Polanski unveils Oliver Twist
2005-09-25 14:00
Prague - Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski unveiled this weekend his latest film Oliver Twist, in which he leaves a large place for the imagination rather than special effects, admitting he is glad he has finally made a film his children can watch.
Speaking at a news conference ahead of the world premiere in Prague the city where he filmed the 19th century Charles Dickens tale, Polanski said it was his wife's idea to remake Oliver Twist as he searched for a project his children could understand after making the Oscar-winning movie The Pianist.
"My children like coming to watch me working but the result of my work escapes them. So I started looking for a subject that would be suited to them and with which they could identify," he said.
The film stars 11-year-old British actor Barney Clark as Oliver and Ben Kingsley as Fagan.
"Oliver Twistis a story of a boy who is swept (along) by adversity and who at the end manages to escape all the dangers. At the same time he does not lead destiny, destiny leads him," said the prolific creator of celebrated motion pictures as Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and Tess.
French-born Polanski, 71, said it was important that children realised life was not like that portrayed in fairytales and admitted he did not much discuss with his children his own childhood during World War II in a Polish Jewish ghetto in Krakow before seeking his parents sent away to a Nazi death camp.
"I wanted to show them a world beyond our comfortable apartment. But I don't sit down with them and say 'this is how it was for me'. I don't dwell on it; I don't think it's healthy, I don't think it's necessary," he said.
Obscure lighting
In the two-hour film Polanski deliberately leaves a place for the imagination with obscure lighting and characters often reduced to silhouettes which have more impact the less they show themselves.
"I wanted to do something totally different because I think that those (special effects) films mostly are mindless and bringing up the generation of viewers that are insensitive to any kind of emotion that transpires from the screen, they are only waiting for the next deafening sound or the next breath taking effect," the 71-year-old director said.
Polanski paid great attention to every small detail and put enormous effort into the sets to reproduce the atmosphere of 19th century London with scenes involving up to 800 people in period costume.
The film which took four months to produce in the studios of Barrandov of Prague where the sets were made by local teams under the close of the French-Polish director.