Obsession is defined as the overall influence of one's
thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc. With that being said, there is defiantly lots
of obsession in the films we’ve seen when this was due. In the Dark Knight, the
Joker is always out to cause trouble no matter what it is and Batman is
obsessed with stopping the Joker. In Singin' in the Rain, they were
obsessed with making a movie that not only had sound but the words matched the
mouth movements. In High Noon, Kane is obsessed with stopping his “nemesis”
to the point his wife leaves him and he was fine. In Proof, you could say
that Catherine is obsessed with her father and his work. Finally, in The
Prestige, there is clearly a huge obsession in Angier's life.
The Dark Knight is a very unique film when it comes to
obsession. Most of the characters in the film are at least a little obsessed.
Batman is obsessed with stopping the Joker, and the joker is trying to get rid
of the Batman. Batman's intentions are good and some good did come from
stopping the Joker eventually. However, he used a personally invasive way to finally
bring the Joker to an end. He had Fox spy on the whole city using a giant sonar
system, just to find his enemy (because tapping one person’s phone wasn’t creepy
enough). This might be seen as taking it a little far but he did what he felt he
had to do. The Joker was definitely obsessed with causing chaos and I believe
more of getting a rise out of Batman. He shows this when he is being
interrogated by Batman. He said, "You just couldn't let me go, could you?
This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
You truly are incorruptible, aren't you? You won't kill me out of some
misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just
too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever." You
could also say that Harvey Dent is defiantly obsessed with justice. He goes
maybe a way overboard trying to find answers when he threatens to kill someone
if the coin landed wrong, (however it clearly worked) shown in the picture
below. Before that, he stole an ambulance with the man who shot Gordon in it.
That was where we started to see Harvey go from good to bad.
Singin' in the Rain is a good film about movie making
and I hadn’t really thought about it till the subject of obsession was brought
up. When the idea of talking in movies was introduced to the characters in the
movie, they were shocked and claimed that it would never be a big thing.
However not too long after they said this they were, in fact, attempting to
make a “talkie”. By while doing this, they had some issues and they became
obsessed with fixing them. Don Lockwood, was obsessed with making sure Kathy
got her chance at being a star. Together they came up with the idea of making
the movie a musical to try and save it. Since Lina wasn't a good singer, they
came up with the idea of Kathy covering the voice of Lina which I believe is a
bit of a obsession, They spent hours upon hours doing voice over’s. Good
eventually came out of this obsession as Kathy was discovered as the true
singer. For Lina it wasn't good, but she was seen as the "bad guy" so
it was fine.
In
Proof you have to look a little bit harder to see the
obsessions. Catherine, as I see it, has an obsession with her dad. When
Catherine is going to college, she loses contact with her dad and calls Claire
to see if she knows what's wrong. When she finds out that Claire doesn't know,
she no longer wants to talk to her. She decides to make a trip to her dad’s
house that was thirty minutes away just to see that he was okay. He said he was
too busy to answer the phone and that it was a distraction. This shows that he
was obsessed with his “work” even though nobody else could make any sense of it.
Catherine also decided quit school to live with him for a long time to make
sure that he was okay. When he died and Claire came for the funeral, she seemed
set on taking Catherine back to New York and maybe putting her in a home. She
was so sure that Catherine would go back with her that she sold the house that
Catherine had been living in for quite a while. While all of that is happening,
Hal is pursuing his obsession of finding out if Catherine's proof is a proof
and if she really wrote it. This obsession did lead to good because we are led
to believe that it is indeed a proof and that she did write it after lots and
lots of denial. We see this at the end when they start going over it together.
In
High Noon, it is pretty easy to pick out the obsession.
It's Kane's obsession to his job and with that, protecting the town. He's so
obsessed that he loses his newlywed wife, partner, and all of the towns support
all over one person. Even though no one in the town agrees with him, he still
decides to take on four enemies all on his own. Even in the beginning
when Kane and his new wife were leaving town, he told her that he had to go
back. She told him she'd leave him if he did go back. I'd say that that's
obvious obsession because he risked his relationship with his new wife just to
do his “job” that was let go from. He is also set on the idea that Frank Miller
must die when he got there instead of being arrested again. This is why he
tries to get deputies but he fails. He goes to the point that he knows he is
likely to die, shown in the first 30 seconds of this film, but he still goes
through with it.
Finally
The Prestige. The Prestige defiantly has the most
obvious obsession out of all these films. Angier is most definitely obsessed
with seeking revenge on Borden and eventually finding the secret to Borden's
"Transported Man" trick. He demonstrates his obsession several times.
When he was seeking revenge, he went to Borden's show and shot Borden. Not only
that, but, when he saw the transported man, he wanted to do it as well but way better
so he could steal the fame. At first he was successful because of his
showmanship but because of his obsession he had to make it better. He brought
Fallon's life into the situation and buried him alive to ask Borden what the
secret was in the picture below. He traveled to America and spent an enormous
amount of money to get the real thing. This caused him to kill himself every
time he performed the trick. As the saying goes curiosity killed the cat,
Borden was trying to find out Angier trick and stumbles upon the “trick” and is
accused of murder and Angier just let it happen instead of letting him live.
This didn’t turn out very good for Angier because he didn't know there was two
of Borden and the one that survived killed Angier. This is an example where no
good came from the obsession. This video demonstrates Angier's obsession quite
well when it comes to finding Borden's secret. Borden has a pretty sizable
obsession too where the two Borden’s swapped wife’s and girlfriend and cut off
a finger, pretty much switched lives without anybody knowing.
One of the characters in all of these films
had a obsession. Obsession played a huge role in almost all of these films and
without it; they wouldn't be very good.
