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Fighting The Good Fight “For Batman, everything is about function, it’s about the most effective way of doing something,” Nolan says, “so we needed a style that is brutal, economical and real.” “We really wanted something that would look as though Bruce Wayne-as-Batman had created his own style of fighting, something that was unique in style and look,” Christian Bale elaborates. “A big part of the Batman persona is the aggressive, animalistic way he attacks his enemies. I wanted to show how devastating he is when he charges forward and attacks people, and his resilience in taking blows as well.” The director also wanted the combat to be more jarring and realistic than the graceful, balletic form of fighting that comes from wire work. “We’ve gotten comfortable seeing fighting portrayed in this graceful, dance-like fashion to the point where the violence loses its threat,” he muses. “I wanted to take it back to a grittier place, where you feel the punches a bit more.” The Keysi Fighting Method, also known as Keysi or KFM, is based on a series of tight, controlled, efficient movements. An evolving discipline that was founded only 20 years ago, Keysi is an intuitive, low-grounded fighting method that requires superior leg and upper body strength, with a strong emphasis on mental focus and awareness. Unlike other martial arts developed for sport, KFM lends itself to combat in close quarters and can be applied to fighting in any environment, against multiple attackers from all directions. “The Keysi Fighting Method is a very intuitive kind of martial art, but also very, very brutal,” Bale relates. “It’s all about going for the break straightaway. It’s quite instinctive and it adapts to many different situations. So it truly looks as though this is Batman’s own style that he’s come up with.” “Christian is an excellent student,” Forman attests. “We were very surprised at how quickly he absorbed the information when we gave him his first lesson.” Bale dedicated himself to five months of rigorous physical training to prepare for the demanding role. Achieving the necessary level of agility and fitness was made all the more challenging by the fact that he had lost 63 pounds – dropping to an emaciated 121 lbs. – for his previous role as a tormented insomniac in The Machinist. “I completely destroyed my body,” Bale admits. “I’d reduced myself to something almost less than human. I tried to do a push up and couldn’t. I went down and I didn’t come back up. I couldn’t do one single push-up because I’d wrecked my muscles so much.” By the time filming commenced, Bale had gained back his former weight and added an additional 20 pounds of muscle to achieve his Bruce Wayne/Batman physique. To film Bruce Wayne’s down-and-dirty confrontation with seven prisoners in a Bhutanese jail, which takes place before he acquires the training to develop a brutally effective fighting method of his own, Forman choreographed a series of crude movements for Bale. “This is where we see Bruce Wayne at his rawest,” Forman notes. “He’s got a lot of inner anger, so his fighting has to come from pure brutality. No formal techniques and nothing too technical.” Staging a realistic seven-on-one battle also presented a challenge. According to Forman, “It’s difficult to choreograph a fight where you have seven characters assaulting one character and make it feel like they’re all attacking him at once. We wanted the fighting to be as realistic as possible.” The first fight sequence filmed was Bruce Wayne’s grueling swordfight with his mentor Ducard, which was staged on a frozen Icelandic lake beneath a towering glacier. “It was beautifully dangerous and quite daunting,” Neeson says of filming in the shadow of the largest glacier in Europe. “Every so often between set-ups we’d see ice crumbling away at the head of this glacier and bits of rock and muck falling off, and we knew this thing was a big living force that was moving towards us.” Due to the danger of filming on the temperamental ice, the safety team allowed only six people, including Bale and Neeson, to be on the frozen surface at a time. “We’d start hitting each other and smashing into the ice and then suddenly hear a big crack! right through the middle of the lake,” Bale recalls. “We’d all stand dead still and look around. Then the safety guys would shout Okay, get off! Get off! Thankfully, we got the whole thing in that one day, because by the next, there was no ice whatsoever. It had melted into a lake again.” In preparation for filming the backbreaking swordfight, Forman and his team spent weeks rehearsing with Bale and costar Liam Neeson at an ice rink. The actors were trained in the art of wielding Samurai swords, defending against blade attacks with forearm gauntlets, and as Bale puts it, “practicing how to fight while standing on ice without falling on your ass all the time.” “The cuts are very powerful,” Forman says of Samurai swordfighting movements, “and it’s difficult to defend yourself against them. It takes a lot of energy and Christian and Liam both put one hundred percent into their performances. They did very well, both with the Keysi and the swordfighting.” “Lawrence Olivier was once asked what he thought the greatest attribute an actor can have, and on top of his list he put stamina,” Neeson says. “Christian has unbelievable stamina. He’s also a very talented actor. When he says his lines, I believe him. I believe what comes out of his mouth and that’s what it’s all about for me.” “It’s a great advantage to have actors like Liam and Christian, who are willing to dive in and express their characters’ physicality even in the most extreme situations,” says Nolan. “I was extraordinarily impressed by the authenticity and intensity that they brought to the film’s fighting and action sequences.” Your Comments and Suggestions are Always Welcome. © 2010 6®, All Rights Reserved. |
