Cinemascope

“Adam Resurrected” got its Israeli premiere late last week at the Haifa Film Festival, with director Paul Schrader in attendance. Jeff Goldblum, who was in New York shooting “Law and Order”, and Willem Dafoe, were unable to attend. But Ehud Bleiberg, the film’s producer, hopes they’ll come to the Tel Aviv premiere in December, when they are off for Christmas vacation, and right before the theatrical release of the film in Israel (it is still not clear whether “Adam Resurrected” will bow in limited release, for an Oscar qualifying run later in 2008 or get bumped way into Spring 2009, in which case any hopes Jeff Goldblum might’ve had for a possible Oscar or Golden Globe nomination will have to be put on hold for 13 months, a long time for a film that’s getting some fine buzz right now. Read my previous report: “Will “Adam Resurrected” get bumped to 2009?“).

“Adam Resurrected”, an English language international production, is directed by an American, stars two American leads, one British supporting actor, two German actors, a German DP, a French composer, a shoot in Romania - but the rest is Israeli: some of the locations, most of the actors, the producer, the screenwriter, the AD, the novelist, and the material.

In Haifa, Schrader, Yoram Kaniuk (who penned the original novel 40 years ago) and Bleiberg, chatted with Israeli journalists after the film’s press screening.

Shot on my shitty Motorola cell-phone. Left to right: Novelist Kaniuk, Director Schrader, Moderator Klein, Producer Bleiberg (semi obscured by tent-pole), Actress Laszlo, at the Haifa Film Festival press conference for “Adam Resurrected”

Schrader: “I didn’t think the world needed another Holocaust movie, certainly not from me. But once I read the story about the man, the boy and the dog I knew I wanted to do this film, even before finishing reading the script, that Ehud had developed before I came on board.
“Most holocaust movies are based on history and fact and are very reverential. Yoram’s book is neither. It’s not based on fact, this mental institute in the desert doesn’t exist, this relationship between Adam Stein and the Nazi officer didn’t exist. And it’s wildly irreverent. It’s in the vein of such World War II books as ‘Catch 22′, ‘Tin Drum’, ‘Slaughterhouse 5′, and they were all novels that were very hard to adapt to film”.

Schrader added: “I want to make it clear: the book is better then the movie”.

Kaniuk: “The book was never well received in Israel and it still hurts me, although it received great reviews abroad. I’m afraid the same will happen with the movie and the critics here”.

Kaniuk, who admitted he was worried about adapting this book into a movie, says he saw the film five times already and “loved it”. “The film is like magic, it’s bigger than life, I loved it, I thought Schrader and Goldblum and the actors, they got it, they got what I was trying to say”. Bleiberg added that Kaniuk wanted to see the film over and over, jokingly saying “maybe Goldblum will do something different this time”. This plays a softer side of the 78 year old Kaniuk, who as a teen was wounded in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, before training as a painter in Paris, joining the Merchant Marine and then chumming up with Charlie Parker and Marlon Brando in New York in the 50’s, and then settling back in Israel in 1958, where he was considered L’Enfant-terrible of the literary scene.

Schrader added: “The phrase ‘The prophet is not welcome in his own city’ actually comes from your country and Yoram can attest that this is true. He is one of these prophets”.

Bleiberg: “After the 1982 war in Lebanon, I read Yoram’s novek ‘The Last Jew’ and I called him and said to him, this book changed my life and I’m sure that one day we’ll meet. Years later the first movie I produced was “Himo King of Jerusalem”, an adaptation of Yoram’s second novel.”

Academy president Sid Ganis, “Adam Resurrected” director Paul Schrader, director George Lucas, and “Adam Resurrected” producer Ehud Bleiberg at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Photo by Tommy Lau/MVFF. Photo via indieWire

A journalist asks about the English title of the movie, “Adam Resurrected”, which is softer then the Hebrew title, that sounds like “Adam, the son-of-a-bitch” (or, more fittingly with the novel’s plot, “Adam, son of a dog”. Schrader says that this was a given: this is how the book is known by to readers in the States and England. Kaniuk added that after having his heartbroken by the fact that Israeli critics savaged his book and readers ignored it he was so happy that an American publisher wanted it translated that he couldn’t care less how they called it.

But moderator Uri Klein (no relation to the chilling Willem Dafoe character) follows up wisely and notes that the English title is in fact well suited for a Paul Schrader film. “All of your films - as writer and director - deal with themes of redemption and resurrection”, Klein said.
Schrader: “Yes, I’ve had a religious upbringing so themes of sin and redemption tend to sneak-in in the back door while I keep trying to do something else.”

Kaniuk: “What was interesting to me that even though Paul was brought up a strict Calvinist he knows the bible better than most Jews. I am also well read with the bible and we understood each other perfectly”.

Actress Hana Laszlo, who won the best actress prize in Cannes for “Free Zone” in 2005 and plays the mad Shwester in “Adam Resurrected”, joins the conversation and says that for the Israeli actors, Schrader’s methods were hard getting used to. “After I did a scene he gave me no feedback so I went to him and asked if I was alright and whether he wanted to comment on my performance and he said to me: ‘I am like God on the set. If you are good you will hear nothing. But if you are bad, I promise you will hear me loud and clear’. This is when I understood how much faith Schrader has in the actors he cast. At the wrap party I came up to him and aid ‘You know, you seem tough at first but you are actually a sweetheart’. And he said to me: ‘Please don’t spread it around, I have my reputation to keep’”.