Jeff Goldblum Blazingly Suited for Role

[jeffan]

Jeff Goldblum Blazingly Suited for Role in Adam Resurrected
Dec. 9, 2008
F.X. Feeney
VIllageVoice.com


The torturer's greatest art, so it is said, is to make his victims go on torturing themselves—for life, if possible. That certainly seems the fate of Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum), a Jewish comedian of genius in prewar Berlin, who is unable to save his family when the Nazi genocide overtakes them and only survives a concentration camp himself by becoming the literal pet of the camp's Commandant (Willem Dafoe).

These harrowing memories torment Adam in 1961, when he is the star patient at a special mental hospital built for Holocaust survivors in the Israeli desert (where most of Adam Resurrected is set). A charismatic marvel of wit and physical self-control (he can bleed at will), Adam is a compulsive Casanova whose first language would seem to be seduction.

He charms circles around his doctors (led by Derek Jacobi), who in turn let him toy with them, hoping that this will help them crack the impenetrable labyrinth of suffering that overtakes him whenever his manic humor fails him. Director Paul Schrader and screenwriter Noah Stollman, adapting Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk's 1968 novel, establish a structure highly akin to Fellini's 8 1/2: The hero "takes a cure," while memories, dreams, and reflections (and several complicated women) relentlessly crowd him.

Goldblum is ideally, even blazingly suited to such a role—it is hard to recall when, if ever, a part has asked more of his actorly gifts—and his scenes with Dafoe in the concentration camp are painful in the best sense. Where Fellini made ecstasy contagious, Schrader is after much darker vistas—the mystery of how good men fail, and condemn themselves. One cannot recommend this film strongly enough.

[jeffan]

Goldblum shines in Resurrected
BoxOffice.com - Movie Reviews
December 10, 2008
By: Ed Scheid
Ratings: 3.5 Stars, 2/5 Bucks


Adam Resurrected is a very different treatment of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Jeff Goldblum is extremely impressive as a German cabaret clown who survived a concentration camp and has become a mental patient. Adam divided audiences at the Telluride Film Festival, indicating that the film's depiction of intense and frequently disturbing behavior may limit the size of its audience.

Adam Stein (Goldblum) is living in an experimental asylum in the Israeli desert in the 1960s. He is able to slyly manipulate everyone, including his doctor Nathan Gross (Derek Jakobi). The inmates treat Stein like a messiah and the asylum is refereed to as "his" hospital. Adam is also having an affair with head nurse Gina Grey (Ayelet Zurer, in Ron Howard's upcoming Angels & Demons).

The film has a genuine originality as it follows Adam through intersecting time periods, taking unpredictable turns. The screenplay is based on a controversial stream-of-consciousness novel by Yoram Kaniuk first published in 1968. Orson Welles was once attached to portray Adam, but financial complications stopped that production. Producer Ehud Blieberg said that before Paul Schrader, several directors responded to the material but were afraid to touch the unusual subject.

In flashbacks, Adam is a popular cabaret headliner clowning around in Germany as Nazi uniform start to appear in his audiences. He is not political, and though Jewish he naïvely believes that he'll be safe because everyone loves the circus. Still, he, his wife and daughter are sent to a concentration camp.

Adam fits into the gallery of conflicted characters from director Paul Schrader (Affliction and Auto Focus) who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Schrader builds tension into the different periods of Adam's life making the film continually absorbing.

Jeff Goldblum gives a remarkable range to the title character, from the theatrical flair of his cabaret performances to his deep anguish at an Israeli cemetery. The grave site scene is particularly effective. Goldblum calls Adam "the juiciest and most challenging role" he's ever played.

Willem Dafoe, frequent Schrader collaborator, brings his commanding presence to the Nazi Commandant who torments Adam by treating him as a pet and forcing him to move like a dog. He passes on to Adam an ironic inheritance which has unforeseen consequences, adding to the bizarre nature of Adam's life.

In the asylum, Adam is confronted by David, a boy (Tudor Rapiteanu) who acts as if he were a dog. Kaniuk based the boy on the actual case of a young patient in a mental institution who had been raised on a chain and believed he was a dog. The sadistic treatment Adam encountered in the concentration camp could make him the one person who can help the young patient. Adam must confront the ghosts of his past to have a chance at resurrecting both of their lives.
----------------------------------
Distributor: Bleiberg Entertainment
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Ayelet Zurer
Director: Paul Schrader
Screenwriter: Noah Stollman
Producers: Ehud Blieberg and Werner Wirsing
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 105 min.
Release Date: December 12, NYC

[jeffan]

Jeff Goldblum's Odd Film Feat
Parade.com
Thursday December 11, 2008, 12:00 AM

It's been quite a trip for Jeff Goldblum. He's gone from a breakthrough role in The Fly to taking on dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and let's not forget fighting off an alien invasion in Independence Day.

But nothing he's faced on the big screen has been tougher than his role in Adam Resurrected. Goldblum plays a concentration camp survivor who ends up in a mental institution and later finds a kind of redemption in an unlikely bond with an unusual new patient.

Q: Did you ever wonder if you were up to playing such an intensely unforgettable character?

A: I've looked for challenges all my acting life but this went beyond anything that I've ever done. The book on which the film is based is brilliant and, for 20 years people have been trying to bring it to the screen. At one point, Charlie Chaplin wanted to do the part and Orson Welles was very interested. But it never happened. So I felt a lot of responsibility to get it right.

Q: Did it take a toll on you?

A: Playing Adam was disturbing, provocative, inspirational, emotional and occasionally horrible. When I'm acting, I'm usually pretending. I don't get drunk to play a drunk. But I couldn't escape that way this time. I knew I was going to have to suffer but not in any way like the unimaginable things that people really went through during the Holocaust. Still, for the better part of three months when we were filming, I was a wreck going around crying every day. It was life-changing.


Q: What was the toughest moment?

A: It was all tough, but I remember the strangest moment. We shot a scene in a graveyard towards the end of the movie where I sort of lose my mind in grief, I just go crazy. I was crying and Paul Schrader the director said, 'That's good, but why don't you get a handful of the dirt from the grave and put it in your mouth and eat it.' And I said, 'That sounds strange. Do we have anything edible that looks like dirt?' He said, 'No, Jeff. Just eat some dirt.' I kept hesitating and he yelled 'Look Jeff!' And he picked up a handful of dirt and put it in his mouth and ate it. I said, 'Paul, OK. I'll do it.'

Q: Now, after starring in primetime as a detective on Raines, you have a new role in Law and Order. Are you a crime buff?

A: It's always been fascinating to me. Crime, of course, is part of our human condition and I think investigating and finding out what caused people to perpetrate violent acts is something that draws you in. Since I play a psychologist, my area of expertise is the psychology of the criminaland what drives someone to do terrible things. I also get to play the piano in an upcoming episode.I'm doing a little jazz, and, in the middle of it I have some epiphany and revelation about the case that we're working on.

Q: Do you get as much of a kick out of the piano as you do acting?

A: I have a jazz group called the Mildred Sincere Orchestra and we perform sometimes at Aqua in L.A. But I'm not trying to make a career out of it. I also love to sing even though I'm no singer. I just kind of ignore that feeling of, 'Oh I don't do that well.' I think everybody should sing a little whether they have a good voice or not. It's a great way to express yourself.

Q: Do you remember your first public performance as a pianist?

A: I was 15 and I decided to see if I could get some extra cash so I went through the yellow pages and called up bars and lounges asking if they needed a piano player. A couple of places said yes, not realizing that I was a teenager. So I ended up playing 'Misty' and 'Satin Doll' during happy hour and I wasn't even old enough to drive much less drink.

Q: Have you always wanted to act?

A: I got the idea early on when my parents took me to see performances at a children's theater. I took some good classes, and by the time I got out of high school, I was passionate,single-minded, focused, and obsessed about being an actor. And here I am, luckily enough, still doing it and giving classes to young actors and helping them to learn the craft. In these times it seems to be a struggle to be free and to be who you are. I think acting has helped me with that.

[DonnaJo]

Hmm....this quote of Jeff's confuses me:

"Since I play a psychologist, my area of expertise is the psychology of the criminaland what drives someone to do terrible things."

It was my understanding that Nichols parents, not Nichols himself, were both psychologists. Do we think that this is a change to the character, or just a slip by Jeff. Meaning that his character acts like a psychologist, but isn't actually educated as one?

[ZackNicholsgirl]

Well you're not that confused if you know what Jeff Meant Nice interviews Jeffan

[Patcat]

Or it's a case of the reporter getting the notes wrong.

Patcat (who's been there, done that, doesn't want to do it again)

[jeffan]

Adam Resurrected
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi
Rated: R
106 minutes
Reviewed by Nathan Rabin
December 11th, 2008
AVClub.com > Cinema

On paper, Paul Schrader's mind-meltingly odd new film, Adam Resurrected, sounds disconcertingly like The Day The Clown Cried, the notorious unreleased Jerry Lewis monstrosity about a clown who leads children into the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Actually, to give Schrader and co-conspirator Jeff Goldblum full credit for their lunatic ambition, Adam may be even crazier than Lewis' comedy-drama; for all its surreal bad taste, Clown probably doesn't feature a protagonist with psychic gifts, a burning bush in the Israeli desert, and a feral wolf-boy who forms a strong emotional bond with a man who lived extensively in the role of a dog in a concentration camp. Yes, Resurrected has the potential to be not just awful, but a crime against cinema, taste, and solid judgment. Not being offensively terrible consequently counts as one of the film's strongest virtues.

In a stunning lead performance, Goldblum stars as a brilliant, apolitical jester whose wife and family end up in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Goldblum survives by reluctantly agreeing to act as the pet dog of warped fan Willem Dafoe, a Nazi officer who remembers Goldblum's pre-camp fame and exploits his gift for physical comedy in the creepiest manner imaginable. After the war, Goldblum lives in an Israeli mental hospital for Holocaust survivors, where he carries on a sordid affair with one of the nurses and becomes a curious father figure to a dog-boy who blossoms under his tutelage.

Adam Resurrected is filled with the kind of quirky novelistic conceits that tend to kill on the page, yet die embarrassing deaths onscreen. Unsurprisingly, Resurrected is based on a novel: Yoram Kaniuk's 1968 book of the same name. Goldblum's simultaneously subhuman and superhuman madman quasi-messiah is a financial genius who's irresistible to women, reads minds, can make himself bleed, and is haunted ineffably by demons he can't begin to fathom, let alone control. Yet Goldblum sells this wildly theatrical character through sheer magnetism. The otherworldly nature of his restless, nervous charisma has seldom been put to better use. Even when it flies off the rails deep into its third act, Resurrected remains strangely hypnotic. Though Schrader and Goldblum have transformed Kaniuk's book into a film as insane as any of its characters, its source material somehow retains its air of unfilmability. That's just one of this film's many strange paradoxes.

[dragonsback]

Thank yoooo, jeffan! What a great, freshly insightful piece from Nathan Rabin! Well spotted, you good thing!. What do you reckon JF? Think your boy is Golden Globe and Oscar-bound? I do

DJ- had a look at the Zack Nichols specs: Parents are psychiatrists, he's the psychologist cop. Upper West Side well-to-do Jewish intellectuals do not as a rule populate the NYPD with their offspring, but the storyline is that ZN's (downwardly mobile, I would suggest) career choice was mild rebellion. That's the drift I get, anyway. We'll know soon enough - er - later enough, I guess.

[jeffan]

Thank you DB. It is a good write-up for both Jeff's performance and AR.

You ask a big question as to whether Jeff is Oscar bound. Paul Schrader has said that it's a very small bulls-eye. I do think that Jeff is an 'outsider' (much as I dislike thinking this and would certainly love to see him step up on that stage), but I'm a realist and don't think he is Oscar bound yet. Hope I'm wrong!

As to Zach Nichols, who knows and I don't think the writers have even fully developed the character yet. I do like your ideas and have been thinking along similar lines. I just look forward to watching Zach tinkling the ivories and, boom, an epiphany about his assigned case. A real Zach/Jeff moment!

As you say, who knows when!

JF

[jeffan]

I forgot to add a 'btw' in my last message. I do, however, think that Heath Ledger should receive an Oscar for the best actor in a supporting role for Dark Knight. If he doesn't...I'll...don't know what yet!

[jeffan]

His Life as a Dog
Jeff Goldblum discusses his tour-de-force role in Adam Resurrected
By: Lawrence Levi
12/12/2008

In Adam Resurrected, opening today in New York City, Jeff Goldblum delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Adam Stein, a Weimar-era cabaret star who in the 1960s is relegated to an Israeli insane asylum specifically for Holocaust survivors. As we learn in flashbacks, he survived a concentration camp by submitting to the perverse whim of a Nazi commandant (Willem Dafoe): behaving like a dog at all times. In the asylum, Stein—wily, charismatic, and devilishly witty—carries on an affair with a sultry nurse (Ayelet Zurer) and falters only when he encounters a new patient, a boy who thinks he's a dog. The film, directed by the provocateur Paul Schrader, was adapted by Noah Stollman from the 1968 novel by the Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk.

Goldblum, who is 56, grew up in Pittsburgh. Over the past 35 years he has worked with directors such as Robert Altman, Philip Kaufman, David Cronenberg, and Steven Spielberg. When I met with him yesterday to talk about Adam Resurrected, he said, "This morning I was on Martha Stewart making menorahs," and added, "She's very Jewish."

Paul Schrader says that the Holocaust "is a subject that in many ways has been exhausted cinematically." How does Adam Resurrected differ from other Holocaust films?

Well, I've never seen anything like it. And like Paul, I was struck, in the first reading of the script—the central event of this movie that he describes as being "about a man who was once a dog who meets a dog who was once a boy"—we thought that was a knockout of a metaphor, and worth doing. And if you read Yoram Kaniuk's book, which is just now being reissued—I love the movie, but the book of course is different and more complicated and more elaborate and spectacular. We tried to stay devoted to the sensibility and voice and spirit of the book. I met with Kaniuk in Israel. He's like the character and like the book—snarky and unconventional and surprising and contradictory and brilliant and provocative and wonderful and kind and funny. When the book first came out in Israel there was an uproar—they were like, "Irreverent about this material? Nothing like we've seen before." But since, it's been translated and became an international treasure, and Susan Sontag compared him to Márquez.

Do you agree with Schrader that cinematically the Holocaust genre is played out?

He knows. He's a cinematic historian, I'm not. While we were filming in Israel I asked him, "What movies shouldn't I have missed out on by this point?" He said, "Here are the 20 movies I recommend"—many of which I hadn't seen. I watched them all.

In preparation for the role, you visited former concentration camps and spoke at length with survivors. What did you learn from those experiences?

A greater feeling for those events. Many survivors were very generous with me, welcomed me into their homes, told me their stories, showed me their artifacts. I felt a greater empathy for, understanding of, what it must have been like. Café Europa in Los Angeles is an organization that serves survivors. One of the women who was running Café Europa—I said I'd never been to a concentration camp, and she said, "The one I recommend that's most intact of any is Majdenek, in Poland, outside Lublin." So I went to Germany, spent a month there, went to Sachsenhausen, and figured out a way to do this side trip to Poland, and it was an amazing experience. Amazing. Reading all about it, immersing myself in it—you can only scratch the surface in a year. But going there and seeing Germany and seeing the concentration camp and standing next to the gas chamber and seeing a room full of shoes—it was life-changing, it was very emotional, devastating.

I've read that you grew up attending an Orthodox synagogue and went to Hebrew school.

I did!

Did being Jewish have any connection to your choosing the role of Adam?

Yes, possibly so. Well, I had a feeling about it anyway. My dad served in World War II, volunteered in the service, and his brother—who was a pilot, went down, killed, in World War II—looked kind of exactly like me, he was my height exactly. So I always had a connection to, was intrigued by—arrested, disturbed, haunted, and was interested in those events, but not until this year did I really get more fully into it. And yes, when it came to me, I had a predisposition to be interested.

I couldn't help thinking of your role in Independence Day, which was a fairly stereotyped Jew opposite a fairly stereotyped black guy played by Will Smith, and I wondered if in playing Jews you're ever concerned about the impression you may make.

Yes, that occurs to me.

Have you ever refashioned a role or spoken to a director about those feelings?

I may not have mentioned Jewishness along with it, that may not have been my only or primary concern, but yes, I've steered and contributed and otherwise lobbied for adjustment in one aspect or another that would add negative stereotype. And I like to avoid cliché anyway—generally.

Is there anything you learned in Hebrew school that stays with you today?

I was telling somebody today I like that Passover song "Dayenu." "It would be sufficient..." If nothing else occurred—talking about what I wish I had done, what else I could have done, what I'd like to do now. I have more appetite than ever, looking forward to whatever comes, and have strong feelings, but—having said that, if nothing else would occur from the huge abundance that I've been gifted with, it would certainly be more than sufficient. And I'd be eternally grateful.

[ZackNicholsgirl]

Those are just awesome! I hope too he'll get an Oscar.. but even if he doesn't , I'll still know deep in my heart that he did a good Job on AR!

[dragonsback]

By Oscar-bound I meant at least a nomination, not necessarily a win, but most definitely a nom. Obviously Goldblum sees this film as the pinnacle of his art/career. He's leaving no stone (or reviewer) unturned getting the message out there. Making menorahs on Martha Stewart - now that is the most original schlep for a film I've ever heard of :D

It would all be almost too much - except that the critics are responding with extraordinary, unqualified praise for Goldblum's performance. Money or high-energy interview rounds can't buy that kind of love . That's why I am dead certain he won't be passed over for an Oscar nom - what has been hailed by one and by all (as far as I can see) as a tour-de-force performance just can't be ignored.

[jeffan]

Adam Resurrected Review
December 14, 2008
Sam Kressner
LivingCinema.com

I never realized how much I missed Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, Independence Day), the leading-man. Since the start of the 2000’s, he’s been playing second fiddle, supporting characters in 2006’s Man of the Year and 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the latter in which he had a hilarious stint as WASP seaman Alistair Hennessey. His haunted performance in Paul Schrader’s latest, Adam Resurrected, is a reminder of why he has remained a consistent, if not star, presence in Hollywood. Too bad the merits of the film are unable to match Goldblum’s performance.

Based on the treasured Israeli novel, Adam Resurrected was one of the first harrowing, fictional accounts of Holocaust survivors. A patient at the Seizling Institute (exclusively for Holocaust victims), circus-animal impersonator, Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum), trots through the asylum’s halls with gravitas and charm. Once Germany’s funniest clown, Adam’s talents — clairvoyance, magic, and showmanship — are wasting away in middle-age, entertaining and tricking the clinically insane.

The sophisticate is also a fiery lothario, involved in a clandestine but much rumored about relationship with head nurse Gretchen (Israeli actress, Jenya Dodina). It is not the furtive relationship that intrigues; rather, it is Adam’s bestial, sexual proclivities. At the request of her handler, Gretchen seduces Adam by getting on all fours, rolling on her back (paws in the air) and barking like a dog.

As revealed through flashback, Adam in hopes for his family’s chance for survival underwent a year of dehumanizing misery sleeping, eating, and barking like a dog in a Nazi ghetto. His master, Commandant Klein (the routinely solid Willem Dafoe), took the magician in as his personal pet, to torture and amuse. The literal hand-to-mouth life as a canine slave acts as a wonderful allegory for the conditions Adam and his people endured in the Nazi ghettos and death camps. However, allegory takes a visual showmanship to translate to screen, yet director Paul Schrader, the writer of masterwork screenplays like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, is better suited behind the typewriter than for directing literary adaptations.

Having shown visual audacity in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Schrader fails to evoke a similar ingenuity in Adam Resurrected. The film seems better suited for a director with a fanciful but distorted imagination, like that of Terry Gilliam.

In scenes of heightened circumstance, Schrader plays for realism instead of fantastic whimsy, and when the script delicately balances sharp transitions of morbid terror to mordant playfulness, the film suffers. The flashbacks in the death camp and Adam’s interaction with the Seizling Institute’s traumatized patients are ineptly handled. Adam Resurrected is as tonally cohesive as a Jackson Pollock canvas; one’s interest sways from strangely amused to detached abhorrence, especially in the film’s hackneyed ending.

But at the soul of Adam Resurrected, carrying it through the doldrums of mediocrity, is Jeff Goldblum’s noteworthy performance. In a thick German accent and fluctuating cadence, he complements his speech with spotty movement but in precise calibration to his character, matching Adam’s erratic, uncontrollable genius. For the wiry Jewish actor who in the mid-’90s oddly flirted with action hero stardom, fighting extra-terrestrials and sprinting from Tyrannosaurus Rexes, Goldblum is finally the lead on the silver screen again (he was excellently featured in The Pillowman on Broadway). To the lanky man who never really went away, here’s to a warm welcome back.

[jeffan]

Making menorahs on Martha Stewart - now that is the most original schlep for a film I've ever heard of

It certainly is, but Jeff being Jewish and Honica on 22 December, I think it a good schlep!

AR and Jeff's performance have received some negative reviews, but you can't please all of the people all of the time!