AFI FEST: Jeff Goldblum talks about Adam Resurrected (November 8, 2008)
Like his Oscar-nominated AFFLICTION (1997), Paul Schrader's latest film deals with an individual tormented by memories of horrific violence. Like MISHIMA (1985), it jumps boldly through time and space. And like AUTO FOCUS (2002), it serves up an alternately playful and disturbing mix of sordid reality and stylized, sexually charged fantasy. What's new and startling in ADAM is its black comedy, which Schrader deploys in an attempt to overturn every sentimental platitude established in the Holocaust-movie genre. Adam Steiner (Jeff Goldblum), the film's clown-victim-hero, survived the concentration camps by working for the Nazis, performing for Jews being marched off to the gas chambers. After the war, he landed in an Israeli mental institution in the Negev Desert designed for survivors. His incisive, manipulative intelligence-he's more brilliant than any doctor-and uncontrollable sexual hunger (is he the craziest patient there?) keep us wondering: Who's running the asylum? Noah Stollman adapts Yoram Kaniuk's celebrated 1971 novel, still one of the finest written about the aftermath of the Shoah. Goldblum, with fine support from Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Ayelet Zurer, gives the performance of a lifetime, reveling in every twist and quirk of Adam's character. Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival
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