If humanity is ever forced to welcome a celebrity overlord, it might be worse than Jesse Eisenberg’s tuxedo face.
At least that’s what scenes from this weekend’s New York Film Festival suggest, where a disturbingly large Eisenberg — zoomed in from Budapest — literally and figuratively hovered over the entire event on Sunday.
“Please tell me you’re in costume,” actor Kieran Culkin said, gazing at the looming human penguin.
“Yes, this is my outfit. The last time I wore a tuxedo by myself was at a bar mitzvah,” Eisenberg mused. (The filmmaker is already dressed up for the shoot of his new film) now you see me Movie.
NYFF party opportunity is the premiere of Searchlight real painEisenberg writes, directs and stars in this Sundance sensation, with its awards and audience design set to hit theaters on November 1st.
The film centers on cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benjy (Culkin), who travel to Poland to reconnect with their roots, visit Holocaust sites, and pay tribute to their recently deceased grandmother, a survivor who immigrated to the United States. pay tribute. The film wraps its meditations on personal grief and historical tragedy in a pair of oddball comedies, ensuring complex questions of identity and responsibility are filled with laughs.
“I think I might have a hypochondriac’s view of the world, maybe, maybe,” Eisenberg said. “But I like to joke the most. So the film is really a push and pull between something ridiculous and funny in a way, but also represents a sadness about the world, a sadness about modernity.
This story has an unusual origin. “I saw an ad online that said ‘Trip to Auschwitz (with lunch).’ It seemed like something worth writing about,” Eisenberg recalled. “What this means is that, as a modern middle-class culture, we want to experience the trauma of our ancestors, but at the same time we don’t want to give up any creature comforts.”
He stopped.
“Now I say [Auschwitz With Lunch] When you pick it up on your phone, you see ads for it,” he told the New York Film Festival audience.
The film was made before October 7 and the wave of global anti-Semitic incidents it triggered, but was released a year later with uncanny timing, implicitly asking how people cope with historical trauma whose causes have yet to be healed. The film also fails to embrace the pain of one group of people.
“I feel like a lot of it is about connecting to one’s family roots… and the loneliness and pain that we all carry all the time,” said Jennifer Gray, who plays a divorcee with Benjy and David on the tour. “It’s not just the struggles of a grief-stricken person, but how resilient and stupid we are and all of those things can exist at the same time.”
Eisenberg added: “I realized you could make a Holocaust story with all the horror and sadness of the Holocaust, but if you make it about real people going through their own personal grief and conflict, you There can be something that can exist in that careful thing.
real pain This is the second year in a row that the Holocaust concentration camps have been viewed through unorthodox screen lenses, following 2023 area of interest Focus on the Nazis living next door. Much of the new film’s power comes from Culkin’s Benji, an unfiltered character who is both defiant and vulnerable — a conscientious instinct — and the comedy between him and Eisenberg’s uptight David friction. Apparently, their witty banter wasn’t over yet.
Eisenberg said: “You know those stories you hear all the time about Hollywood pervert directors falling in love with actresses? I was like, [for Culkin]. He’s so funny, so charming, so frustrated, so witty, and light and dark at the same time.
Culkin added, “You literally told me on set how people fall in love with actresses.” (pause.)” you said, sweating about three feet away from me. How should I react to this? ‘Go away now?’
“Yeah. I guess that was your reaction. I mean you probably just said, ‘Cool, thanks.’ ” or “Hey, I love working with you too.pause) “You still can,” Eisenberg replied.
Culkin then said, “I’m going to try to do that.”
