Christopher Nolan has been chatting about Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and the power of eyebrows.
Christopher Nolan has a few things to say about his movies at the moment, and understandably so. Still, following publicly chastising major studios like Warner Bros for endangering the theatrical experience, now lots of us find ourselves on the collective end of Nolan’s criticisms. In this case for not showing enough appreciation as to the acting genius of Tom Hardy’s eyebrows.
Confused? So are we, but is 2020 isn’t already surreal enough for you, then maybe hearing Christopher Nolan – one of the great filmmakers of our era – compare Tom Hardy’s eyebrows to Marlon Brando will do it for you.
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Whilst chatting about Hardy’s rather brilliant performance as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan had this to say t0 MTV.
“The voice, the relationship between just seeing the eyes and the brow. We had all these discussions about the mask and what it would reveal and what it wouldn’t reveal, and one of the things I remember him saying to me, he sort of put his finger up to his temple and his eyebrow and said ‘can you give me this to play with? Let people see this'”
He added, “sure enough, you see there in the film, this kind of Brando-esque brow, expressing all kinds of just monstrous things. It’s really quite a performance”.
Indeed. Whilst any cinephile who cherishes the cinematic experience may have quietly applauded Mr Nolan for having the fortitude to call out Warner Bros for its decision to endanger cinemas with its HBO Max streaming decision, we’re not sure this point was quite so urgently needed. After all, is there anybody out there that doesn’t appreciate Tom Hardy in the film? It’s a hulking, tour-de-force of sheer physicality that somehow managed to stand on its own rather than live in the shadow of Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker from 2008’s The Dark Knight.
Still, despite this general recognition, we still aren’t appreciating the performance of his eyebrows enough. So go on, let’s make Nolan happy, use the comments section below to spread the plaudits for one of the finest eyebrow-related performances of this century (so far).
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