Jake Paltrow’s (“Young Ones,” “De Palma”) latest film, “June Zero,” breaks itself into three distinctive points of view. The film follows the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. Rather than focusing on Eichmann himself, the film revolves around those whose lives were touched by the trial and his crimes. From a 13-year-old boy who claims to have worked at the factory that built Eichmann’s crematorium to a prison guard tasked with keeping him alive before his execution to an Auschwitz survivor, the film weaves through these individual stories while linking them all together (read our review).
We spoke to Paltrow about “June Zero,” his interest in this story, his work with his co-writer Tom Shoval, and crafting one of the film’s pivotal scenes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What first drew you to the story? Was it one particular detail?
It was an element of the story. I hadn’t intended to make a movie set in this era or subject. There was a detail that there were no Ashkenazi guards allowed to guard Adolf Eichmann, which was interesting to me as we dug deeper into it and learned that there was a core of these officers from North Africa and the Middle East — most of whom hadn’t been living in the country for that much time. Digging deeper into that is how we learned about the one-time use of crematorium. There were a number of inherent contradictions in it. Even ironies like the idea of religion and culture with no cremation asking itself to build a one-time use crematorium for somebody who has built many crematoriums to burn the Jewish people. That seemed like it inherently has a very dramatic and interesting thread I hadn’t seen or read about.
So, I started researching what was, in my mind, a more fictionalized version of the story. I went to Israel to make this research trip about it and came upon the man’s claim when he was a young boy — now an older man — that he’d worked in this oven factory. We talked to and interviewed people who worked there who said he didn’t. I thought it was a very interesting place to start this kind of movie because we’re starting with a contested history — telling this story about history through a history that may or may not be true, which also applies to testimony when we think of how it applies to Holocaust history. These testimonies, in many ways, allowed people, especially Israeli people, to understand at the time what had really happened to European Jews in Europe during the war.
But it also applies to the Shoah Foundation, archived in DC. We think of those testimonies and have these stories forever. So what is the testimony of one person, and what is the value of it? It’s a different context. But I think for audiences who have no relationship with these other things, it’s an interesting way to get into a story like this.
The use of the three perspectives is such an interesting vehicle for telling this expansive story. How did you choose the three points of view to focus on? You mention that David’s story is contested. Are others the same or more factually confirmed as true?
They were all based on claimed true stories or actual elements, though some things are dramatized. But I think that’s just true for movies. As I get older I find it harder to feel — unless you’re dealing with transcriptions of conversations — comfortable trying to recreate the idea of the people at the top echelons of power from having these conversations. Also, they are not often the participants in these actual events. A great movie that focuses on different perspectives through fiction is “Paths of Glory,” which is told from the point of view of those soldiers and Colonel Dax. Because those are the people who actually have their lives on the line.
Tom Shoval and I, while writing, were talking about how we would do a story about the Lincoln assassination but do it from the point of view of a dresser at the theater or a carriage driver waiting outside whose experiences are no less frightening or important than anyone else there that night. It’s a way that I thought we could show these sorts of players in history who were very, very involved and whose stories were not usually the ones who get highlighted.
The other part is that I’m not interested in who Adolf Eichmann is. Even if we could psycho-analyze him or understand the things that motivate him, where is that going to get us now after millions of millions of people have been killed? I’m not making a movie where I’m trying to understand this person. I’m making a movie where I’m trying to watch these people interact in these kinds of contradictory roles. Certainly, it applies to the prison officer who is tasked with keeping this person alive until we kill him. And then when we kill him, we will be cremating him even though we’re a culture with no cremation and a religion with no cremation, and we’re figuring out how to do this because there’s no crematorium in the country.
I’d been interested in how you don’t showcase Eichmann since, in another interview, you called the idea “uninteresting.”
I can expand on it for a moment. I think what I find uninteresting is that we’ve seen those treatments of criminals. Even if there’s no more significant criminal we can point to or somebody like this now, we’re used to these dramatized versions of these characters getting the Hannibal Lecter treatment. There’s something about that that feels so problematic to me. And I’m just not interested in exploring it or even applying my opinion on something like that. Because I don’t think it really gets us anywhere.
For a story of this depth, it’s interesting how you keep a cohesive tone throughout while allowing each section to have its color. How do you manage that, and how deliberate was it to play with the tone of each character you focused on?
It’s deliberate, but I think the thing that you’re hoping for in making these things is that your intuitive qualities will get you through the other side. You have a sensibility — whatever that might be — and you have an idea of how to do it, and you’re believing in that weight. Of course, you prepare. We prepare these movies for an extended period of time. It becomes a bit of a balance of what you think you can achieve and what will make it right. In this case, I’m happy and proud of what came out of it and how it worked because I think it was more complicated than I had imagined.
We’re telling a relatively simple story. But in the process of doing it, with a minimal schedule of making it and working in a language I don’t speak very well, it was much more complicated than I thought. Trying to balance some of the humor and ensuring that we could land the emotion in a way where it wouldn’t seem sentimental in any way and that would feel earned, all of that is being dealt with day to day, and then you apply this to making something in a language you don’t speak, and I could see it grow right in front of me as we were starting to do it. It’s where your intuition as a movie maker makes it work.
There’s a scene at the movie’s end where two characters talk about the difference between never forgetting and always remembering. I was just curious about the writing process for this scene and then seeing it come to life through the direction and performances since it’s such a pivotal moment in the film.
In many ways, I think that conversation is an x-ray of Tom and my process of writing this story. We wanted to present a kind of conflict or something that seems like a conflict at first but could be finished without resolution, if that makes sense. Even without a resolution, it brings these two people closer even though they remain somewhat divided regarding their general viewpoints of life, their world, and the future, as it applies specifically to Israel. So, you have someone challenging a narrative that doesn’t come up until later. We thought of Ada as somebody from the future. She’s the woman who fell to earth and a voice that we’re very in touch with now in the country, the protest movement, and that sort of stuff, but not something that entirely existed then or could be understood.
It’s also very much based on Miki Goldman, who allowed us to use his history, and his son became involved in the movie. He’s very close to us and who we love — he’s 98 years old and still with us. These are his experiences. As Tom and I are working on something like that, we’re pushing each other in a way that allows us to find how to work inside a provocative subject matter but do it just as a provocation. What about this stuff that interests us, and is there something we can push toward? If it’s an unresolvable thing, can we do anything by talking it out ourselves and dramatizing it in the movie? Is there something we’ve found that gives us a further step forward?
That’s the best part of working with somebody. I’d primarily written alone before this, and there was a cultural barrier in the subject matter that I didn’t feel comfortable writing alone. I wanted to find somebody, and very luckily, I found Tom. He’s bringing so much to this movie and the writing process, making me a better writer. And also seeing things in a way I wouldn’t have necessarily seen them. I think that’s true for both those two characters as well. So, showing the scene to Miki, seeing him so moved by it, and having no objections makes you feel like we’ve pulled it off.
“June Zero” is in theaters now.