📱 2022-09-04 20:00:49 – Paris/France.
Ben Parker poses an interesting moral dilemma in his new film, Burial. What would a person do if they came into contact with the remains of Adolf Hitler? For Russian soldier Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega), this hypothesis becomes reality when her unit is tasked with transporting Hitler's remains out of Germany and into Russia in 1945. However, a group of German Nazi soldiers known as "werewolves" interrupt the transport, leading to a violent confrontation around the dead dictator's body.
According to Parker, who is both a writer and a director, the hunt for Hitler's body is like searching for buried treasure. Once you find the treasure, it "drives people crazy" and leads to corruption. In a conversation with Digital Trends, Parker explains the origins of Burialhis curiosity about WWII history, Charlotte Vega's riveting performance, and the status of independent cinema in 2022.
Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Digital trends: what was the basis of Burial? I believe you finished this script while promoting Bedroom.
Ben Parker: I was, yes. How did you know that? It's good research. I got up on stage when I was showing Bedroom, and you get the question, "What's next?" I said, "Well, that's the movie I'm going to do next." And then it took five years to get it off the ground. The story, the germ of it, took place before my first feature film.
I was writing a lot of different scripts, and I was researching and writing a script about another Russian personality who turned against Stalin, which was interesting. He was branded a traitor because he turned on Stalin, then was among those who tried to save Prague at the end of World War II. I thought that was really interesting.
But by the way, I found in one of the books this note about the burial of Hitler's remains at the end of the war. Well, now I'm watching this. I'm researching it. It's interesting. What I was doing was kind of a biographical drama, and then this happened. I thought that idea was so visual – what happens to a person when they have to find Hitler's remains, bury them and dig them up – what it has to do to someone.
So it gesticulated for a while. I hadn't made my first feature film yet so I didn't think I could make a feature film out of it; I thought it would be a nice short film. When I did my feature film, I thought, “No. I will sit down to write this in an article. It's a very good idea.
you compared Burial à The treasure of the Sierra Madre, but with a body instead of gold. It is also a moral story. Why did you decide to take this path in telling this story?
There's also a nod to the very beginning of the film. There's a TV presenter who says, "The treasure of the Sierra Madre going to be on TV. It's such a great movie. I'm also obsessed with stories of gold and buried gold. Gold, while it can be used as a good thing, is one of those things that drives people crazy. They see it and they go crazy. They find it and they go crazy and it corrupts.
I thought that was just a great allegory for that because that horrible person who is now dead is going to corrupt everyone around him again. You have to burn it and get rid of it. The characters say they want people to see he's dead, and the people who want to get rid of him have kept it a secret. This sensitivity of buried treasure, and it's hard to say buried treasure because it's the opposite of treasure, has the same effect on people. It drives people crazy.
Did you know the German "werewolves" well before writing the screenplay? Were you a WWII history buff?
All the men in my family are military, so we get shoved down our throats to some degree. [Laughs] All the women are teachers or nurses and all the men are soldiers. My grandpa and my dad just sucked this thing up and regurgitated it to me. So I knew a little about it, but I didn't know about werewolves.
I didn't know about their werewolf, and that's something I found out when I found out the origin of this story, so I researched that as well. There are some good books on it. There is a lot of genre horror literature. What a big name to turn that into a thing. I think John Landis knew that when he was doing An American werewolf in London. There are Nazi werewolves and all that.
But real werewolves were also fascinating and vastly overrated for their numbers. They weren't a big military force at all because Germany had practically bled everyone. But what was fascinating was when I went to film in Estonia, it was like those guys [werewolves] were the bad guys. Then in Estonia they had a similar faction called The Forest Brothers. I'm like now I have to find out everything I can about the Forest Brothers. It was a similar guerrilla force hiding in the forests, living off the forest, but fighting against the Soviets. And it's also an interesting story.
you were gonna call the movie werewolves?
[Laughs] I did. It just confused people. Initially, I wanted to talk about real things. I also wanted to talk about people who make up stories, propaganda or myth and people who use myths to control people. Some of the most enjoyable elements of mythos are legends and folklore and that sort of thing. But I wrote it through the lens of these mythical creatures.
There were werewolves, then there were vampires. Vampires who want to suck the blood of everything dry. They are leeches. They don't care about anything. Werewolves would come out at night, covered in hair, and play with these visual mythos. I thought it would be a really good idea to call the film werewolves because people would think, "Wow, werewolf!" But that's exactly what they did. They thought they were going to watch a werewolf movie. [Laughs]
Burial – Official trailer with Charlotte Vega, Tom Felton | HD | IFC Midnight
In general, war films do not have many women in the lead role, but Burial is built around Charlotte Vega's character, Brana. How did this decision to build around Brana come about?
I'm drawn to those kinds of stories. I am drawn to strong female characters. It could be a blessing or it could be a curse. You could make a lot of war movie fans say, "I'm not going to watch a movie with a woman," but I love those stories. It was also a big plus for me to have someone who is more sympathetic to the central part of the story.
It revolves around Russian soldiers at the end of World War II. I knew that I absolutely did not want to be completely radiant about the Soviets and their behavior. I wanted to make sure we said what really happened. So having that Brana character helps with audience sympathies. He's someone you can support.
When did you know Charlotte was the right actress for the job? What impressed you about his performance?
I saw her in a friend's movie called The tenants, and I thought she was fantastic. She and Bill Milner did the movie together, directed by Brian O'Malley, which is a great movie. I thought she was the go-to actress, and I put her on a very, very short list early on in the process and said, 'I want her. And invariably what happens is a lot of other people say we should try this and try that, and luckily that came back to be one of my top picks.
I just saw something in these performances. She was at the reboot of wrong turn, and she's really awesome. She has a good ability to be tough, but also shows the sensitive side of things, not by being weak, but by a look or a thing. The audience sees it. It's good. It's like magic. I don't understand the acting at all, but when you see it, you know it's awesome.
Charlotte had a great line in the movie when she's in the barn with Lukasz and says she knows what it's like to be "surrounded by wolves." Despite Germans and werewolves as enemies, she still feels nervous around her allies.
Yeah. I also like this moment that she has. I wish I could take credit for it, but I didn't direct it that way. She's done this line many times, and the one we use in the movie, she nods slightly at the question. He said, “You know what it's like to lose someone? She nods slightly for the audience to catch her. She says “Yes”, but she says something else, and I think that's amazing. Every time I see that in a movie or on TV, when you say something and say something else in a look, it's just awesome. It conveys twice as much, the deep horror of her past, by that little look she makes. It's good.
Why did you decide to frame the story through a flashback? Was that always the plan?
Yeah, that's always been the plan. I wanted to start it in 1991. Again, you're making it difficult for yourself because you should probably define it as a bookend in the present tense. It is easier to do production design. But to place it in 1991, that moment in history when everything fell apart and people were saying, “Great! It's finish. It's finish. Isn't that great? And at that moment, something happens that makes a character say, "I know how it goes." It can still grow back if you let it grow back.
It was important for me to do that. To show at this point things can grow back if you let them. You have to stay on it. Also, I love when someone tells me a story. I like when there is a character who tells me a story. I shouldn't do it all the time. I'm not going to do this in every movie, but it's a nice way to get into it.
You made a little claustrophobic horror. You wrote a haunted house horror. Now you have Burial. What is your next progression as a filmmaker?
I like science fiction. I love to read science fiction, and I like like Philip K. Dick and stuff like that. I would like to do something science fiction. I think that opens up a lot of avenues. I love that. Yeah, I'm an open book. I made a very good horror movie. I've done two thrillers with horror touches and I have a horror movie that hopefully will happen. But it's really fun for me. I think from most scripts I come from a horror stance, even when it's a thriller. I want to make you shiver with frights. I want to thrill you with horrible stuff. It's all about tension. You know, I love Brian De Palma so I would like to do some kind of horror.
What is the status of independent cinema today? It seems like every two weeks there are opinion pieces about how IP and superhero movies are dominating theaters or how projects that would have been indie movies years ago are now becoming shows of TV. But, there are still independent filmmakers doing good work.
It all depends on the audience and what they are watching. If you're just happy to watch IP, then that's what people are going to do. It's hard after COVID, to go out and make the effort to go to the movies and see independent films and stand up for those independent films and say, 'That's really good. There have been some really good independent film hits, and that's great. It's really heartwarming to see it when that happens.
I don't think there is anything wrong with doing things over IP. I just think if the cynical option is "let's take an IP that everyone knows" it's harder for a filmmaker or writer to do something new with it...
SOURCE: Reviews News
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