Angelina Jolie’s directorial venture Unbroken is based on the hardships and success of olympian and World War II warrior louis Zamperini. She talks about her bonding with the fighter, choosing sensitive stories and her UN-related work
This is your third directorial project. What was it like to be calling the shots once againIJ
I’m very happy as a director. I may be stressed, but I love every difficult challenge. I love seeing a story throughout from beginning to end. I like the nurturing aspect of it — building the family of crew and supporting everyone. I’m much happier not being that person out in the front.
What fascinated you about this particular projectIJ
I imagine that for the last ten years, louis has been sitting there having a coffee in the morning and wondering, ‘Who’s going to make this movieIJ’ And I’ve been sitting in my room laying there thinking, ‘What am I supposed to be doing with my lifeIJ I want to do something important. Where is itIJ’ Whereas, it was right outside my window.
It was such a strong reaction: ‘I don’t want to just make a movie, I want to evolve as a human being. I need and want to be near this man. It had to be something that I’d be able to walk away from, having learned something. Also, and this sounds really cheesy, but I see so much horror in my UN work and I wanted something that would help me and others know that there’s a reason for hope. Something that can help you fight through even the darkest of times. I have such a huge responsibility to get it right because I love him so much and because he’s helped me so much in my life.
How challenging was it to capture the essence of louis Zamperini’s story — from being an olympian to a World War II fighterIJ
As a director you’re that little bit removed where you have to try to really put yourself into everybody’s shoes, including all these young men which made me think less about my own experiences but more about my sons, or things I know about Brad and the young men whom I have known in my life. To get into their mindset, I listened to the actors a lot who helped me to get them through this because they told me what they should be doing.
With Unbroken, I had many sleepless nights feeling, “Oh my God, I hope I can do a good enough work and be worthy of this man’s story, to be a keeper of his story.” And I was scared. But I worked hard and louis made me feel that it was going to be all right. Even when I didn’t have faith in myself during production, he would always remind me that I was going to do a good job.
What did you learn about Zamperini from the personal rapport you share with himIJ
He was truly a great man. And he had this wonderful ability to — whenever he spent time with people — see greatness in others and he wanted them to realise their potential. So he would sit with you for hours and you felt focused and directed and wanting to be better from just being around him. And he was like that with everybody. He saw other people and he lit up. And when we made this film, he said, “Don’t make a film about how great I am or how exceptional I am; make a film that reminds people that they have greatness inside themselves.”
How do you relate your movies like Unbroken and In the land of Blood and Honey about the Bosnian war to the work you have done with the UN refugee agencyIJ
When I did Blood and Honey, it was to try to understand how people who are friends and lovers could, months later be murdering each other. How does that happenIJ I couldn’t understand the war in Bosnia — I was a teenager at the time. And it was a study for me so I could do my work better. Unbroken, for me, was in a way the opposite. We have more refugees, more people displaced from conflict today than we did after World War II. So the state of the world and our inability to prevent conflict and address the needs of people around the world was very upsetting to me. Zamperini’s story was inspiring for me. It was a reminder of something to hold onto — our faith and strength of the human spirit. This can actually pull us through — it has in the past — and it’s something to remember in our dark hours, that this exists. And I wanted to put that out into the world because I think we all need that right now.