Does Nolan Look Like a Man With a Plan?

Christopher Nolan is a quantum filmmaker; each of his movies is an event. Memento established him in the directorial firmament, but Insomnia proved that he was consistent. The first thing I sensed as I watched The Dark Knight was his inveterate approach and his signature fingerprints: rich, complex scene composition. He establishes so many things within a brief span of time.

Batman Begins was raw and visceral. The exploration of Bruce Wayne as a character takes place on open ground that is impossible to miss. It is explained to us, but it is not shouted down in a chorus, and this works perfectly because the dialog is so well written and so larger than life and the characterizations are strong. Bruce's dad is given only a handful of lines (his mother doesn't even speak), but the movie wastes nothing in telling you what kind of man he is, and he is important since he is the harbinger of his son's descent into Batman. Bruce is a man seeking answers. At the beginning of the movie he is in disrepair, and so it is as much a journey for us as it is for him.

The biggest divergences from Batman Begins are illustrated best with this scene. Ducard delivers one cohesive speech that spans several different settings, and despite looking whole on paper, context changes based on the scene. Two separate lines are given in the midst of a scene transition ("We can teach you how to become truly invisible." "Invisible?"). This mirrors a similar occurrence in Citizen Kane where a dramatic jump in time is masked by an otherwise cohesive line ("Merry Christmas...and a happy New Year"). Cuts are employed extensively. Time and space seem to be abolished as the music swells. The movie moves fast, never lingering on any one scene for too long, and it realizes that the presentation of Bruce's psychology and the pacing of it is important in understanding the man behind the mask.

Batman Begins is crafted with perfect atom-point precision for the first fifty minutes. This can't be sustained, of course, since it has to move forward into Gotham and the crime drama that awaits, and so it undergoes a shift in tone and pacing. The Dark Knight I feel is the model of equanimity. To quote Salieri from Amadeus: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall." Everything in The Dark Knight works in perfect tandem, relaying information about the characters on multiple levels while establishing future events. Though Nolan sometimes bends reality, there is a sense that the movie becomes so rich and detailed that it begins to reflect life itself. For instance, he deftly establishes the Batman copycats and conflates them with the state of the criminal underworld as demonstrated by Scarecrow. That scene also sets up several future storylines (suit upgrades, the mobster and the dogs later in the film), and it's an excellent interlude into the Joker's story: Bruce may think that Batman has no limits as he has the mob on the run, but that ideology will soon be tested. The Dark Knight is like any other great movie. It rewards you for being perceptive.

I only have a working theory that Batman Begins was endemic of a David Goyer approach. The Dark Knight feels more certifiably Nolan brothers. There are some bridging qualities, for instance, the symbolism of the purging fire. But they seem to be two textile approaches to otherwise similar movies.