Edward
Norton talks to Philippa Bradnock about his latest films
The Painted Veil and The Illusionist
 Edward
Norton is the face of any urban alienated cinema made in
the last ten years. From the adrenalin-soaked opening of
the cult Fight Club, where he is bruised almost beyond recognition,
to petty crook, Monty Brogan in Spike Lee's 25th
Hour, Norton
epitomises modern masculinity, the angry pride of the dispossessed
20th century male.
However, his two most recent films, The
Illusionist and
The Painted Veil, see him take on dissimilar roles as the
romantic lead in period pieces. In The Illusionist he plays
Eisenheim, a stage magician in turn-of-the-century Vienna,
who uses his skills to try to win the girl he loves (Jessica
Biel). In The Painted Veil, an adaptation of a W. Somerset
Maugham novel set in 1920s Shanghai, he is a middle-class
English doctor who attempts to avenge his wife's (Naomi Watts)
infidelity by forcing her to accompany him to a remote part
of China where a cholera epidemic rages.
This seems like the maturing of an
actor who has made his name through cult, macho roles.
More recently he has moved into directing (Keeping
the Faith in 2000 and the recently announced Motherless
in Brooklyn) and producing films. Norton was also a producer
on The Painted Veil which he has been trying to make for
seven years, and has only now managed to bring the project
together. “We spent a good bit
of time in the beginning just developing the script and finding
the financing,” he explains, “Even when Naomi
[Watts] was interested in doing it, we had a hard time finding
a slot in which she and I and any director we were interested
in weren't working on something else. It takes time for the
pieces to click into place.”
Initially the script mirrored the
novel faithfully, but Norton felt that it needed to have
the more open feel that would come with fleshing out the
story and location shooting in China: “While the
book is brilliant as a story it's extremely claustrophobic.
Really if you were just to film a rendition of the book
you could film it at Shepperton, there was no need to go
to China. My contribution on script level was that I said
to Ron [Nyswaner, screenwriter] that it had to be inspired
by the themes and the scope of it had to be expanded, both
emotionally and in terms of its view of China.'
The script was revised and the cast
and crew travelled to China where they were able to make
the film for only $20m. However, they also had to negotiate
with the Chinese government, to which Warner Bros. had,
unprecedentedly, given substantial approvals over the final
film. “Those came to a head
in some very unpleasant ways,” Norton says, “but
I think it's a total testament to [director] John Curran
and his courage that he dug his heels in resolutely and refused
to let those things compromise the film. He won those debates,
so that we didn't suffer this terrible incursion into the
integrity of the film.”
In the end the location shooting was
worth it, and produced a film which was more in keeping
with Norton's ideas of political comment: “It became
much more about Western people mucking around in other
people's countries, telling them how to fix them and wondering
why they're not being thanked for it. That had been unconsciously
present, but I think John brought that view more clearly
into it.”
 Norton also influenced the screenplay
for The Illusionist: “Two
friends of mine who wrote the film Rounders had produced
[director] Neil Burger's first, very small indie film. He
had come to them with this idea and they were producing it
for him also. Maybe I have a predilection for thinking I
can improve on the classics or something, but Brian and David
and I all thought that it didn't quite work. We convinced
Neil that the basic conceit of the film ought to be that
it's a trick within a trick within a trick. That in the end
the Illusionist is effecting his ultimate illusion in the
service of his love.”
But part of the allure of the role
was that Norton found it hard to envisage himself as Eisenheim. “I don't
really see myself as this guy,” he says. “I had
an idea of him in my head, but I don't look in the mirror
and see that guy. So I thought it would take some work to
pull it off, and that was the initial appeal for me.”
In The Painted Veil, Norton also had
to adjust to the role, playing an English doctor which
required not only an unfamiliar accent but also a kind
of 1920s middle-class English reserve: “it's
about immersing yourself in some sense of a time, a place,
a culture in a society. If you read Somerset Maugham you
get a great window into the psychology of that class in that
time.” Norton attaches great importance to historical
context as an vital part of making films that audiences will
enjoy and find relevant. He adds:”I tend to prioritise
work that reflect[s] what's difficult about the times we're
living in. Those films that have meant a lot to me over time – not
my own but films generally – have been films that were
engaged in their times.”
This belief in exploring the context
of a particular time finds its echo in the careful treatment
of the special effects in The Illusionist: “[We were]
very, very rigorous in only performing illusions that were
being performed at the time. And as strict as we could
be about performing them live as opposed to using camera
trickery or CGI. The only thing [for which] we didn't use
the actual mechanisms that were available at the time,
were the spirit manifestations. Spirit manifestations at
the turn of the 20th century were apparently really effective
and sophisticated, but the techniques they used required
a very darkened theatre. So we couldn't do it and at the
same time get it on film. So we cheated those a little
bit.”
 American audiences have so far responded
well to The Painted Veil. “It's produced a very emotional reaction in people,” he
says. “We had one screening out at UCLA, part of a
senior film screening series, and that was a really interesting
experience for me. People were coming up to us afterwards,
people who had been married 40 years saying how deeply they
related to the dynamics of this couple. And the forgiveness
element of it, that seemed to touch a chord with a lot of
people.”
Given this recent tendency towards
more romantic period drama roles, one feels that Norton
must have a hitherto unsuspected liking for the genre. “I
certainly am a fan of films like Out of Africa... I think
the reason [it] holds up as a 'romantic film' is that it's
really about loss. It's not about romantic consummation,
it's about a woman confronted by the fact that she can't
hold on to things, not possessions nor property or even
this man. The dynamics between those characters are ones
that I think people can still relate to. You get the romance
of period and place, and the exoticism of it but I think
there's something in it that people can recognise themselves
in. And I like that. I tend to respond to that. I don't
tend to respond to the people who meet through a wedding
planner, or whose dogs get their leashes entangled.”
The
Illusionist is released on 2 March.
The Painted Veil is released on 20 April.
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