After 40 years of making movies and TV, Barry Levinson has come to some conclusions about “ordinary” life. He spoke with mattzollerseitz about 'The Survivor' and more
“I find in characters our imperfect nature,” The Survivor director explains, “and it’s constantly fascinating.” Photo: Jessica Kourkounis/HBO Harry Haft was a Polish Jew who made it through Auschwitz by fighting other inmates for the delectation of Nazi officers.
This script was written by Justine Juel Gillmer, but it feels to me very much like a Barry Levinson script. Yes, it’s a drama, and it’s concentrated on a man who’s a survivor of the camps, but at the same time, it’s a Barry Levinson hangout movie. People are talking to each other about things other than the events of the plot.
The relationship between American Jews, the dominant Wasp culture, and other marginalized groups is a topic that’s recurred throughout your filmmaking career, in various guises, to the point where The Survivor kind of reminds me of what Robert Altman said when he accepted his honorary Oscar in 2006: “To me, I’ve just made one long film.”
When I was writing it, I thought, This is a story of this group of people and how their world is going to change. The 1960s are coming, and the way that we see things at a particular period of time does not last forever. I thought that by doing it as a series of casual talks, I could show all those issues. That’s how I got the idea of a husband and wife and getting into a big argument over the flip sides of records.
It’s interesting how the movie toys with expectations. As soon as Ben Foster came onscreen, I looked at him and went, “Oh, he looks a little bit like Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, with the smashed nose and the wavy hair.” And the time period is the same, so I thought, Oh, this guy is a strong, silent brute. He’s not going to talk. You take your time revealing that this is an eloquent, thoughtful guy. Turns out he’s a guy who looks inward all the time. He’s just not writing a novel about it.
I’ve seen a lot of boxing movies, but you’ve got some stuff in here that’s new, like the moment where Rocky Marciano knocks Harry down and you’ve got a very long, lateral, slow-motion tracking shot of Harry falling. His body is stretched out horizontally, almost like something from a Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon. I couldn’t even believe it was a real guy because his body is so strangely contorted in the frame.
Tell me a little more about Vicki Krieps. She seems to have exploded into movies in the last few years. If you watch Danny’s face in those little cutaways during the fight between Harry and Marciano, you can see how involved he is in the scene, and you can see how troubled he is by the fact that Harry is getting the shit kicked out of him.And then the ad-libbed lines ringside when he’s talking to Marciano — Danny threw those in, and they were perfect.
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