Director/ writer Laszlo Nemes won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for his 2015 debut, Son of Saul, a daring fiction feature set in Auschwitz. I met him as he was making the rounds during the award season. On one memorable night, he faced a most anxious moment, meeting Elie Wiesel, the novelist who wrote about his experience in Auschwitz, including watching his father die. Of the dwindling generation of survivors, Wiesel (87 at the time) was a Holocaust elder statesman, an eloquent witness and not one to suffer fools gladly. He found the film a powerful representation of his experience of the place, a murder factory, and important. Before his death in 2017, he was dedicated to keeping the memories of genocide alive as a deterrent to future atrocities. That night, I asked Nemes what he was planning next: a film set in Budapest at the dawn of World War I, from the point of view of a woman. In Sunset, Irisz Leiter, an orphaned woman, tries to get a job at a hat emporium that used to belong to her family. From there, Nemes sets her plight against the larger historic moment, again, as in Son of Saul, in allegory. I had a chance to speak to Laszlo Nemes about Sunset on the phone from his home in Budapest.
Son of Saul had a message that reverberated, a social question about the nature of the Holocaust. The echoes that film created were profound. But as a filmmaker, I felt responsible; I had to grow up more in my visual approach to making Sunset.
I wanted to make Sunset before Son of Saul. In Sunset, one personal story reflects the turmoil of a nation. The Austro-Hungarian Empire represents European civilization in crisis, and I wanted to make a film about the birth of the 20th century.
Son of Saul was bold enough to offer a new vision of the Holocaust, and that was an important step. Many doors opened. But I do not think it was a success because few people saw it in Germany and Austria. I am worried that today’s films are more important for their subjects than experience of life, which is what I want to portray in cinema.
Where does your title Sunset come from?
Sunset represents the end of an era, with reference to Murnau’s Sunrise’s optimism about the coming world. We are at a crossroads today as well. American and European civilizations are joined now in ways they were not then.
Tell me about your central character, Irisz Leiter and the family hat business. Why hats, for example.
Details of appearance, the personalized attention to appearance, show the promise and illusions of the turn of the century. Hats are external signs of civilization at its height. We didn’t see the signs of change. I try to step back and see the perspective.
Watching Irisz Leiter, I had the sense that she was for you the way Anna Karenina was for Tolstoy. Why make the film from the perspective of a woman?
My grandmother was a link to the century for me. She created a visceral link to history for me growing up. So women are important. When I read James Joyce’s Ulysses I was impressed by Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. Its humanist, modernist approach inspired me in the making of Sunset.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
Comments