At the 5:53 mark in the first episode of Marvel’s new Daredevil TV series, Daredevil: Born Again, Foggy Nelson has stepped outside a bar to take a phone call.
Foggy is a business associate of both Matt Murdoch, aka Daredevil, and Karen Page, who both remain inside the bar. Moments earlier, Foggy was flirting with a district attorney. Murdoch listened in on their conversation and relayed what he heard to Page, whose concern for Foggy resembles that of a teasing older sister. The DA is, we’re informed by Page, out of Foggy’s league.
Murdoch could hear what Foggy and the DA, named Kirsten McDuffie, said, while Page could not, thanks to his superpowers. This is a Marvel TV show; exceptional hearing balances out Murdoch’s complete blindness. That hearing, after Foggy exits the bar, extends through the wall. As Murdoch continues to eavesdrop, the ambient noise drops away and a circle, like a reflection on the camera lens, appears right atop his ear. The circle carries clear meaning: Murdoch is listening even more intently. Things have gotten serious. The camera plays with depth of field, and we follow it, which is to say we follow Murdoch’s ear, from inside the bar to outside, where Foggy is taking his call.
A cut then takes us somewhere else. We’re inside now, at the door of an apartment, where someone named Benny, whom Foggy was talking to on the phone, is in hiding. The camera focuses on a fly circling a bare bulb, and the microphone does, as well. The show’s audio emphasizes the sound of the fly, which might suggest that Murdoch or his superhero alter ego, Daredevil, has entered the apartment, except we already know it’s someone else. If you’ve seen the early Daredevil show and noticed the circular pattern on the individual’s glove, you known who it is: the villain who goes by Bullseye. Bullseye has used a bent paperclip to pick the door’s lock. With a whir, the fly is stuck to the wall, pinned by the paperclip.
As all this happens, both Foggy and Murdoch listen in — Foggy, helpless on the sidewalk, interpreting the sounds for Page; Murdoch, who has put on his Daredevil costume, thanks to that specialized hearing.
The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again does an enormous amount with the hero’s hearing, highlighting what a Marvel is capable of when it elects to focus on the details. I won’t be recapping all the episodes, but I did want to annotate some of the wealth of sonic signatures in this first one — and if other key moments arise as the series unfolds in the coming weeks, I may summarize them. As I type this, a third episode is waiting for me to finish this newsletter (and dinner).
▰ The position of Bullseye’s circular scope parallels the location of the “lens circle” earlier around Murdoch’s ear.
▰ The loudness of Foggy’s heartbeat is exaggerated after he’s shot by Bullseye, and the heartbeat slows over the course of a welcomingly long fight, until finally Foggy is dead.
▰ During the fight between Daredevil and Bullseye, the camera moves forward out of the bar and then back, as if the fight has stopped, except it hasn’t; we’re merely seeing what Daredevil’s ear is focused on.
▰ As Daredevil proceeds up a staircase after Bullseye, we hear still Karen talking to Foggy out front. This is a traditional combination of simultaneous scenes, a standard filmmaking technique, switched up, because what we’re hearing is what Daredevil is hearing.
▰ When Foggy’s heart stops, Daredevil casually pushes the subdued Bullseye off the roof where they had been fighting. The body lands a few feet behind Karen, who is still on the sidewalk, leaning over Foggy’s body. She responds with shock to the thud, something she has heard but hasn’t seen, putting her in a situation not unlike Murdoch’s. She initially thinks she has lost two friends this evening — until she checks, she fears it may be Murdoch bleeding out on the ground, not Bullseye.
▰ Murdoch in his apartment, a year after Foggy’s death, hears the voice of his nemesis, the Kingpin, aka Wilson Fisk. Amid the noise of city life, he has, by instinct, homed in on someone else’s radio or television. Only then does he turn off his own stereo system and tune into Fisk’s announcement: a run for mayor of New York City.
▰ As Murdoch absorbs the gravitas of Fisk’s announcement, we hear the smoke alarm that goes off due to his dinner now burning on the stove. Of course, he is attentive to the more dire alarm of Fisk’s mayoral run.
▰ Finally, for now, there is the moment when Murdoch appears outside an event Fisk has attended. At first, we just see Fisk and hear the noise of his loud fanbase cheering him. Then Fisk is directed, by a political aide, to Murdoch, still off-screen. The street goes quiet, not because the crowd has shut up, but because Murdoch has so focused Fisk’s attention. It’s an especially powerful moment, given how it attributes to Fisk’s focus on Murdoch a clear parallel of how Murdoch experienced Foggy’s death earlier.
▰ And one critique: A later face-to-face meet-up over coffee between Murdoch and Fisk at a diner earns its nod to the great scene between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Michael Mann’s 1995 film, Heat. The only thing I didn’t get about it — as in a scene earlier between Page and Murdoch after Bullseye is sentenced to life in prison — is how such conversations can take place within earshot of other people. The depiction of the bubble of silence that exists when people are focusing is great, in terms of a given character’s point of view. However, that near-silence is entirely psychological, not physical. People nearby would be privy to what is discussed.
This first episode of Daredevil: Born Again is titled “Heaven’s Half Hour.” The second episode, signaling that it will focus on Fisk, is titled “Optics,” referring both to both a switch from sound to vision, and to the political sense of how current events are framed.
