Comparison of a Commercial Film with an Auteur Film - Essay Example

Comparison of a Commercial Film with an Auteur Film (From the 2000s) Different types of films are produced with varied representation and manipulation of reality depending on the interpretation the audience is supposed to make out of it. “Dark knight” and “memento” are two movies produced by the same director, Nolan. The director portrays the two movies as a representation of the society through analysis of major themes and setting of the movie. Both movies are centered on the theme of pain and fear and its manifestation through revenge. In “The Dark Knight”, Bruce suffers pain and fear when his parents are murdered and this triggers the changes in his life to seek vengeance for the murder of his parents. The events in the while movie spout from this origin as Bruce goes through intense pain and mastery of fear in order to survive the high rate of crime in Gotham City. The same ways, Leonard goes through pain and fear after the death of his wife and undertakes to seek revenge. He goes through tough times, disappointment as he feels the efforts by the police are unfruitful and becomes very frustrated. Just like Bruce, Leonard suffers when seeking revenge as he suffers memory loss and this impedes his struggle to avenge for his wife. Eventually, he gets redemption as he kills the man who killed his wife. This paper seeks to compare the commercial film with an auteur film by focusing on “Dark knight” and “memento” both of which are directed by Nolan. “Dark knight” “The Dark Knight” is a commercial film that turned out to be a gigantic blockbuster. The movie was based on a compelling comic book. The movies is set in medias res and revolves around, economic, social and political issues. The setting of the movie is very naturalistic to mirror the society and make the audience identify with the characters. The movie is set in the basement of Gotham police station in an interrogation room. The police station is a reflection of the police dramas and real police stations as he police offices have a desk with lots of files, records and desks. On the other hand, the interrogation room is isolated, grimy and dingy and only contains to chairs, a single metallic table and a lamp. This contrast is sued to show the harsh reality of crime life and to educate the audience of the luxury of freedom. The use of lighting is also important in enhancing the setting of this film. At the beginning of the film, the in interrogation room is very dark and the joker is shown in a rather dim light that tends to alter his image. On the other hand, the face of Commissioner Gordon is not seen clearly as he enters the interrogation room. His face is fully seen when the full ceiling of fluorescent lights is lit. This is a contrast as it shows that the joker is not hiding anything but the commissions comes out as someone who is hiding something. At this time, the office is left with the light of a lamp. This scenario is symbolic of the secretive things that are undergoing with the commission without the knowledge of the people in the office as they are kept in the dark as the commissioner talks to the joker (Chamberlain, 1994). The movie has some aspects of political elements. This is because there are many practical civic issues entangled in the drama. The drama is thrilling with the ability to keep the audience glued to the story and experiences of the characters as opposed to presenting a complete political treatise. The crafting nature of the joker is a reflection of the political evils that are experienced in the society today. For instance, the joker is double masked as part of the crew that robbed the back. We also learn that he was the one who had hired to goons to rob the bank. During the unfolding of the story, we learn of the evil plan that the joker had planned with the goons. He articulately plans to get rid of the goons and get away with all the money by having them kill each other after the job. He demonstrates to the joker is a dubious and meticulous character who pays keen attention to details with an aim of destroying unsuspecting victims. He demonstrates wisdom when he viciously lies that he wants to help the goons but his wisdom is used to use people as tools to achieve his selfish goals. The movie is reflection of the social and political issues faced by people of Gotham City. The events of this movie are triggered by the murder of Bruce’s parents. Bruce takes up the role of batman in order to avenge his parent’s murder by killing the person who killed his parents. At first, there is chaos and turmoil in his plans has he ventures into something he knows nothing about and has to master the direction before the gains a clear plan for his revenge. Al Ghul advices him to master his fear so that he can use if to manipulate other people. Though the events at this point, Nolan allows the audience to understand that fear and pain are two dangerous aspects that can transform the nature of a persons into a different path. This makes Bruce to take the role of Batman. This is because batman is a scary figure that strikes terror. There is a huge contrast in the role played by Bruce. While he sets out to revenge for his parents murder, he turns out to be the hero who champions for change in Gotham City. Despite the fact that he comes out at night and in a rather mysterious way, most city people see him as a savior. His objective is to create an image that inspires the city to take practical actions and solve their problems. While he plays the role of the city savior, he combines it with the city vigilante thereby eliciting mixed opinions from the public. This is because he is very dangerous as the city vigilante. After achieving his first victory in fighting the city corruption, Bruce meets the joker who is a complete manifestation that he is trying to fight. Unfortunately, the knowledge he had learned about the criminal mind seems not to apply to the joker as he a very witty person. The joker is greedy and vile and he manages to get the real identity of Bruce and uses it to manipulate Bruce. While Bruce seeks to inspire people to do well and fight evil, the joker seeks to do the opposite by inspiring people to do evil. This sets out contrast between the two characters who have been shaped by fear and pain but who have chosen tow different paths to deal with their frustrations (Nola, 2000). The presence of the joker in the path of the batman show the audience that even the best of men in the society commit sins and make mistakes due to disappointments and frustrations. There is always an evil side in men which only manifests itself when desperation sets in. when the joker forced batman to choose between Rachel- the women he loves and Dent- the real hero of Gotham city, he sacrifices the same course he is fighting for in order to save the women he loves. This shows that he make a selfish choice. Although this choice is not easy to make, Bruce is faced by a situation in which he has no escape as the cunning nature of the joker manipulates the situation so that the choice Bruce makes is associated with pain. The irony of his choice is that the Rachel is already dating Dent and even though she acknowledges her feelings for him, she cannot commit her life to him as she sees him more of the batman as opposed to Bruce. Although he goes through different obstacles as merges the hero who has championed for change and reduction of social and political evils in Gotham City. “Memento” The movie is set in LA, where Leonard Shelby’s wife was killed. Shelby tries to find a way to help solve his wife’s murder, but he wasn’t able to. There is hope though as he was able to shoot one of the unknown intruder, the other murderer knocked him down and escaped. These confrontations with the intruders made him have a head trauma, this led to him to suffer from “severe anterograde memory dysfunction” (Memento Official website 2000). This makes his Short-term memory to be inexistence- this makes his attention span last for about 15 minutes (Klein 2001). It becomes very difficult for Shelby to sustain his long-term memory becomes unsustainable, he thus can’t generate new memories. Something amazing about this condition is that Shelby can remember everything that happened prior to the accident. Some details such as his job, who is wife is, and general life issues can be remembered, but when he wakes in a cheap motel he can’t remember where he is or how he got there. It is worse that he can’t remember the people whom he met the day before. This condition and circumstance made him not to trust anybody, all he did was to try and solve the issue a paranoid manner. What he is certain about the throughout the movie is his quest to revenge the death of his movie. The obsession he had was so intense that he resolved to find the murderer on his own, he felt that the police are doing nothing to solve the case. Every day that he wakes up he tries to avenge his wife. One of the biggest challenge he is facing is the fact that he can’t remember. He developed a strategy that would help him remember how the crime occurred. He takes Polaroid of everyone and everything and places them in his pocket, in additional to this he also scrawls some notes on his back as he goes on. It is also amazing due to the fact that he tattooed some very important information on his body to help him remember the very crucial details of the murder. Other things that he possessed in his quest to look for the murderers of his wife is police files, map, and direction and notes. There are two characters who seems to be dubious in the movie who help Shelby in his avenging mission, Natalie and Teddy are the characters. How can one trust a mentally challenge person to seek revenge? This is a question that one asks himself as the movie progresses. It is very easy to manipulate a mentally challenged person, he has been manipulated by teddy several times. Lenny is very prone of making mistake in the movie, on one occasion he records the number plate of a car as 1 instead of I. the license plate changes everything according to Lenny’s tattoo, the message portrayed on the movie is that memory can manipulate everything, memory is just an interpretation. The whole movie is centered to make the view to speculate and interpret scenes. There is an interesting sub-plot parallel story to Memento’s tale, it is the story of Sammy Jankins and his wife: there is a case that Leonard has to investigate as an insurance investigator, he is supposed to find out whether Sammy Jankin’s anterograde amnesia which resulted to the car accident. The conclusion of Leonard is that the condition is psychological than physical, which prompted the insurance company not to compensate Sammy. Sammy’s insurance claim was denied because the policy didn’t cover mental illness (Belling 2001). According to Sammy’s wife she thinks that the amnesia problem is mental and is voluntary, this reasoning makes her to put her husband into test. She was very sure that her husband loves him so much and was certain that he could do nothing to harm her. She tells her husband to administer some shots of insulin, Sammy does not realize that he does not administer the right shots, he has given his wife an overdose which makes her to go into comma. This can be aimed to show the viewer the contrast between Leonard and Sammy, while Leonard’s wife was murdered, Sammy killed his wife himself. It can be possible that the sub-plot is aimed to show that the Leonard wife was by Leonard himself, and it was Teddy who planted the whole story in order to make Leonard a very resourceful killer (Belling 2001). The narrative in Memento can be characterized as non-linear and fragment narrative structure. Nonlinear narrative is supposed to reveal a relationship between characters and the key story line. The director has made sure that that the viewer will be in the shoes of the protagonist. As one watches the movie he is made to be a detective, trying to investigate some scenario such as the murder case and the insurance claim. The director (Nolan), gives the film a noir genre’s propensity to confuse the viewers’ anticipations an intangible twist by relating the flow of the narrative to the state of the protagonist. Nolan has made the opening scene to run backward, this is depicted in a slow motion manner. The main reason why he does this is to make sure that the audience will understand the structure of Memento. In this slow motion we view the development of a Polaroid, a bullet flying as teddy comes back to life after the shot of the gun. We see the revenge murder of Teddy that was committed by Leonard Shelby, this event takes place at the end of the movie. The structure of the narrative in this movie can be said to be very complex and clever, for this reason the viewer is expected to pay attention to the proceedings of the movie. The reverse narrative is told on during the first five minutes of the movie, whatever happens in the first five minutes will end up happening at the end of the movie. Teddy is the man that has been puzzling Leonard during the whole movie, he is shooting him at the first five minutes of the movie, which is a reverse concept narrative structure. The confusion at the beginning of the movie is too much, in fact the viewers and Leonard are confused in the same manner. The confusion tends to ease as the movie is about to come to an end, where one can now connect the events that took place in the beginning and how they were related to the whole movie. Due to the complexity of narration that this movie possesses, and the unique style of storytelling the movie should be watched several times to understand it intensively. Nolan presents the tow movies in a rather similar ways. Both are based on the same storyline as the main character does through tough times to seek revenge for murder of a loved one. While “Dark knight” is a complete mirror of the society presented in with a social and political stance, “Memento” is a story centered on entertainment. Work Cited Belling, Catherine. Film Annotations Memento. 2001. Print. Cameron, Ian (eds.). The Movie Book of Film Noir. New York: Continuum. 1993. Print. Chamberlain, Bridge. Revenge of the Killer Genre. Chamberlain. 1994. Print. Christopher Nolan. Memento. 2001. Print. Hordnes, Lise Does Film Noir mirror the culture of contemporary America?. 2002. Print. Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight. 2000. Print. Klein, Andy. Everything you wanted to know about “Memento”.2001. Print. Read More