Scene Description Spotlight: “The Dark Knight”

Today we shine the spotlight on a great piece of screenwriting, the screenplay for The Dark Knight, co-written by Christopher & Jonathan Nolan. If you want to understand the value of subplots, this sequence provides a mighty big one: Cross-cutting between storylines to generate increasing tension.

Sequence set-up: Batman (Christian Bale) has ‘interrogated’ the Joker (Heath Ledger), who informs Batman that both Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) are being held hostage at different locations. “You choose one life over the other,” Joker says, “Your friend, the district attorney. Or his blushing bride-to-be.”

Arguably one of the most important sequences in the movie because (1) terminates Rachel, thereby ending Bruce Wayne’s dream of quitting Batman and leading a normal life, (2) it forever scars Dent, both physically and emotionally, setting him off onto his own personal transformation and descent into hell, and (3) it frees The Joker.

You can literally feel the sequence speeding toward its climax — and much of that energy is a result of the cross cuts between subplots. Let’s track them:

• Rachel held hostage
• Dent held hostage
• Batman’s desperate race to save Rachel
• Gordon desperate race to save Dent
• The Joker messing with Stephens
• The Fat Thug and his cell-phone bomb

The sequence is cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, building to the point that by P. 93 and 94, the end of the sequence, there’s hardly any dialogue, instead a primary slugline and a line of scene description, followed by a cross cut indicated by another primary slugline and a line of scene description, and so on and so on.

The film version is slightly different in terms of some dialogue and swapping out various cross cuts, but the screenplay pages sell it — you read it and you get the sequence.

BTW, there is an excellent example of how movies manipulate time. On P. 92, there’s this:

But it’s not until P. 94 — after the Joker emerges holding Stephens hostage, after the Joker dials his phone call, after the Fat Thug explodes, and after Batman arrives to find Dent that those 10 seconds officially elapse and the detonation occurs where Rachel is being held.

What do you think of this sequence? And what are your favorite scenes in The Dark Knight?

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