Oscar Isaac makes the trip from ‘Star Wars’ pilot to real-life Nazi hunter
WASHINGTON – Nothing is more grounding for a guy like Oscar Isaac than going from filming “Star Wars: Episode IX” in London to screening his new movie at the U.S. Holocaust Museum for a crowd filled with survivors of Nazi atrocities.
“It’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re not in that galaxy far away anymore. You’re in a very real place where something that actually is incredibly important has the weight of history behind it,” said Isaac, who plays real-life Israeli intelligence agent Peter Malkin in the historical thriller “Operation Finale.”
Directed by Chris Weitz, “Operation Finale,” which opens in theaters Wednesday, centers on Malkin and a group of fellow Mossad operatives who traveled to Argentina in 1960 to capture ex-Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and bring him to justice in Israel.
Question: Even with the heavy subject matter, you bring a similar sense of humor to Malkin that you do to X-wing pilot Poe Dameron in “Star Wars.”
Answer: Often in a script when something is written as quite serious, I try to find the other side of it as well. But with (“Operation Finale”), it wasn’t to be a salve for the darker stuff. It was actually based on Malkin as a human being. The guy was really funny and he used it as armor.
Q: What do you want people to take from “Operation Finale”?
A: The fact that you don’t have to be a pure evil monster to be a part of hate. Eichmann (was) where the whole banality of evil came from, this idea that, well, he’s just a family man who was doing his job and was behind a desk. He didn’t pull the trigger, but he is clearly just as responsible as the people who did because he orchestrated the deportation to the death camps. The idea of showing the human face of this man who did this is very important because it reminds us that it’s human beings just like us that could commit these heinous acts.
Q: Are you going to be sad saying goodbye to “Star Wars” when you finish “Episode IX”?
A: Not really. I’ve gotta get on with my life, man. It’s a lot of years (laughs). Coming back this third time has actually been the most fun so far. We all just have a real command of what we’re doing and it feels a bit looser.
Q: What about BB-8, though?
A: I’ll give him a home. I’ll adopt
him.