Writer-director BenParker sat with Digital Trends to discuss WWII history and the origins behind his new thriller, Burial.
Ben Parker poses an interesting moral dilemma in his new film, Burial. What would a person do if they came into contact with the remains of Adolf Hitler? For Russian soldier Brana Vasilyeva , that hypothetical becomes a reality when her unit is tasked with transporting Hitler’s remains out of Germany and into Russia in 1945. However, a group of German Nazi soldiers known as “werewolves” interrupt the transport, leading to a violent confrontation over the body of the deceased dictator.
But as a side note, I found in one of the books this note about the burying of Hitler’s remains at the end of the war. Well, now I’m looking at that. I’m researching that. That’s interesting. The thing that I was doing was a sort of biopic drama, and then this came up. I thought that idea is so visual – what happens to a person when they have to find the remains of Hitler, bury them, and dig them back up – what it must do to someone.
I thought that’s just a great allegory for this because this horrible person who’s now dead is going to corrupt everybody around him still. He needs to be burned and gotten rid of. The characters say they want people to see that he’s dead, and people who want to get rid of him kept it secret. That sensibility of a buried treasure, and it’s hard to say buried treasure because it’s the opposite of treasure, has that same effect on people. It turns people crazy.
In general, war films do not have many women in the leading role, but Burial is built around Charlotte Vega’s character, Brana. How did that decision to build around Brana come about? I saw her in a friend’s film called The Lodgers, and I thought she was fantastic. She and Bill Milner did the film together, directed by Brian O’Malley, which is a great film. I thought she was the actress to go for, and I put her on a very, very short list at the very beginning of the process and said, “I want her.” And invariably, what happens is lots of other people say we should try this and try that, and luckily, it came back to one of my top picks.
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