Chicago as Nolan's Gotham
Having "lived" - at times knowingly, and at others unwittingly - with The Dark Knight for the last few years, many Chicagoans might have been gratified by Christopher Nolan's recent statement that Gotham has always been Chicago in his mind. But others have not been so pleased, either with Nolan's views or his vision as realized in this second entry into the Batman mythos.
As a life-long Chicagoan with unholy love for her city, I was never likely to be among the balkers in the first place. Nonetheless, the whole tone, look, and feel of The Dark Knight constitute an elegant defense of Nolan. As heartbreakingly beautiful as I find Chicago to be every minute of my life, Dark Knight does for Chicago what Disney's Meet the Robinsons did for my relationship with the work of William Joyce: It's a walk through a familiar landscape with someone who defies belief in revealing dark and beautiful and terrifying new things about it.
There's no question this is the Joker's movie as much as it is Batman's, but it's Gotham's, too, and in being Gotham's it makes each citizen therein a hero, a villain, a victim, and a savior. The view of Gotham and Gotham's citizenry isn't just the wild blue yonder visible from Bruce's penthouse, it's the Gordons' squalid back porch, it's the subterranean cells of the Major Crime Unit. Moreover, it's all of those views pieced together, crazily by the Joker, bleakly by the Batman, with a clear vision of right by Dent, and however they can be made to fit by people desperately trying to keep themselves and those dear to them safe and whole from sun up to sun down.
Without at all being dark and tangled as the Gotham of Batman Begins so wonderfully is, Dark Knight's Gotham is clotted, congested, slow, sluggish, and heaving with life, by day and by night. Without drawing attention to the device, Nolan is having some fun with how superheroes and villains can get a damned thing done when they're hung up in traffic or trying to get past the knot of morons having deep and meaningful conversations at the foot of the escalator.