Story Point of View - Part 2: The Dark Knight

So let’s take another look at Story Point of View. 

Something that I find interesting about Story Point of View is that it isn’t restricted to what the point-of-view character can see (pov shots), it is about what this character experiences. I know this might sound abstract but I think it might become clearer if we look at this scene from The Dark Knight. You all know this scene, a bunch of gangsters come together to discuss the money they stashed away, when the Joker surprises them with a little magic trick. 

The reason I find this scene an interesting example is that we do not see it from the point of view of one of the main characters. Instead we experience this scene via the group of gangsters, and more specifically we see it from the position of the nameless gangster, ‘The Chechen’. 

You know, this guy:

Let’s see how this works . . . As the scene opens, Chechen walks into frame. The camera follows him as he walks into the room where the meeting is taking place. It doesn’t matter that we don’t see the room from his exact perspective (he walks into the room while the camera lingers at the doorway), because we share his experience. 

It is almost as if the meeting was waiting for him to arrive, because as soon as he sits down a television is put up. As Lau appears on the screen there are some reactions, but only when Chechen leans in do we cut to a close. Again the shot isn’t an exact pov, but the rhythm of the edit makes it Chechen’s experience: as he leans in we cut to a close.

As Lau explains what is going on we cut to shots of the police raiding the bank, these shots don’t have a clear point-of-view character, but that makes sense since nobody in the room can actually sees this happening, it is a way to make the scene a bit more visually interesting than just showing a bunch of guys staring at a TV screen.

After Lau explains what happened, Chechen asks Lau how he intends to stay out of Harvey Dent’s hands. (Chechen, who seems to be a minor guy in the group, leads the dialogue) Lau explains that he will go to Hong Kong where he will be safe from extradition. After a few more cut away shots of the money being moved, Lau says that he has already made his move, and we cut to a different shot of Lau. 

This is an interesting shot. The camera is with Lau and now for the first time we clearly see that he is in a private airplane. This is the only time we see this set-up in the scene. You might wonder how this could be a shot from Chechen’s pov, since he isn’t in the plane and his view of Lau is only the close shot at the TV. But the different angle of Lau illustrates Chechen and the other gangsters’ thought process. They suddenly understand that Lau is speaking to them from his plane. 

Enter Joker. Before we see him we hear his menacing laughter. Chechen looks up. Gambol looks up. (This shot of Gambol brings him back to our attention, he is going to be important in the rest of the scene) As Joker walks into the room, the camera follows him.

A shot likes this, where we follow a walking character, often puts us in the character’s point of view, like in the opening shot. But that is not how it functions here. The set-up of the gangsters looking up and the fact that we don’t see Joker’s face yet, once again makes us experience the action through the point-of-view character. He is wondering who is entering, and this shot from behind makes us feel that mystery. 

After the joker makes his pencil disappear he looks up. At Chechen. The shot of the Joker looking up is followed by a reverse shot on Chechen looking back, nodding. (He seems to appreciate the magic trick) The camera is just a little to the right side, so that when Joker looks at Chechen his face opens up towards the camera. Had he looked screen-left, in the direction of Gambol whose bodyguard he just killed, he would have been facing away from us. This quick moment of eye contact gives us the feeling of a dialogue between Joker and Chechen.

Throughout the rest of the scene the story point-of-view is a bit more neutral but notice how the camera favors Chechen’s position. From here on the scene is basically a dialogue between Joker and Chechen (personifying the group) on one hand, and Gambol who refuses to cooperate with Joker on the other. Note how the joker mostly talks facing screen-right, only looking left when he has to address Gambol. (In western countries movement from left to right feels like advancement, it creates a feeling of propulsion, whereas opposite movement feels like the opposite -this comes from our way of reading) When people stand up the camera looks up at them, matching the point-of-view of Chechen, who stays seated until the end. 

I like how they used a minor character to lead our experience in this scene. It adds a sense of mystery and threat to the Joker. Imagine if we’d seen this scene from the Joker’s point of view, it would take away a lot of his enigma. The filmmakers could also have chosen to use Gambol as the PoV character, but the scene needs him to be a loose canon. If we experience things from his point of view, his reaction would feel more reasonable. Lastly they could have used Maroni, that actually would have made sense since he seems to be the most important of the gangsters. But later on he will turn on the Joker, while the Chechen stays loyal. By keeping Maroni on the background his last-minute change of heart is somewhat foreshadowed. 

NB It feels a bit silly to use a scene from The Dark Knight as an example, since there are already so many video essays and articles about this film. But this scene is a good example of something I wanted to talk about and it helps that most people will know this film.