the Rings is not about monsters and magic, it's about a small man doing everything he can to save himself from corruption. Homosexuality, euthanasia, monsters and magic are all just techniques that are used to tell much more universal stories.

All the sprawl, the change from a rambling, disjointed movie to one that follows a strict plot, the change in characters, everything is to show how one can go about adapting a book to a movie. It's right there in front of us. The scenes that Charlie describes (during scenes of writing!) we all actually get to see. Kaufman jerking off to the book jacket picture of Susan Orlean? It's there. The opening sequence of a lifeless planet? There. The last time we see Charlie, driving away, his voice over is describing the very scene we are seeing, all except the last shot of flowers.

Whereas Brokeback Mountain, Million Dollar Baby, and Lord of the Rings tell universal stories using different subject matter, Adaptation tells us about the process of writing. The tacked on, Hollywood plot is a technique to tell us about what it's like to write.

A final note, on Adaptation. It is not the only movie to tackle the subject of writing. I need to add another film to my to-do list, Naked Lunch, possibly my favorite movie about writing.

The End

The first thing we need to look at in order to understand the ending is Donald Kaufman, Charlie's twin. Donald, at the beginning of the film, is living in his brother's house. He's just as fat, just as unattractive, and has no job or money of his own. Indeed, the first time we meet him he quite literally can't stand on his own, stuck to the floor due to a vague and never again mentioned back problem. We also find here that Donald has a plan for getting out of Charlie's house, not to mention off his floor. He's going to be a screenwriter.

Donald's story as a screenwriter is very straightforward. He takes McKee's class to learn the proper way of doing so, writes it very quickly and easily, and has no problem selling it. Donald's experiences at writing his script are basically the Hollywood ideal, where he has no problem writing it, no problem selling it, and by all accounts it's great. Mother Kaufman, who we never meet, loves it. Donald's girlfriend loves it. Charlie's agent loves it. Charlie does not. He doesn't actually read it, but just the concept of the film is enough to turn him off.

Now, the pattern of Donald's screenplay is what Charlie wants. He wants his screenplay to flow easily and be loved by others. He tries to do something completely different, by avoiding traditional plots and stories, but the goal is identical. The end of the film looks like one of these traditional films. Charlies's experiment at writing a screenplay fails, but the end result becomes a movie, I would argue a successful one. More than that, though, is the very last shot of the movie itself. We see Charlie driving away, describing the very scene we're watching as his ending, then the camera pans away to some flowers. Specifically, daffodils, widely considered to be weeds. We see the flowers close in the evening, then open again in the morning, as time flows faster and faster they open and close again and again.

Why is this? Is this a metaphor for the cycle of life? After all, Donald just died while Charlie lives. Is it to show the dance the La Roche described much earlier in the film, the dance that allows all life to exist? Does the yellow of the daffodil petals have something to do with Susan Orlean and Charlie's loves blonde hair? I think the answer is much simpler. At the beginning of the film, during that lunch with the beautiful producer, Charlie says he wants the movie to be just about flowers. He says, several times, that he wants to show how beautiful flowers are, but, for most of the film, he can't figure out how to do so. The last shot of the movie is to show how beautiful flowers are. Not only exotic orchids, but the most common flower in the world. It too is beautiful. So, in the end, Charlie succeeds. He succeeds at making a movie that shows how beautiful flowers are. He succeeds at finishing his screenplay. He does not betray his initial goals, he adds to them.

This only leaves one huge question remaining. Why this sprawling film? Why does it start to disjointed, and end so traditionally? Is it just to set up the daffodil shot?

Adapation's stories and lack thereof

Adaptation follows several stories throughout it's plot. First, it follows the story of Susan Orlean, and her relationship with John LaRoche. Secondly, it follows the story of Charlie Kaufman, specifically his work on the script, and his relationship with his twin. Third, it follows the story of Donald Kaufman, the aforementioned twin's work on his own script and career.

As an aside, here, it's worth noting that some of the plot points in this film correspond to real life, and others don't. Charlie Kaufman did write the script, he did write Being John Malkovich, Susan Orlean did write an article and later a book on John LaRoche. However, Charlie Kaufman does not have a twin, orchids can't be turned into drugs, Susan Orlean did not have a sexual relationship with LaRoche. Normally I don't like to mix facts from the real world in with facts from films. I only note them to make sure that viewers understand that this movie is a work of fiction, even if it's presented as being otherwise.

Now, two out of three of our main stories follow a relatively similar structure. In the case of Susan Orlean and Charlie Kaufman, the first part of their story does not follow any particular plot. Events just meander between each other with no overall connection to what moviegoers typically expect from their stories. Orlean's story is treated with much more dignity, however. The first two thirds of her story is basically a long introduction to John LaRoche, his life and work. We get some information about her, and some about flowers, but it's mostly La Roche. Charlie Kaufman's story follows a similar pattern. The first two thirds of his story are basically an introduction to Kaufman. We also get some information about the movie industry and the craft of writing, but we mostly see his insecurities, his fantasies, and his hang ups. In both cases, though, there is no real story. It's more akin to a sprawling documentary.

The last third, however, we see a change. Both stories have a trigger. For Orlean, it's her trip to the swamp to see a ghost orchid. For Kaufman, it's McKee's seminar on screenwriting. The change we see is that now we have a story to follow. All the information we've been getting about our characters in the first two thirds of the movie comes to light here. So what are the stories? In Kaufman's case, he finally builds the courage to meet Orlean. In Orlean's case, she embraces her relationship with La Roche. Kaufman emerges as the protagonist. He is the one who grows as a person. His experience hunting down Susan Orlean gives him the courage to kiss his love interest. He mourns his brother's death, but not in a crippling way. Susan Orlean emerges as the antagonist, who's largest role is to oppose the protagonist. She literally holds a gun to his head, forcing him to do her bidding, in this case meaning driving them both to the swamp, where she intends to kill him.

All the things Kaufman said he did not want to do at the beginning of the movie occur now. The romance, the guns, the drugs, the artificial plot, the sidelining of the flowers themselves, all show up in the last 15 minutes of the movie. Does this mean he betrays his principles? Is Kaufman a failure in his own eyes? We've two more subjects to touch on to enlighten these questions.

Adaptation's Beginning and End

Adaptation is one of the stranger mainstream films in recent memory. The first time I watched it I sat through the entire film, took a 15 minute break, then immediately watched it again. I knew I had seen something, but I had no idea what. Deciphering the movies many layers and stories has been a challenge I've wholeheartedly enjoyed.

The movie starts several different ways. It starts with LaRoche driving to the Fakahatchee swamp while listening to the origin of species. Notice the squeal the tires makes when he turns right. It starts with Kaufman at a business dinner, discussing his feelings on adapting Orlean's book. It starts at the beginning of time, then loosely follows the development of life on this planet. Every one of these beginnings is described by Kaufman as he works on his screenplay. Even the screeching right turn LaRoche makes. It should be clear from this that we are not only watching the story Susan Orleans wrote, but also the process of turning that story into a movie. Let's look a little closer at one of these beginnings, Charlie Kaufman's dinner with a beautiful producer.

We learn several things here. First off, that we're going to get a lot of voice over, and only from Charlie Kaufman, though we knew that from the introductory credits. He's extremely self-conscious. We also learn that he wrote Being John Malkovich, a fact that happens to be true in the real world as well. We learn that it's that script that got him this opportunity for adapting Susan Orleans "The Orchid Thief." Most importantly, we learn what he does not want to do. He doesn't want to make it about guns, or drugs, or tack on a romantic story that was not in the book. These facts, especially these last ones, are absolutely critical for understanding the film, but they're tossed off so haphazardly it's incredibly easy to miss them.

The reason these facts are so critical is that this is exactly how the movie ends. The orchids become drugs. Orleans gets a gun. Orleans falls in love with LaRoche. It is exactly the Hollywood ending Kaufman explicitly stated he did not want to do. So, why? Why is the ending so completely the opposite of what he wanted. In order to understand that, we need to look at the structure of all the story lines that unfold.

The Death of Optimism

We last left off looking at the primary characters in the film, just beginning to touch on Rachel. Rachel holds a useful position in Nolan’s Batman films. She functions as a plot device, splitting Batman from the police when she is kidnapped. She is the love interest of two of the primary characters, arguably three, as Alfred clearly takes a paternal view of her, knowing her through her entire life, trusting her as much as he trusts Bruce Wayne. More than that, she is a barometer for Gotham as a whole.

In “Batman Begins”, Rachel begins to accept Wayne/Batman, only to ultimately reject him. She latches onto Dent, through both her love and her career, as she sees that he is the real future of Gotham. Rachel realized, in the first film, she could never be with Bruce Wayne, because of the duplicity of his nature. He had split himself in two so completely that there was little anyone could call a full human. Wayne is far more Batman than he is billionaire playboy, but the Batman persona can’t last. What will happen to him when Batman outlives his usefulness? No one can tell, but Rachel didn’t see what she needed to. Contrast that with Harvey Dent, who does have a real future when his life District Attorney ends.

Her death represents, in a very real way, the death of hope in Gotham. This would be interesting enough, in terms of storytelling, but Nolan is too much a director to stop there. She steps out of her role as symbol for everyone else when she not only makes her decision, but carves it in stone. She writes her decision to marry Dent in an unsealed envelope, then gives to Alfred to give to Wayne. By giving it to him, she was separating herself from her father figure. She had grown up, and she proved it to herself, and us. It also guaranteed that Wayne would take her seriously. Coming from Alfred, her words would have real weight. That act also gave Alfred his own chance at growth, when he burns the letter. He established his own life in that act. Not as a servant, not even as family, but as Wayne’s, not Batman’s, protector. His gray knight, if you will. But her death marked the death of optimism, made possible by Batman, for the coming chaos, started by the Joker. Her death triggered it, not Dent’s. Dent’s actions, after he lost Rachel, were a foregone conclusion. What if the Joker had not confronted Dent in that hospital room? He may not have picked up a gun, but he would’ve certainly rejected the role of Gotham’s white knight. The net effect would only be different by a matter of degree. Rachel’s role caused Gotham’s final test, Dent was just the trigger.

Some final thoughts on these pieces, and the movie on the whole. This is akin to the type of stuff I wrote in college, studying Shakespeare,Vladimir Nabokov, and Hunter Thompson. The question occurred to me, as I wrote them, as to why exactly I’m doing so. I mean, at the end of the day, this movie is entertainment. Good entertainment, to be sure, but no more important than any of the other hundreds of thousands of films ever made. That’s true on one level, but on another, this type of art definitely has a role to play in the human experience.

I write these things because I can. Because the movie supports a close, multi-layered look. Nolan created films about a comic book superhero, but also managed to treat crime and terrorism as real threats, not just something that might effect someone else. He also manages to touch on themes as old as humanity itself, such as the tropes of heroes, villains, one’s role in the world, family. Hopefully, by exploring some of the effects of these films, I can help others to understand a little bit more of the film, and will think just a little bit about these, and other, themes. The information and analysis is there, it just takes a thoughtful look to begin to bring them to light. This is not intended to be the end-all be-all of Dark Knight pieces, just a beginning. I could’ve taken these in very different directions. That’s good, it makes for a complex, interesting movie.

Upcoming Analyses

Some films I plan on doing in-depth analyses on:

Adaptation

Pirates of the Caribbean (parts 2 and 3)

Jurassic Park

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Ultimatum

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Sunshine

Thank You For Smoking

These are hardly the only ones I intend on doing. And I may do them completely out of order, but this is a good start.

Two Sides of a Few Coins

We last touched on how groups are treated in Gotham. Democratic decisions are not to be trusted. Individuals are. Individuals are the real heroes. Not the waves of vigilantes Batman inspired, but Batman himself. Not the police as a whole, but the newly appointed Commissioner Gordon. Not lawyers, but District Attorney Harvey Dent.

Harvey Dent is an interesting take on an old character. “Harvey 2 Face” has been treated many times before, and every time has had one thing in common: his face was scarred. It was a bastardization of his face, a role he not only fully grasped, but reveled in. Nolan’s Two-Face is not scarred. In “The Dark Knight”, half his skin isn’t just wounded, but entirely missing. This is a visual metaphor for what Two-Face really is. He isn’t an ordinary man, twisted and evil; he is a good man, even a great one, exposed for the monster he really is. Towards the beginning of the film he even says so. “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Batman is the same, but his inner self isn’t exposed by a horrific event. He dons a mask to show who he really is. Who is he really? That’s a question he spends much of the film grappling with. His failure to save the woman he loves throws this into sharp perspective. True, he’s been successful at stamping out crime, but a side effect is to inspire untrained and dangerous vigilantes. He had the best intentions becoming Batman, but the consequences of his actions were well beyond what he imagined. Contrast this with the playboy persona of Bruce Wayne, a teetotaler and man-slut. In public, he must act the boor. In private, he can let out who he really is. If the Joker is Batman’s soulmate, Harvey Dent is the other side to Batman’s coin.

Commissioner Gordon takes an interesting role here, too. In nearly all other treatments, Gordon has a tiny role. He’s rarely more than a plot device. In Nolan’s take, he is much more fully fleshed out. He has a family, whom he’ll do anything to defend. He has a career; he didn’t start out as commissioner. One thing that Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne have in common is two sides, a public one, and one they hide. Gordon is the same. He’s willing to fake his own death, he allies with Batman, a creature entirely outside the law, he allows Batman to interview the Joker entirely alone, allowing him the chance to do very dangerous things. He blames Batman for crimes he knows him to be innocent of, for the public good. Gordon, like Dent and Wayne, maintains 2 personas. Finally, we come to the most interesting character, the Joker.

The Joker does not have 2 personas. He is barely even a character, more akin to a force of nature. He never worries his plans might go awry. And his goal is always the same, chaos, wherever he goes. He causes chaos in the criminal world, as we see in the first scene. He breaks the one rule criminals have. When I first saw it, I thought, why is the Joker killing his accomplices? He doesn’t care about the money. Then I realized, that was the whole point. He did it for no reason at all, just to sow confusion and chaos. He lies to Dent, saying he never has plans, that he’s like a dog that chases cars but would have no idea what to do with one if he caught it. That’s clearly a lie. He plans things down to the most minute detail. He does it to get Dent to go crazy, and focus his blame on Batman and Gordon.

So what we are left with is a single character that’s honest about his intentions, and he’s the most vicious and cold-blooded monster to ever walk the streets of Gotham. This is why groups can’t be trusted. In an anonymous group, one can let his or her inner self run wild. One can be as selfish and dangerous as possible. One can let out his or her inner demons. In the climactic boat scene, the groups don’t have any other goal than to save their own skins. But when it comes time for a single individual to take action, when it comes time to shed the anonymity, they act for the public good. The message here is clear. Do not trust groups, and only trust individuals when there is evidence to back it up.

Bruce Wayne/Batman, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, public and private Jim Gordon all contrast themselves to the Joker in terms of both what side of good and evil they are on, and their duplicitous nature. That only leaves one other major character, Rachel. We’ll look more at her next time.

Democracy in The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Batman story has been a very interesting, multi-layered take. On the one level, it is a story of revenge, of all-consuming obsession, of a man’s journey to discover who he really is. On another, it is a political story, of how corruption effects democracy, and vice versa.

Democracy plays an interesting role in The Dark Knight. The beginning of the movie finds Lt. Gordon and Batman discussing whether or not they could trust the newly elected District Attorney, Harvey Dent. There is no reference to any crooked elections, or voter intimidation, or electronic voting machines being hacked. There is no indication this was anything but a fair and open election. Yet the two are withholding judgement regardless. Okay, maybe they simply distrust the power structure in Gotham. After all, this movie was largely shot in Chicago, a site chosen no doubt for it’s distinct architecture, but it is also difficult to ignore its history of corruption and party-rigging. But, at the end of the film, we find two boats given the choice to either blow the other up, or die themselves. To make matters more interesting, one contains normal citizens, the other convicted criminals. The normal citizens, at the captain’s request, take up a vote whether or not to hit the switch. The vote comes up overwhelmingly in favor of doing so. Now, the important thing to realize here is that this is the wrong decision. Batman, and the police, are closing in on the Joker, even as they vote. So what, you might say. The trapped people had no idea of that. It was a risk they couldn’t take. But the Joker already had a history of lying. Earlier, when he kidnapped both Dent and Dent’s love Rachel, he switched addresses. Batman naturally went to save Rachel, a woman he too loves, but when he arrives finds that Dent is there instead. He doesn’t hesitate, and saves Dent, but had fully intended to reach Rachel. The Joker can’t be trusted, the people know that. Flipping the switch just as easily could’ve blown up their own ship. That isn't a difficult situation to imagine. The Joker's sense of humor is dangerous at best. Wouldn't he have enjoyed the show watching everyone blame the villains, when it was actually Gotham's citizens that blew themselves up? My point is that in this film, people in large groups don't make good decisions, or at the very least, they make decisions that can't be trusted.

My view of the heavily mistrusted democracies is also influenced by Gotham’s very recent history of extreme corruption. What caused that corruption in the first place? The mob gives us some big clues. They are flush with cash, owning and operating whole banks that rival any of Gotham’s best. The movie doesn’t deal with how the mob made their money, except on a very small scale. In an early scene, the Scarecrow, the villain from the first film, sells drugs to the mob. Indeed, the first film, Batman Begins, had an extended scene at a very large drug deal at a port. The mob makes their money on things that they couldn’t possibly do if they were legal. It’d be more cost-effective to open a legitimate business. Taxes are considerably less than bribes and legal fees in the long run. Don’t believe me? I stand on the history of Prohibition as evidence. Before prohibition, there was a mafia, but selling illegal alcohol brought such astronomical profits that the mob grew to rival the federal government in power. When it was legalized again, alcohol became a legitimate business. The mob was pushed out by real business owners. Whether or not criminalized drugs is good for society at large is a question I don’t wish to address, but needless to say, it gives criminals a large chance at high profits.

My point is simple. Democracy not only leads directly to decisions that cannot be trusted, but it sows the seeds to make bad decisions in the first place. The Joker rose to power in the criminal vacuum Batman created. The criminal economy that Batman took down itself rose as a result of elected officials, bribed and terrorized to let criminals act with impunity. The elected officials came to power as a result of democratic institutions.

People, as a whole, make decisions that cannot necessarily be trusted. So why is that? Why is it easier to trust an individual, than a population? For that answer, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum the movie touches on. Let’s look inward. We shall save that for part 2.