Film meets art: Chris Nolan inspired by Francis Bacon

the sections of my films that have dealt with war I could set it to be beyond what I'm able to express in the script in in word dialogue you then have to look to art really to teach you or guide you in terms of expressing things beyond dialogue and narrations I'm not sure if I could remember exactly when I first saw a picture by Francis Bacon but it would have been very young I mean he's always been my favorite artist I just find a tremendous atmosphere to his paintings sort of moving quality I think there are for me suggestions of distortions of a memory in the way the faces are portrayed in a way that I found fascinating in various ways of my work I've tried to echo or represented in cinematically I think I'm very very drawn to the bleakness of it really because I think whilst it might be emotionally uncomfortable the bleakness of what it's represent there it makes you think about the limitations of human experience that human understanding of our own place and things and all of that Ethan and John Kerry on his makeup artist and myself trying to figure out a way to take a look the clown makeup but make it more threatening somehow more real world and texture it really and I wound up taking a book of bacon paintings and showing them a lot of the different distortions of the way that the paint would run together the colors would mix we weren't of applying that to the makeup and letting a have a sort of slightly worn through quality sweaty I think what Heath was able to do with his makeup with makeup artists this kind of really uses his face as a canvas don't really try and achieve some of that tortured quality and some of that threat in the actual makeup of the Joker I really love the black the black spaces it makes me think a lot about the geography the pending about whether Fergus sits in the world and I quite like the paradoxical nature the more he removes the less he tells you really about what's out there the more I find myself thinking about what's in that dark space behind and everything because you never have the resources to fully create the world that you're creating so you are leaving a little void you're leaving a lot of gaps so part of what you start trying to do is reusing those unnecessary gaps intelligently so that where you're not showing something it's helping you rather than feeling the limitations of the world you've created one of the interesting things for me about seeing paintings in real life is it's a completely different experience than when you see them in a book and particularly the oil painting you know we were talking about bacon and look at oil painting to be able to see the thickness of the paint to see that how the brush moved and the brushstrokes and everything you really start to feel the personality behind a field craft of it which is is very inspiring any way in which you can get a little bit more of handmade quality of the work doing a little bit more of personality to it I think that helps you really create an atmosphere for the audience so one of the reasons that I I love film is that it is a as an analog medium it has a lot of life to it it has a lot of even in its imperfections it's got a lot of personality to it and when you get into the realm of digital imaging it's I think inherently a little sterile inherently there's a little bit more of a barrier between what you're trying to do and reaching the audience having other frames of reference having other windows into other possibilities is essential you