How did actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz end up with Steven Spielberg for the film “Munich”?
How did Mathieu Kassovitz end up in the casting of Steven Spielberg’s Munich? The director of ET simply came to get it! As a reminder, Munich tells how during the night of September 5, 1972, a commando from the Palestinian Black September organization entered the Olympic Village to shoot two of its Israeli occupants and take the nine others hostage.
Kassovitz interprets the Belgian Robert, creator of scale models and mechanical toys who has become a specialist in mine clearance. At the time, the actor-director was believed to have given up his acting career after telling his agent not to call him again…except to film with Spielberg. He recounted years later to First :
I’ve always had these kinds of mind-blowing chances in my career. I found myself doing Munich, with Spielberg, who is my living God. Not only that, but he makes me say a line as important as: ‘We Jews cannot do to others what we ourselves have suffered.’ It’s amazing, damn, the correlation between my private life and what I’m given to do in the movies.
OLIVIER BORDE / BESTIMAGE Mathieu Kassovitz
In the Munich press kit, Kassovitz confided that he was immediately caught up in the script: “The script (…) dazzled me with its construction, its subtlety, its power and its audacity. I think it’s a very intelligent film on the concept of revenge in general”.
Kassovitz’s passion for the American filmmaker is indeed not new, since he has admired him since childhood:
“I was too young to see it in theaters, but we recorded it on TV”remembers the director of La Haine about Jaws. “I discover it at the same time as Duel. My father explains to me that the two films are constructed in the same way. It opens my eyes to the fact that while they may be B-movies, they can also be viewed as allegories of life, deeply metaphysical films at least as powerful as 2001.
FAME PICTURES / BESTIMAGE
Steven Spielberg
Always at the microphone Firsthe declares : “I see the importance of writing with the camera, the genius of this guy who manages to make you believe in things you don’t see – a shark, a crazy driver. Great art. My passion for Spielberg is born the.”