Web Exclusive Interview: Jeremy Podeswa
A Piece of Himself
Director Jeremy Podeswa had some very personal reasons for adapting Fugitive Pieces
Without much fanfare and in typically unassuming Canadian fashion, filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa has become one of TV's most sought-after directors. He's helmed episodes of Rome, Nip/Tuck, The Tudors and Six Feet Under just to name a few, and last fall he decamped to Australia to direct an episode of the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks-conceived World War Two miniseries Pacific.
And while the TV gigs hone his craft and provide him with a comfortable life down in Los Angeles, his first love is film and making movies that have something to say about the human condition.
He burst onto the Canadian filmmaking scene in 1994 with Eclipse, about the sexual adventures of 10 Torontonians on the eve of a solar eclipse. Then, in 1999, came The Five Senses, another multi-layered, ensemble drama set in Toronto. But that was eight years ago, and while his small-screen career was flourishing he was always on the lookout for the next meaningful tale he could bring to the big screen.
He found it in author Anne Michaels' critically acclaimed novel Fugitive Pieces.
"I just thought it was an incredibly poetic, beautiful and profound piece of writing, and it was really unlike anything I had ever read," says the 45-year-old Podeswa while sipping a latte in an eatery in Toronto's Little Italy neighbourhood, just a few blocks from his own home (Podeswa also has a place in L.A.).
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This photo: Rade Serbedzija (left) and
Robbie Kay in Fugutive Pieces. Above: Jeremy Podeswa (left) on set with
Stephen Dillane
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We're chatting a week before the start of the
2007 Toronto International Film Festival, which has chosen Podeswa's
big-screen adaptation of Fugitive Pieces to open the fest.
The film tells the life story of Polish national Jakob Beer (Stephen
Dillane), who, as a child, witnesses his parents’ murder at the hands
of Nazi soldiers during World War Two. While his sister, Bella, is
dragged away, Jakob escapes and is rescued by Greek archaeologist Athos
Roussos (Rade Serbedzija), who moves Jakob to Greece, and later
Toronto, where he grows into a reticent man consumed by his tragic past
and memories of his long-lost sister. Ultimately, it's the love of two
very different women, and Jakob's ability to write down his thoughts
and feelings, that bring him out of his emotional shell.
Beautifully filmed — shifting between Jakob's childhood and his
conflicted present — and anchored by Anne Michaels' poetic language, Fugitive Pieces is Podeswa's most assured film to date, and a work that brings him, in many ways, face to face with his own family's history.
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"I do have an experience in my background that kind of connects me to the book in a more personal way," he says, "which is that my father is a survivor of the Second World War who lost his family during the war, and was not much older than Jakob is in the book when those events happened to him."
Podeswa's parents had read the novel, but had not yet seen their son's movie at the time of this interview, which had the director feeling a bit anxious.
"I am very nervous, whenever you're sharing something you've made with your loved ones it's nerve-racking because you want them to appreciate what you've done, and especially in this case because I'm dealing with an experience so close to my own father's experience.
"You want to feel that you've got the details right and that you honour the experience, so I'm highly sensitized to that,” Podeswa continues. “But I think he's going to like it and I'm very excited about him seeing it and sharing in it. I mean, the movie is sort of a love letter to my family."