REEL MAGIC

Christopher Nolan, savior of the Batman franchise, explores the world of stage magic in The Prestige.
By Chris Connolly

In modern filmmaking, a kid equipped with large amounts of RAM and Coke can generate entire worlds. Yet with almost any effect available to them, filmmakers aren't exactly turning out classics. The old Star Wars kicked ass, while the new- largely computer- effected- Star Wars sucked ass. In The Prestige, starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, 36-year-old director Christopher Nolan, who famously eschews CGI effects in favor of good old-fashioned smoke and mirrors, digs deep into the concept of reality versus illusion while spinning a tale about dueling turn-of-the-century stage magicians.

Magicians, huh?
Christopher Nolan: Yes. I think their world is an intriguing place for a narrative. During the Victorian period, before film, magicians were important figures in the entertainment world.

So magicians were the filmmakers of their time?
Christopher Nolan: There are parallels. The early wizards of film came from magic. Orson Welles was a magician. What fascinates me about filmmaking is the concept of withholding things to create a reality for the viewer.

Is that why you avoid using computer effects?
Christopher Nolan: There's a difference in how people perceive things that are animated and things that are real. So much of the appearance of objects is serendipity, the extraordinarily complex, chaotic interactions of light and texture. Even when you have a computer providing texture mapping there's a degree of accident to the appearance of objects that cannot be recreated.

With Christian Bale and Michael Caine in The Prestige, was there a lot of Batman talk on set?
Christopher Nolan: No. None, because I hadn't decided I was going to make another Batman film at the time. I've never wanted to make the same film overand over. So while I have decided to do the next Batman, it's going to be different from the first one. The fact that we're calling it The Dark Knight, rather than Batman 2 or something, is representative of that.

Will Heath Ledger's Joker disappoint people looking for camp?
Christopher Nolan: That's something we're going to discover. Batman Begins suggests strongly the direction that character will take.

More ominous? More icy?
Christopher Nolan: Yes. More like that character would be in the real world.

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