I saw this film on Monday and it was a far different experience for me than it would have been on Saturday before the shooting.Īn interesting thing that I came to believe while shooting this movie is that Nazi Germany wasn't unique. We're having this conversation the week after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Oscar Isaac and Nick Kroll star in "Operation Finale." (MGM) While we were shooting, Charlottesville took place, so it was a tremendous reminder that we'll be reminded of these things one way or another, either because we're carefully keeping them in mind or because they pop up out of the unconscious of our own country. There still is that sort of Germanic past, but there were also a lot of echoes coming from the States.
And there's Bariloche, which is a place where a lot of German immigrants settled when they left Germany. That's still in operation and serves pretty good German food, actually. There's still the ABC Club, which is the German restaurant where Eichmann met Mengele in Bueno Aires. There were all kinds of weird echoes while we were there. There is this bizarre trove of Nazi paraphernalia that was unearthed during our production. Is there still any sense of that former Nazi German culture in Argentina? We wouldn't have experienced that if we were shooting in Montreal, as pleasant as that would have been. It's extraordinary the number of times someone came to me and said, "Oh, I remember when this happened" or "My cousin knew one of the guys involved in the mission," all these sorts of things. There's sort of a fringe benefit in the accretion of history, not just in the buildings and the look of things, which is very particular, but also in the sense of the people around us, our extras, our secondary players, people who had lived through this history. It was a very particular decision and I really felt it was important for us to get a sense of what it was like to be there, to be able to shoot sometimes in the actual locations where things took place.
Argentina is a long way from here, plus there are none of the rebates or tax benefits that drive runaway productions to places like Canada or Hungary or Romania. Going down there was definitely something that I kind of had to force upon all of us. On the other hand, we never found any roadblocks in our way in terms of shooting there. In some ways, Argentina has not wanted to concentrate very much on this part of their past. How did you get to shoot there? Have the country come to terms with this part of its history? In the past, Argentina hasn't really wanted to acknowledge this part of their history. And yet, when the end credits came it, I found it I was wrong. As I watched, I wondered where you'd found such great locations because I was confident that there was no way you would have been able to make this movie in the real locations in Argentina. I was really blown away by how beautifully the film is shot.
Adolph Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) at his Israeli trial in "Operation Finale." (MGM)