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Christopher nolan speaks about his best scene in his best movie

Christopher Nolan revisits and analyzes his favorite scene in 'Dark Knight'

09:04 AM PT, Oct 28 2008

EXCLUSIVE

The "Dark Knight" director gives a deep dissection of his single favorite scene in the movie -- the gripping interrogation sequence, which (with no special effects and only bare-bones lighting) would become "the fulcrum on which the whole movie turns."

This is the second of a three-part interview with Christopher Nolan, the director of "The Dark Knight," which was released in mid-July and is now approaching $1 billion in worldwide box office. The numbers are astounding, but even more startling is the fact that the 38-year-old filmmaker captured that kind of global audience with a movie that is relentlessly dark and finds its axis in the performance of Heath Ledger as the nihilistic and sadistic Joker.

I asked the London native to pick one scene in the film that he would circle as the essential moment in the movie, either in its service to the overall story or the film's texture. He answered quickly.

Nolan: To be honest, it’s pretty easy for me. The scene that is so important and so central to me is the interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker in the film. When we were writing the script, that was always one of the central set pieces that we wanted to crack.

GB: At what point in the production schedule did you shoot it?

Nolan: On the set, we shot it fairly early on. It was actually one of the first things that Heath had to do as the Joker. He told me he was actually pretty excited to tear off a big chunk early on, really get one of the Joker’s key scenes up in the first three weeks of a seven-month shoot. He and I both liked the idea of just diving in, as did Christian [Bale, who portrayed Batman]. We had rehearsed the scene a tiny bit. We had just ripped through it a couple of times in pre-production just to get some slight feel of how it was going to work. Neither of them wanted to go too far with it in rehearsal. They had to rehearse some of the fight choreography, but even with that, we tried to keep it loose and improvisational. They wanted to save it all. We were all pretty excited to get on with a big chunk of dialogue and this big intense scene between these two iconic characters. It was quite bizarre to see Batman across the table across from the Joker [laughs]. I'm glad you asked this. You know, I could actually talk about this scene for hours.

We had a lot of time to shoot it too, because it was so early on. Quite often, as you get behind on other things and you run toward the end of the shoot, things can get very squeezed. But you tend to schedule the first few weeks very generously to give the crew and the actors and myself time to find our feet and find our pace. So we had a couple of days to do it.

GB: Can you give me a snapshot memory from those days shooting the scene?

Nolan: It was a great set built into a location. It had all of the advantages of feeling that we were in a real place. Nathan Crowley, the production designer, built these great mirrors and this long, tiled room that I really loved the look of; it had the feeling almost of an abattoir or something. That all fed into the brutality of the scene. We wanted to be very edgy, very brutal. We wanted it to be the point at which Batman is truly tested by the Joker and you see that the Joker is truly capable of getting under everybody’s skin. I’m realizing this now about that scene — I haven’t thought this through before — the synthesis of all the different elements that I’m most interested in within filmmaking all come in that scene.

Nolan: The scene starts between Gary Oldman [as James Gordon] and Heath with the lights out, and [director of photography] Wally Pfister literally just lit the scene with the desk lamp, the table lamp, and nothing else. And then when the lights come on, Batman is revealed, and the rest of the scene plays out with a massive overexposure. He overexposed like five stops, I want to say, and then printed it down to bring some of the color back in. But it’s this incredibly intense overhead light which let us move in any direction. We had a handheld camera and shot however we wanted, be very spontaneous.

For me creatively, that had been about inverting the expectation. We’ve all seen so many of these dark movie interrogation scenes where somebody is being given the third degree. We just wanted to completely flip that on its head. And have the bright, harsh, bleak light sort show you the Joker’s make-up and its decay. The Batsuit was redesigned for this film. And unlike the suit that we had in "Batman Begins," it’s capable of really being shown in incredible detail and still hold up to that kind of scrutiny under that bright light. The suit looked much more real and more like a functional thing this time. The whole scene was about showing something real and brutal and getting this real harshness.

GB: There’s remarkable physicality of the actors in that scene. They are such different presences in the room: Christian is all dark mass and bottled fury and Heath has this spindly weirdness. ...

Nolan: Yes, and I think you start to see it even at the beginning of the scene where everything is in closer. There are tight close-ups with just a little drift to the camera. We start in a very controlled way, but even within that frame, the way Heath is bobbing in and out —and he’s actually bobbing in and out of the focal plane because, you know, it's very hard to follow someone whose leaning toward camera the whole time. It actually really adds something. We’re continually trying to catch him with the focus. You really see his movement back and forth. That way, even in a tight frame, you have this sense of strangeness. On the other hand, you have Batman sitting there just very, very controlled, restrained as you say. Then there’s a point where it spills over into real physicality and he drags the Joker across the table. We go handheld at that point and shot the rest of the scene with handheld to be very spontaneous in its movement. They had rehearsed the stunts and the fight stuff very specifically, but we really let the actors work within that. I had never seen anybody sell a punch the way Heath was able to with Christian. I got the violence I wanted. What I felt was really important creatively for the scene was that we show Batman going too far. We show him effectively torturing someone for information because it’s become personal.

Christian and I had talked a lot on "Batman Begins" about finding a moment in that film where you actually worry that Batman will go too far. A moment where his rage might spill over and he would break his rules. We never found that moment. It just wasn’t there in that story. There was a lot of strength and aggression in the way he played the part, but I don’t think the story provided that element of losing control. What the Joker provides in the second film is the fact that his entire motivation is to push people’s buttons and find their rules set and it turn it on itself. And Batman of course places such importance on his rules, his morals. It’s what distinguishes him, in his mind, from a common vigilante. The Joker is able to twist him around and make him question his own approach and his own actions.

GB: In the first film, the Batman’s most memorable moments of intense aggression feel more like theater — he’s doing it in a calculated show to scare people. The first movie seems to be about Batman’s fear; the second one is about his rage.

Nolan: Exactly. That’s why we never found that moment of danger, the one we had talked about, where there’s this danger that Batman will just lose it and go too far. That rage is very much a central part of the story in ‘The Dark Knight,’ and that interrogation scene is the fulcrum on which the whole movie turns. I think Batman finds out — and Bruce Wayne finds out — a lot about himself in that scene. I was just delighted to get to see Christian show that rage. And it’s wonderfully balanced with Gary’s control as well. Even though everyone remembers the scene as being the Joker and Batman, Gordon played a very important part to setting it up and allowing this interrogation to happen. And then as he is watching from the sideline, he sees the exact point where this is going too far. He knows Batman well enough to observe this, to recognize it. He tries to get in, but Batman has locked the door. And what we get to lead to, by the end of the scene, when he’s just pounding on the Joker, I think Heath managed to find the exact essence of the threat of the Joker and who he is: He’s being pounded in the face and he’s laughing and loving it. There’s nothing you can do. As he tells Batman, "You have nothing to do with all of your strength." There’s this sort of impotence of the strong and the armored and the very muscular Batman; he's very powerful, but there’s no useful way for this power to be exercised in this scene. He has to confront that.

Originally, at the end of that scene, once the Joker reveals his information, Christian dropped him and then, almost as an afterthought, he kicked him in the head as he walked out of the room. We wound up removing that bit. It seemed a little too petulant for Batman in a way. And really, more than that, what it was is that I liked how Christian played it: When he drops the Joker, he has realized the futility of what he’s done. You see it in his eyes. How do you fight someone who thrives on conflict? It’s a very loose end to be left with.

-- Geoff Boucher

Dark Knight @ I MAX

(Dont worry, this is not a review of the movie, you can get that in some pro movie site.)

Hyderabad...Hyderabad!!! After a long time I was back in the city I grew up in, the city that has given me many memories n friends, like none other...but today, right here I cant speak about all that, this is just not the forum...but...there is something that I can tell you. An experience of a life time...to watch something that I might probably rate as one of the best blends of Class and Entertainment! The lethal combination of one of the biggest block busters of the year and the finest arena for visual entertainment, literally sweeps you off your past memories of good old stuff that you might have watched seated in cushioned barber's chairs (believe me! Thatz what some of the best theaters in Chennai and Bangalore offer you) in so called AC theaters with wall mounted fans. As I was eagerly waiting to get my tickets, I dint know that I was part of a Historic ticket sales that had grossed eight times more than the closest super hero competitor...Spidey 3! (at the same point in the sales cycle i.e. 21 days from the film’s official release). Unfortunately, when I got my ticket (I watched it alone...so sad!) my watch gave me a very unpleasent surprise...it was 12 noon (What a time to watch DARK Knight!) the same time the movie was scheduled for! I had to literally CARRY MYSELF and run to the hot spot...it took me some time to find the place, for the entrance to this huge Arena (that resembled the Greek Amphitheaters) was awfully puny with the least Hungama! Probably, Mr. Prasads wanted to thrill us with the contrast! Well begun is half done, it is said! Seated somewhere on the fifth row from the top, I couldnot help myself pan the entire theatre...a wonderful creation...a cocktail of aesthetics, professionalism and marvelous entertainment! Then it all began...I sat right across the table...on the other end were Batman and Morgan Freeman discussing how to save the World! and yes...I was also on the helicopter taking the tour of the city and ofcourse watched Joker's everymove from close quaters or atleast that was the experience of proximity which the phenominally huge screen delivered! At somepoint of time I did feel that, thank God I dint come with some friend to watch the movie for I might have totally ignored that person fair and square! If you wanna Watch The Dark Knight make sure you do it in I Max! Its Entertainment Max worth every bit of what you pay!!!

Note: I havent been paid by IMAX for this article...though if they wish to do so after reading this post I dont mind!!!

Hi guys!
Sairam!
Here's an amazing article on the current US financial crisis published in The Hindu on 5th Oct 2008 a bit long but a MUST READ!!! Amazing how man's desire leads to a vicious cycle of wants and more wants finally he is forced to bow down timidly, trembling, shocked by his own failure. Yet as the saying goes " to err is human, but it feels Divine"! Other commarades in foolishness try to bail him out...endorsing his acts of utter stupidity and unimaginable insanity to be a mere evil gesture of fate and describe it as destiny's conspiracy against humanity (humanity-to be read as USA). We are all sitting on a timebomb with the trigger in our own hands...

WHEN THE BUBBLE BURST
While some blame the greed of Wall Street investment bankers and the dangers of a totally unregulated system for the current financial crisis, what can’t be denied is that lives, and lifestyles, have been suddenly changed across the social spectrum and careers built up over a lifetime have vanished in an instant. Apart from the revised $700 billion bailout plan, can the U.S. government do enough to restore confidence and assuage the trauma?
The real question is: Who is going to compensate the common investors across the world who have lost their wealth in the resultant market meltdown?
The bursting of the speculative bubble in the U.S. housing market has destroyed billions of dollars in investor wealth across the world, crippled the banking system, expunged close to a million jobs…and India has not been spared either. With banks failing by the day, definitely, these are uncertain times for the financial services industry. While many people who have lost their jobs are faced with permanent shrinkage of their lifestyle, others in the industry are going through the trauma of not knowing if and when their turn would come. Who is to blame?
Flashback to year 2003:
Rohit (name changed to protect identity), a good friend of mine and someone who was officially considered to be a genius with an IQ of 150+, graduated from one of the leading IIMs. Rohit managed to make it into the New York Headquarters of the most sought after firm that had arrived on campus for the first time — Lehman Brothers — a top U.S. Investment Bank (then). On joining, he was assigned to Lehman’s mortgage securities desk that dealt with Collateralised Debt obligations (or CDOs).
Following is an extracted transcript of a chat session I had with Rohit back in 2004:
Me: So man, you must feel like you are on top of the world.
Rohit: Yes dude, the job here is amazing, I get to interact with people around the world, investment managers who want to invest millions of dollars
Me: Great…so tell me something interesting. What’s your job all about?
Rohit: You know there is a great demand for American home loans, which we buy from the U.S. banks. We then convert these into what is called as CDOs (Collateralised Debt Obligations). In plain English, this refers to buying home loans that banks had already issued to customers, cutting them into smaller pieces, packaging the pieces based on return (interest rate), value, tenure (duration of the loans) and selling them to investors across the world after giving it a fancy name, such as “High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage Fund”.
Me: Wow! I would’ve never guessed that boring home loans could transform into something that sounds so cool!
Rohit: Hahaha…actually we create multiple funds categorised based on the nature of the CDO packages they contain and investors can buy shares in any of these funds (almost like mutual funds…but called Structured Investment Vehicles or SIVs)
Me: Dude, you make your job sound like a meat shop…chopping and packaging. So, in effect when an investor purchases the CDOs (or the fund containing the CDOs), he is expected to receive a share of the monthly EMI paid by the actual guys who have taken the underlying home loans?
Rohit: Exactly, the banks from whom we purchased these home loans send us a monthly cheque, which we in turn distribute to the investors in our funds
Me: Why do the banks sell these home loans to you guys?
Rohit: Because we allow them to keep a significant portion of the interest rate charged on the home loans and we pay them upfront cash, which they can use to issue more home loans. Otherwise home loans go on for 20-30 years and it would take a long time for the bank to recover its money.
Me: And, why does Lehman buy these loans?
Rohit: Because we get a fat commission when we convert the loans into CDOs and sell it to investors.
Me: Who are these investors?
Rohit: They include everyone from pension funds in Japan to Life Insurance companies in Finland.
Me: But tell me, why are these funds so interested in purchasing American home loans?
Rohit: Well, these guys are typically interested in U.S. Govt. bonds (considered to be the safest in the world). But unfortunately, Mr. Alan Greenspan (head of Federal Reserve Bank, similar to RBI in India) has reduced the interest rate to nearly 1 per cent to perk up the economy after the dotcom crash 9/11attacks. This has left many funds looking for alternative investments that can give them higher returns. Home loans are ideal because they offer 4-6 per cent interest rate.
Me: Wait, aren’t home loans more risky than U.S Bonds?
Rohit: We have made home loans less risky now. In fact they have become as safe as U.S Govt. bonds.
Me: What are you saying, man? What if the people who have taken these underlying home loans default? Then the investors would stop getting the EMIs, and their returns would take a hit. Wouldn’t it?
Rohit: Boss, may be some will default, but not definitely more than 2-3 per cent. Moreover, we have convinced AIG (a leading insurance company) to insure our CDOs. This means that even if there were big defaults,the insurance company would compensate the investors.
Me: that’s amazing. What are these insurances called?
Rohit: Credit Default Swaps.
Me: Definitely you guys are the most creative when it comes to naming.
Rohit: Thanks.
Me: And why has this AIG guy insured millions of home loans?
Rohit: See man, the logic is simple. Home prices in the U.S always go up. In fact over the last three years alone they have doubled. So even if someone defaults paying the EMI, the home can be seized and sold for a much higher price. So there is no risk. Insurance companies are actually competing to insure this, because they can earn risk-free premiums.
Me: No wonder investment managers from all over the world want to put money in your CDOs.
A global financial cobweb started getting built around the American dream of purchasing a home and it rested on the assumption that “home prices will keep rising”. As demand for the CDOs started growing across the global investment community, the investment bankers (like Lehman) who were meant to sell these instruments also started investing a significant portion of their own capital in these. I guess after selling the story to the whole world, they themselves got sold on the seemingly foolproof concept. Gradually the markets for CDOs and Credit Default Swaps started expanding with traders and investors buying and selling these as if they were shares of a company, happily forgetting the underlying people behind these products who took the home loans in the first place and on whose capacity to repay the loans, the safety of these products depended.
As Wall Street firms like Lehman were churning more and more home loans into CDOs and selling them or investing their own money, there was a pressure on the banks to issue more loans so that they can be sold to the Wall Street firms in return for a commission. Slowly banks started lowering the credit quality (qualification criteria) for availing a home loan and aggressively used agents to source new loans. This slippery slope went to such an extent that in 2005, almost anyone in the U.S could buy a home worth $100,000 (45 lakhs INR) or more without income proof, without other assets, without credit history, sometimes even without a proper job. These loans were called NINA — “no income no assets”.
The U.S. housing market went into a classic speculative bubble. Home loans were easy to get, so more and more people were buying houses. The increased demand for houses caused the price to increase. The rising prices created even more demand, as people started to look at homes as investments — investments that never went down in value.
When I touched base with my friend Rohit in late 2005, he was on cloud nine. During the previous one year, he managed to buy a home in Long Island (a posh area near New York City) worth almost a million dollars, and got himself a Mercedes. All this was interesting to hear, but what shocked me was that although he was earning close to $20,000 a month (that is what CEOs in India make) he was not able to save anything because his lifestyle expenses where growing faster than his salary.
Unheeded signals
In late 2006, Mortgage lenders noticed something that they’d almost never seen before. People would choose a house, sign all the mortgage papers, and then default on their very first payment. Although no one could really hear it, that was probably the moment when one of the biggest speculative bubbles in American history popped. Another factor that lead to the burst of the housing bubble was the rise in interest rates from 2004-2006. Many people had taken variable rate home loans that started getting reset to higher rates, which in turn meant higher EMIs that borrowers had not planned for.
The problem was that once property values starting going down, it set off a reverse chain reaction, the opposite of what had been happening in the bubble. As more people defaulted, more houses came on the market. With no buyers, prices went even further down.
In early 2007, as prices began their plunge, alarm bells started going off across mortgage-backed securities desks all over Wall Street. The people on Wall Street, like Rohit, started getting calls from investors about not getting their interest payments that were due. Wall Street firms stopped buying home loans from the local banks. This had a devastating effect on particularly the small banks and finance companies, which had borrowed money from larger banks to issue more home loans thinking they could sell these loans to Wall Street firms like Lehman and make money.
Everyone got into a mad scramble to seize and sell the homes in order to get back at least some of the money. But there were just not enough buyers. The guys who had insured these loans thinking they had near zero risk (e.g. AIG) could not fulfil the unexpectedly huge number of claims. The best part was that since these insurance policies (credit default swaps) could themselves be traded, multiple people had bought and sold them, and it became so tough to even trace who was supposed to compensate for the loss.
The global financial cobweb built around mortgages is on the brink of collapse. Firms, large and small, some young some as old as a 100 years have crumbled as a result of suing each other over the dwindling asset values. Lehman’s India operations, that employed over a thousand staff, is up for sale and many of the employees have been asked to leave. The Indian stock market has crashed almost 50 per cent from its high (and so have markets around the world) as the Wall Street giants sold their investments in the country in an effort to salvage whatever is good in order to make up for the mortgage related loss. Hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies all over the world have lost billions in investor’s money. Many Indian B-School graduates with PPOs (pre-placement offers) in the financial sector (India and abroad) have either received an annulment or indefinite postponement of joining dates. IT firms that built and maintained software for the U.S. mortgage industry or the related Investment Banks, have shut down their business units, laid-off people or transferred them to other verticals.
Fragile system
For all the hoopla over the sharp and sophisticated people on Wall Street, the current financial crisis has exposed the fragility of the system. Wall Street is blaming the entire episode on people who could not repay their home loans. But the reality seems to point towards the stupidity of people who lent all this money, financial institutions that built fancy derivative packages and in effect facilitated billions in trading and investments in these fragile low quality loans.
The U.S. Govt is planning to grant 700 billion dollars to the Wall Street firms to compensate the financial speculators for the money that they have lost. Isn’t this like rewarding greed and stupidity? The head of a leading Investment Bank has stated, “This is necessary to sustain financial ingenuity. We don’t want to spend this money on ourselves. We just want this money to go into the market so that we can carry on trading complex securities, borrowing and lending money.” (Yeah…right, so that one can act as if nothing had happened without analysing too much into it). The real question is: Who is going to compensate the common investors across the world who have lost their wealth in the resultant market meltdown? (either directly or through pension funds). After being unreachable for a month now, finally I heard back from my pal, Rohit, saying he is back in India to take a break from the roller coaster ride that he had lived through. After Lehman’s collapse he has lost his job and probably the house that he had bought by taking a hefty loan. I really don’t know whether to feel happy for him, for getting an opportunity to learn a lesson or two from the experience or to feel sad for him for losing his job. May be I’ll get a better sense of things once I meet him next week.

The author is a financial consultant and a columnist. He can be reached at: shyamscolumn@gmail.com or www.shyamscolumn.com.

Reference: http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/10/05/stories/2008100550010100.htm

ASSASSINS CREED

check out the Assassins creed screen shot

Hidden messages in water

Water…

The Earth is largely made up of it.
As are we…

And yet about it we know significantly little.

Until the groundbreaking work of a pioneer Japanese researcher whose astonishing discovery about water, documented photographically, changed most of what we didn't know…and led to a new consciousness of Earth's most precious resource.

Dr. Masaru Emoto was born in Japan and is a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University and the Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. His photographs were first featured in his self-published books Messages from Water 1 and 2. The Hidden Messages in Water was first published in Japan, with over 400,000 copies sold internationally.
What has put Dr. Emoto at the forefront of the study of water is his proof that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality. By producing different focused intentions through written and spoken words and music and literally presenting it to the same water samples, the water appears to "change its expression".
Essentially, Dr. Emoto captured water's 'expressions.' He developed a technique using a very powerful microscope in a very cold room along with high-speed photography, to photograph newly formed crystals of frozen water samples. Not all water samples crystallize however. Water samples from extremely polluted rivers directly seem to express the 'state' the water is in.

Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health. The success of his books outside Japan has been remarkable. Dr. Emoto has been called to lecture around the world as a result and has conducted live experiments both in Japan and Europe as well as in the US to show how indeed our thoughts, attitudes, and emotions as humans deeply impact the environment.

Dr. Emotos newest book, The Hidden Messages in Water, further explores his revolutionary research. Since humans and the earth are composed mostly of water, his message is one of personal health, global environmental renewal, and a practical plan for peace that starts with each one of us. The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health.

Guys thatz precisely why our ancients have developed the practice of giving thirtham or sprinkle water (even the Christian practice-Holy Water) that is kept in the sanctum sancto of temples....imagine if mere words written with feelings can cause such changes in the crystal structure of water, what would happen to that water which is constantly exposed to vedic chants and prayer...even greater consequences...70% of our body is composed of water so every thought we think every feeling/emotion that we develop will influence water in us which is the primary medium in the body (Blood) which permeates the entire body!!! Hence definitely feelings positive or negative is bound to directly affect our health in its own way....so think positive b positive and live positive!!! Guess what...all the rudram that we chant every day is going to have phenomenal effect on our physical and pshycological system too!

Comments from experts:
"Half of the earth is water; our body is three-quarters water. Water represents the interface between the 4th dimension in which we live and the 5th dimensional sphere of our soul. Many studies have shown subtle effects of healers upon hydrogen bonding and infrared absorption of water. None of these scientific studies can compare with the beauty and clear messages shown by Dr. Emoto's elegant work. The impact of thought and beauty has never before been demonstrated so well."

C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.
Founding President, American Holistic Medical Association
President. Holos University Graduate Seminary
Author of 295 publications, including Sacred Healing

Courtesy: http://www.whatthebleep.com/crystals/