For your HBO Max movie survivors, Telling the story of Harry Heff, a prisoner in a concentration camp, a prisoner in real life forced into boxing to survive an internship, both director Barry Levinson and star Ben Foster have found interesting connections to the story through the their own families. as well as disturbing events. History.
“I was about five and nearly 40, living with my parents and grandparents in a small house and a man showed up at the door,” Levinson recalled to Foster during a television panel on Deadline’s Contenders. He was called Simka and he was my grandmother’s brother, and I never knew he had a brother, and they started speaking a language I didn’t understand.
Levinson recounted how his uncle stayed with his family for two weeks in the room of a future director. “I woke up one night because he tossed and turned in bed, he talked and screamed, tossed and turned, and then went back to sleep. And in the night. The same thing would happen “.
Years after Simka’s departure, teenager Levinson reportedly talked to her mother about the origins of her relative’s heartbreak. “She says, ‘Well, you know Simka when he was in a concentration camp …’ I said, ‘Was he in a concentration camp?’ Then he started saying a few things. “
Read the script later. survivors, Levinson was surprised by the investigation of the traumatic disturbing responses. “Those who survived the trauma, in this case the concentration camp, as soon as it’s finished, it’s not like, ‘Okay, okay, it’s done and now get on with your life.’ We now call it post-traumatic stress disorder; We now have a name. When a terrible injury occurs, some can get over it, some can’t, and that’s the story of Harry Heff ოდა, who fought in the fields as an SS boxing entertainer. And if you win, live another day; If you lose, it’s practically the end for you: you’re dead. “
Haft escaped from the camp and traveled to the United States, hoping that one day he would find his lost love again, hoping that by participating in a battle for public awards, he would attract his attention. “He’s battling post-traumatic stress disorder,” Levinson explained. “And then the irony is Rocky Marciano, who was well on his way to becoming a world champion, a great fighter in the early 1950s: Harry Haft actually fought him. So this trip … {My initial connection was PTSD. “
Foster found his father’s resonance with his Romanian and Ukrainian grandmothers who fled Europe to escape Russian pogroms in the 1920s. they are killing you, as people say, we will find a safe haven somewhere else, “Foster said.” Take that boat, travel and say ‘We’re leaving’. And we should and should be paying more attention to that lately. “
Levinson said he sees a direct link to the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. “When do you think you see all these people coming out of Ukraine and say how many of them will suffer from what has happened now?” she said. “How long will it last in terms of progress and how do you get over it to somehow continue your life?” And it repeats over and over and over and over and in that sense, and also because of other incidents that happen in our lives when we’re hit and can’t just deal with it now, alone. “
Deadline Contenders Television is sponsored by Apple TV +, Eyepetizer, Final Draft, The Seven Mysteries and Michter’s. The partners are Desalto, Film AlUla, Four Seasons Resort Maui, Jason Mizrahi Design, ModMD, The American Pavilion and Tidelli.
Source: Deadline
