Monday, June 13, 2005
BATMAN BEGINS: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN
The Continuum continues its series of features on Batman Begins with a roundtable interview with director Christopher Nolan from last weekend's press junket.
Following is an edited transcription of the roundtable interview:
Question: Except for a few jokes at the kid level at the end, it struck me it wasn't a kids movie. Am I right or an I misperceiving?
Nolan:I think you're right. I think there recently has been this increasing misperception that kids will not respond to something that's also for adults. When I looked at films that I liked as a kid they were in tonal terms sophisticated. And kids my age all loved it. I think that often there's that tendency to underestimate kids.
Question: How do you approach future projects? Are you looking forward to tackling bigger projects now?
Nolan: To be honest I don't think they come much bigger than this one. I would certainly love to do something on this scale again, because I enjoyed it. But I would also be interested to go back to something smaller as well. I think there are advantages to different scales of filmmaking. You wouldn't want to do just one thing.
Question: This film has a lot of revelance to the post-9/11 world with the fear toxin/anthrax and terrorism and response to that. How did you hit on that angle and how helpful is Batman as a model of response?
Nolan: I think we hit on it as a model simply through drawing from the history of the comics, relating thematically to what is most interesting about Batman, which to me was the idea of fear and the use of his symoblism of his greatest fear to turn fear against his opponents.
Everything stems from that. There really wasn't any conscious attempt to reflect the world we live in. I just think that, myself and David Goyer, in writing the script, we were living in the same world and we were influenced by some things. But certainly everything came very much from the comics.
As far as Batman as a model of response, he's a very dangerous model. That's partly the point of the story. I think if one were to watch it a second time and watch it in a particular way, there are quite a few drawbacks that are presented to his approach and his response.
But that's what's interesting about him as a character. He is flawed and he is very dark, although he's channeling it into something heroic. There is a great deal of positivity and heroism related to that -- there is a price to pay for it.
Question: How much of his anger is really under control by the end of this film?
Nolan: Well, I think that it's harnessed, and that is a form of control, that doesn't mean it's not there and it doesn't mean it's suppressed; it's channeled and it's harnessed. And that to me is what keeps him as a character frightening to his opponents and to all of us to some extent.
Question: What was the creative mandate for you going in to reinventing it for a new audience?
Nolan: The creative mandate was really to do something fresh and original. And that was coming straight from the studio. And it was the reason I wanted to get involved in the project.It's pretty rare to have an iconic figure that's owned and controlled by a studio that's asking you to do something different with it. That really was the mandate. For me, what that became was my desire to do something we hadn't seen before, which was a superhero story that is told in a realistic fashion and doesn't step outside itself and acknowledge the form and the medium it's coming from, but one in which the audience hopefully is just immersed in the reality that's going on.
Question: What was your inspiration for the look of Gotham City?
Nolan: We tried not to be too specific. When Nathan Crowley, my production designer, started discussing the look of the film with me, we immediately rejected any reductive notions. The driving force was not to, "OK, they've done an art deco city, we'll do a modernist city," nothing like that. We wanted something that reflects the reality of a large modern city which is a tremendous variety of architecture, a tremendous variety of periods in which things were built. We wanted a history to the place as well as a contemporary feel. What we would up doing is that the way that we approached Gotham as an exaggeration of New York, an exaggeration of a modern American city was to look at interesting geographical features of the cities of the world. A lot from New York, some from Chicago, a lot from Tokyo because of elevated freeways and monorail systems. From Hong Kong we took the walled city of Kalhoon is the basis for the narrows, which is this kind of walled-in slum. So what we really did was putting together the elements that let you exaggerate all the socio-economic factors that feed into Gotham as an exaggeration of the modern American city.
Question: Would you like to handle a sequel?
Nolan: Well, I enjoyed making this film very much. So, I would be open to it. But I wouldn't want to jump into it straight away.
Question: One of the more remarkable aspects of this film was the practical effects. What kind of challenge what that to you?
Nolan: The challenge wasn't really to me. The challenge was to the stunt co-coordinator and the physical effects guy. And they rode to this admirably. In a day and age when so much is done with computers, they really rose to the opportunity. They really enjoyed the opportunity of what they're best at, which is performing amazing feats and building amazing things that can actually work in the real world.
For me, once I set that all in motion it was really just a question of filming it and trying to be disciplined about not listening to the little voices in your ear that says, "Well, you could do this with visual effects. You could leave this for now. You can move on and not affect it." I was very glad we held to that discipline, because it meant in post production when we did get into our visual effects components we had all the right materials to make that stuff look great and not have to do too much of it. And we had the time to do what we did do. We had the time to perfect it, because we weren't doing four to five times the number of shots we said we were going to do, which is what happened on a lot of these films.
Question: What is the next comic book franchise that you would like to tackle?
Nolan: Gosh. I don't know what I want to do next. My brother is actually working on a screenplay that is based on a comic called The Exec that you know we're quite excited about. But I really don't know how I'll end up choosing my next project. It just kinds of happens.
Question: The actors were very flattering about you role with the movie. Can you talk about your approach with actors?
Nolan: My approach with actors is to try and give them whatever it is they need from me. Direction to me is about listening and responding and realizing about how much they need to know from me and how much they have figured out for themselves really. And this was a very, very talented bunch of actors and they were very specific in what they wanted to do. What was nice about that is that they were very relaxed with the notion that I had a lot of other things to worry about, because of the scale of the film. In the past with my films I've been able to concentrate very, very much on the performances of my actors. With this film there were all kinds of other things to take into consideration. But as very talented and generous actors, they allowed me to do that without feeling shortchanged. They seemed to accommodate that very easily.
Question: If you were to come back for a sequel, have you given any thought to the story? The last scene was a great tease.
Nolan: Yes it was, but it's also really for me it was just a way to send the audience out with a sense of possibility and sense of excitement about where this character could go. I certainly share that sense and we've certainly talked and thought in vague terms about how you could follow on from this film, absolutely. But at the same time, it's very important that this film stand on its own.
Question: What was your visual agenda for the film and how much was discovered in the editing room?
Nolan: Well, you're always discovering a lot in the editing room. Particularly the action, because you have to over shoot a lot and shoot an enormous amount of material because many of the sequences very much have to be discovered in the editing and manipulation of it. But for the rest of it my shooting style was really identical as it's been on previous films. I don't think there was any accommodation. I think one of the trickier things was having the guts to build colossal sets and then not shoot them. To just shoot the scene the way I thought it should be shot. But everybody was OK with that. It worked out.
Question:In casting Katie Holmes, what was her appeal?
Nolan: I think she's got a wonderfully, warm and generous presence that is very glamorous but very girl next door at the same time. But she also has this maturity beyond her years which the character really needed. Because Rachel really is Bruce Wayne's conscious in a sense. She has to stand for a couple of things. She has to be the life he might have had, what he's lost, but she also has to be the voice of his conscious and keep him on his toes. And I think Katie did those things very well.
Question: Did you give Bale direction on expression through his mask more?
Nolan: Yes, to a certain extent, but he was also very specific in what he wanted to do and he drew from a lot of certain influences that I agreed with in terms of the graphic novels. A lot of what he was able to turn into performance comes from that material.
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