Symbolism in the Dark Knight Trilogy | Part 1 - Batman Begins

this video is brought to you by movie it curated online cinema streaming exceptional films from around the globe get your first month for free at movie comm slash storytellers in studying English literature and talking a lot about it I started become more at ease with the idea that filmmakers storytellers they grasp evocative symbols they grasp a resonant imagery and the reason these things are evocative and resonant is that they do have other layers subconscious layers of resonance that the reader wall in case of film that the film goer can pick up on and interpret in their own way and that is a valid approach and that was something I in retrospect I very much needed to learn and and get on board with after more than 80 years since his first appearance in Detective Comics volume 27 the character of Batman remains one of the world's most iconic and well-regarded superhero Affairs of all time and although numerous filmmakers have since attempted to translate the Caped Crusader's universal appeal onto the big screen none have arguably done so as effectively as director Christopher Nolan with his Dark Knight trilogy my primary obligation was to look at the history of the character 66 years of our history and draw from and distill from one of the essence of what makes that legend that really was the the primary obligation I would argue that unlike some of the other iterations Nolan's trilogy successfully managed to capture this underlying essence transforming what could have otherwise been a run-of-the-mill superhero story into a three-part cinematic journey about a man haunted by a tragedy fighting his inner demons to save his city and its people and ultimately to save himself in this first part of my series on a Dark Knight trilogy I will take a closer look at Batman Begins and examine how Christopher Nolan utilized the symbolic power of the Batman character to construct the most evocative iteration of the Dark Knight's origin story today the original inspiration behind the Dark Knight trilogy particularly Batman Begins it was about taking this beloved character and recontextualizing the character well that was very important to me because I thought you know Tim Burton's vision of Batman I thought was extraordinarily stylized quite brilliant actually and very visionary but extremely idiosyncratic and stylized and what it denied me that I'd seen in the comics was the notion of Batman standing out against his environment a relatively ordinary environment so that the citizens of Gotham are as amazed by this iconic figure as the audience is and a sense viscerally of the impact of everything he does if you can believe in it if you can relate it to the textures of everyday life then I think you're taking the audience on a more extreme journey because things seem real and they're investing in the concrete reality of these things and so for me it was much more about creating a recognizably real scenario that the extraordinary figure of Batman could exist in and addressing the origins of that the origin story which hadn't been told in films before hadn't really even been addressed in the comics very specifically actually and so we were able to really look at that gap in pop culture and say okay what if we tried to ground this and really explain how this might happen in in a real-world scenario that was always the jumping-off point for the tone of - Nolan the symbolic power of the Batman story can only be effectively conveyed to an audience by stripping the character down to its core and then grounding that archetypal essence into a palpable reality thereby constructing a narrative that balances out the mythic and a real I what made me feel that I knew how to tell that story because it's a very new Irish story it's very much a thriller yes it's a superhero film but at base level it's based on these ideas or guilt fear these very very strong impulses that the character has and of course the thing you always have to remember about Bruce Wayne about man you know Bruce Wayne doesn't have any superpowers other than extraordinary wealth he's in that sense very relatable and very human and I think that's why I gravitated towards it because they're stories that are massively operatic and appealing in their universal nature and the operatic larger-than-life nature but they're based on very very relatable human beings and in particular the figure of Bruce Wayne I think is a very fascinating very primal figure the heart of this fiction the story of Bruce Wayne in Nolan's trilogy is one that begins with and centers around a fall this fall is both a literal fall as well as a symbolic descent into fragmentation and death one that as Jonathan pezzo observed in his video on Batman maps almost perfectly on to the story of the fall of man from the Garden of Eden Bruce and Rachel are playing in the garden of Wayne Manor like Adam and Eve they convey a sense of innocence and wholeness in our being the Wayne family is covered in wealth and stands quite literally at the center of Gotham the city which they helped create but the sense of sufficiency and centeredness is subtly disturbed when Bruce falls down a dark cave after stealing an arrowhead from Rachel like Adam and Eve of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil Bruce's worldview is cracked as he is confronted with fear and an image of animality and death which first takes to form in the arrowhead as a tool of death any weapon of war and then in the attacking swarm of bats his helplessness is laid bare for only a moment but it comes to be fully exposed shortly after and Bruce realizes that not even his parents can ultimately shield him from the realities of the outside world blinded by our sense of sufficiency they willingly exit the theater into a dark alleyway ready are suddenly confronted by the knowledge of good and evil in the form of an armed mugger who tragically kills Bruce's parents helpless and alone Bruce realizes that he is naked like Adam and Eve he falls from his garden his harmonious bond of Rachel is broken and he's left to compensate for his original sin which is the guilt he feels for the death of his parents it was nothing that you did Noland then takes this symbolism of the fall and injects it into every level of the story and so if the fall is something that happens to Bruce both literally and psychologically it simultaneously plays itself out on the societal scale through Gotham City the state of the city in ways become synonymous with the state of Bruce Wayne as a person I mean we were trying to build a world in the way that you know Ridley Scott had done in his films like Blade Runner for example we were looking at the silent era Fritz Lang's films trying to figure out the use of the geography of the city to express a sense of metaphor allegory with them with the narrative we're creating which is what the world of Batman and Gotham as a sort of heightened version of a regular City you know a kind of New York on steroids if you like the death of its main protector at the hands of one of its own citizens exposes Gotham City to its insufficiency as it attempts to cover his nakedness with an ever thinning veil of justice and order this city is rotting they talk about the depression as if its history and it's not things are worse than ever down here in Bruce's absence that sour of Wayne Enterprises has been taken over by corrupt new CEO the city's insane asylum is run by a doctor more insane than the majority of his patients and its justice system is bought and controlled by the town's biggest crime boss that's the power of fear and to push this imagery even further Nolan shows us Wayne Manor as this symbol of the old order or the spirit of the city in a frozen in the lappa dated state like a repressed trauma one tries to cover up and forget about the city in its fallen state is not yet ready to face its demons and leader as Bruce his unexpected return to Wayne Manor is not one indicating a return to his Center by means of personal transformation but is rather fuelled by selfish and destructive desire for a revenge Bruce's near transformation from the legacy of the city's most cherished philanthropist into a lawless murderer then becomes the ultimate image of this cynical fallen state in this upside-down world it's only through a stroke of luck and a slap in the face by Rachael that he's woken up out of his vengeful stupor he realizes that to effectively fight the city's corruption he first needs to understand the criminal mind he needs to face his own insufficiency so Nolan has him descend down into the edge of the world into the underworld there's the centex both the physical form of self-imposed exile in which Bruce loses his high status billing our identity and lowers himself into the world of petty crime but it's also the image of a psychological descendant to the edge of his own being one of the fun things about the character one of the great things about Batman is this sort of elemental nature kind of mythic quality that his story has and I think the first third of our film which really deals with his leaving Gotham and going around the world and finding that the means to to fight crime essentially I mean there's a lot of you know the Count of Monte Cristo things like that this kind of part of the story where the hero his force tool has to you know abandon his kingdom if you like and discover himself and then returns changed that's a really important part of the myth of the character I think but it hasn't really been addressed before initially however bruises journey to self-discovery lacks a clear sense of higher purpose as he gradually becomes disillusioned bogged down and ultimately stuck in this chaotic world a prisoner to his own inertia I've been exploring the criminal fraternity but appearing to him at his lowest point like a projection from his own psyche Ra's al Ghul offers to lift them out of his prison and to become a guardian of true order and justice by joining the League of Shadows this moment marks the beginning of Bruce's mythic ascent his journeying out of the underworld out of the edge of his being and towards his center and as a fitting image to mark his starting transformation Bruce has to pluck a rare winter flower as his potential of new life out of death and bring it to the top of a mountain to the headquarters of the League of Shadows where he will find the promise of a new identity but in order to move into this new identity Peru says who supplement his insufficiency and so like Adam and Eve after to fall who had to work to ground to stave off death Bruce has to compensate for his nakedness by means of rigorous physical and cognitive training but most importantly he's forced to supplement his biggest weakness which is the fear surrounding his childhood trauma one of the first things that we uncovered you know in the in the history of the character what makes Batman essentially was the rationalization or the explanation really of why he gravitates towards the bat figure of the bat the symbol of the bat but ultimately when when Alfred asks him he says it's because he's afraid of bats and so we started to weave fear into really every aspect of what Bruce Wayne has to deal with in the world and Sophia really underlies everything that goes on in them in the films Bruce has to cover himself in fear in order to fight fear he has to embrace the primal emotions surrounding his drama and use those who fight the criminals of Gotham City to conquer fear you must become here must bask in the fear of other men but it's not until the very end of his training that Bruce realizes Ra's al Ghul's true intentions the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice it is beyond saving and must be allowed to die Roz and the League of Shadows utilized her darkness to spread darkness aiming to flood Gotham City to restore it to harmony the ascend of the mountainous thus reveals have been a false source of enlightenment men's who learn lost in a disillusioned into the hands of a tyrannical ideology and in the same manner the blue winter flower becomes not the image of potential new life but is inverted into a symbol of death as the league uses its toxic serum to spread fear and panic amongst its victims but if the League of Shadows showcase the dangers of an extreme ideology on a physical level they also come to represent the pathologies within the individual human being on a personal level Ra's al Ghul is part of is unconscious off his shadow a small part of him that exists hidden at the edge of his being that part that comes to him at his lowest point that shows him who he could become and attempts him to fully indulge in his darkness in his feelings of anger guilt and resentment but instead of embracing this indulgence Bruce sets the headquarters on fire exposing his darkness to light and Rises out of the blaze seemingly having integrated this part of his shadow but an unknowingly saving Ra's al Ghul Nolan shows us that Bruce is not yet ready to truly let go of his feelings of anger and resentment and so he unconsciously leaves open to possibility for his shadow to retake control over his life master Wayne there's an important scene in the jet between Alfred and Bruce Wayne after he leaves the League of Shadows where he talks about the logic of becoming a symbol why he has to become something more than just a man and in Batman Begins it became an important thing to get across there's a symbol I can be incorruptible I can be everlasting what simple something elemental something terrifying upon his return to Gotham he realizes that his darkness can also be his ally and so he ventures down into the caves hidden underneath Wayne Manor down into his true identity where he's once again greeted by his fear in the form of a swarm of bats but this time around he doesn't shrink back in panic but instead shines a light on it and embraces it and so like Adam and Eve who covered their bodies and dead animal skins so - Bruce covers himself in the form of the bat both as a physical armor but also as a layer of animality he understands the need to cover himself in fear and death not to spread death but to fight it using part of his animality his shadow and transforming it into a force of good in order to then become a symbol Bruce must utilize this new identity to take on the role as the dark guardian of Gotham City in his monstrous and hybrid appearance Batman participates in the imagery of the gargoyle which as Jonathan Bazo has pointed out is the architectural version of the mythological guardian at the edge of the world and like the gargoyle designed to keep water out of buildings Batman's job is to covered a realm from the forces of chaos that seek to flooded and so as Bruce has started lighting up his shadow so - Batman begins to illuminate the unattended - corruption in Gotham City as a guiding principle I always wanted to try and align the audience with with Bruce Wayne's perception my fascination with storytelling in films is all about that subjectivity it's all about whose point of view am i seeing the story from that's very much the game it's creating a maze and then putting the audience into the maze with the rat if you like rather than hanging above it and seeing him make the wrong turns you kind of make those mistakes with the character Bruce is not yet fully formed in this new identity and the question arises whether he's doing this more out of personal interest than out of a sense of selfless devotion to the people of Gotham City well we both care for writers Oh what you're doing has to be beyond that it can't be personal well you're just vigilant Nolan represents this separate part of Bruce's shadow in the form of the Scarecrow much like Ra's al Ghul dr. cranes frightful alter-ego has shown to be an inverted guardian of swords instead of helping his psychiatric patients to confront their inner demons he indulges in fear and chooses who spread it amongst his victims for his personal game instead of keeping the monsters out he actively poisons the city's water supply turning it from a controlled force of renewal into a destructive flood and so if Ra's al Ghul is the manifestation of Bruce's unacknowledged resentment and anger of the potential tyrannical figure that he could easily become the Scarecrow comes to represent his inner selfishness the danger of Batman becoming a tool for Bruce's ego it's your father's name and it's all that's left of him and unsurprisingly it's at this exact moment when all of these bubbled up emotions come to a head that Ra's al Ghul's suddenly reappears in Bruce's life an idea like our more animal nature can never be truly done away with and if one is not paying close enough attention these forces can take over and cause great damage to one's life Noland then shows us the image of this dying of the old order in the burning of Wayne Manor with Bruce Wayne literally haven't collapsed under the weight of his trauma and it's all fret in his role as wise old man and his Bruce's conscience who pushes him to keep on fighting to save his own life and so the destructive fire as a marker of death is turned into the beginning of a rebirth both in the lifting up of the crippling weight of Bruce's trauma and into going down into his inner being in order to face himself one more time and so as Bruce has to venture into his trauma once more so to Gotham City has to confront its insufficiency in an ultimate struggle this confrontation is appropriately placed on the island of the Narrows as this dark lawless slum home to the downtrodden and the mentally ill and existing as this undefined place connecting to parts of the city the Narrows act as a symbolic mirror image of the alleyway and a confrontation that ensues air can therefore be seen as a societal manifestation of Bruce's childhood trauma Ra's al Ghul's vaporizer turns Gotham's water supply into a panic inducing poison causing a flood of fear and chaos to spread throughout the island exposing its people to their insufficiencies in a literal mist of confusion and terror now possessed by a shadow like Bruce in the years after the murder of his parents Gotham is on the verge of tearing itself apart traveling like an infection through a body Ra's al Ghul takes the vaporizer towards the heart of the city and its main water network underneath Wayne Tower if the center is reached the entire city will be flooded and fear and will collapse upon itself these events simultaneously perfectly mirror what is happening in Bruce's unconscious functioning as the image of his trauma threatening to consume him whole and it's only by finally letting go of his attachment to his fear his anger and his selfish resentment that the part of a shadow can be integrated into his identity as shown in the final lining up of Ra's al Ghul beneath Wayne tower flying off into tonight Bruce is now fully established and committed to his role as Batman and has made great strides in his ascent towards the center and his identity as an individual and in the same manner Batman has pulled Gotham City out of death and has helped its who face its own fierce in his role as a supplement or to guardian of the city and in his efforts to mass-produce an antidote against the fear poison the antidote one for Gordon to inoculate himself the other for mass production but also and more importantly in the way that he's starting to become a symbol of hope a sign that the city can and should stand up for itself and make its own ascent from its fallen state Nolan then adds to the sentiment by showing the salvaging of the spirit of Bruce's Barons in the rebuilding of Wayne Manor that previously frozen and burdensome trauma is transformed into a means to strengthen Bruce's character and his resolve we build it just the way it was brick for brick and yet the final return to the harmony of the garden has not yet been accomplished the unity of masculine and feminine cannot yet be reestablished because although Bruges has strengthened his being and has provided the city of courage and a hope for a better future he still disjointed in his identity he never came back at all his ascent has only just begun and now that he has opened the door to the insufficiencies of us in our being more shadows will emerge and more resistance will need to be faced before I returned to harmony can take place yes I mean he's a he's a very complex heroic figure and I think what I wanted to do by the end of the film is leave the audience with a sense of having seen and experienced heroics and a sense of triumph but that's oddly tempered and that's very much the Gary Oldman's you know role at the end of the film is to just introduce this slightly bittersweet notion of things are not all wonderful and it's not simple there is an idea that we got from the comics about escalation and about the fact that Bruce Wayne's response to criminality is as extreme as it gets that's going to prompt an equally extreme response ultimately and so there is a sense of things being visited upon Gotham because of Bruce Wayne's actions and that's something that I think is very important the story I mean I I find Bruce Wayne not to be unpleasant I think he's damaged goods I think he's he's a character that I want to do audience to have a lot of sympathy for and that's why we spend a lot of time showing what happened to him as a child and how he's arrived at where he is it's it's somebody not being able to overcome them as selfish instincts it's somebody finding a way to supplement them a finding a way to channel them into this different persona and I think that the more that those floors are allowed to just bubble under the surface you know underneath the sort of triumphalism I think that makes things I think it makes it more like real life frankly with Batman Begins Christopher Nolan has captured the essence of the Batman in essence that we as human beings can universally relate to it's the tale of a tragic fall of a person in a society ripped apart by trauma and corruption and gulf by feelings of guilt anger fear and grief it's the journey of a man starting to come to terms of his insufficiencies both within and without lifting himself out of death and transforming the tragedy of his life into the beginning of a long and our tour assent those were all the things feeding into the way in which we approach telling those three stories or one big story over over three films and we went into it not knowing that we would get to make three films we approach Batman Begins very much as an isolated piece but always with a sense that okay if we could we would return to Gotham we would try and flesh out you know a bigger story because we were interested to see in our telling there was always a finite sense to what he was doing felt that he would need to view this as characters created or symbols created to try and inspire the people of Gotham and that there would be an end game to that that he would have an effect on the world and then be able to stop and so we became very interested in seeing how that story would play out and now a quick word about our sponsor movie is a unique streaming service that at any given time has just 30 films available every day they add a film and every day they take one away and this curated selection always consists of high-quality films and documentaries from all over the globe many of which you might not be familiar with in which you likely wouldn't be able to find on many other streaming services for instance if you like author films right now in the u.s. movie is treating films by Werner Herzog Steven Soderbergh and a brand new documentary on the set photographer of Apocalypse Now a great companion piece to its final cut which has recently hit cinemas so if you sign up now you not only get 30 days free access to their entire assortment of 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Channel: Storytellers

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Rating: 4.9572935 out of 5

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Id: uRCoHS5ZKTI

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2019