War & Peace
Jeremy Podeswa, a Canadian director of hit US television, chats to Ruth Hessey about his very sensitive feature film, Fugitive Pieces
Jeremy Podeswa says TV beats film
Even though he's in town for the Sydney Film Festival, one of the world's most sought after television directors is very clear about the fact that "film has become old hat."
"The premium cable networks," says Jeremy Podeswa, "have picked up what the studios have dropped because they're so afraid of not having hits."
Podeswa should know. He's directed episodes of some of the best series in television history, including Six Feet Under, Queer As Folk, Nip/Tuck, Rome and the extraordinary magic-realist Carnivale.
Attending the SFF with his third feature, Fugitive Pieces, Podeswa is lapping up the Sydney autumn after working in Melbourne for months on the humungous Spielberg-directed HBO series Pacific, starring Tom Hanks.
"I have a double career," he admits. "I started in independent film, but television has become so exciting, I'm happy to have two such rich and interesting mediums to work in."
In contrast to the "hugely ambitious" Pacific, Fugitive Pieces, is a quietly personal work. Adapted by Podeswa from the best-selling novel by Anne Michaels, the film is illuminated by the extraordinary performance of a small boy played by Robbie Kay. Podeswa scoured the US and Europe looking for the right child to play young Jacob.
"He had to look as if he'd experienced something traumatic, with no tricks. I needed a beautiful soulful child, and I knew the instant I found him." The role was crucial because when you meet the adult Jacob, a lonely, self-isolating novelist, "you understand the man he became because you've seen what he went through as a child."
The film starts as Jacob's marriage is being eroded by the ghosts of his family's demise at the hands of the Nazis in WW2 - an immolation he witnessed hiding in a secret cupboard.
Jacob is rescued by a Greek archaeologist who smuggles him to the island of Edra, (it has since become "a bohemian enclave with no roads or cars - Leonard Cohen has a house there"). The relationship between Jacob and Athos (Rade Sherbedgia won Best Actor in Rome) is so powerful it permeates the entire film with sweetness, even though we spend more time with the adult Jacob (Stephane Dillane).
"I loved the book so much because it's not cynical," Podeswa explains. "It shows the power of a single act of charity, and the potential for human kindness, even in a period of many atrocities."
Fugitive Pieces Screening Sun 8 June, 12.45pm at State Theatre