Jesse Eisenberg Q&A / Resistance
Jesse Eisenberg has built a reputation as an actor whose charm is heavily connected to his nervous manner and anxious nature. In person, he is sharp, witty, nervous, and somewhat fidgety. In his new movie, Resistance, however, we see Eisenberg delivering arguably the most sustained dramatic performance of his career. He plays Marcel Marceau, the legendary French mime who became an unlikely hero during WWII after joining the French Resistance and working secretly to save the lives of thousands of French Jewish children. Marceau, born in Strasbourg, was himself Jewish and his father was a kosher butcher who emigrated from Poland to France.
Eisenberg, who spoke via phone at the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown in the U.S., believes that Resistance will invite audiences to draw strange parallels to the current era.
“Resistance is this really beautiful, uplifting movie about a guy (Marceau) who is keeping these children entertained and distracted through a war,” Eisenberg said. “[The film] will be filtered through the lens of parents keeping their children occupied when they are not allowed to go outside or play with other kids, which is exactly what I’m dealing with now.
“So it’s really strange, in that, you think a movie will be perceived a certain way and they always end up being perceived [according] to the circumstances in which it is being shown.”
Directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, Resistance co-stars Ed Harris and French star Clémence Poésy and was shot in and around Munich, not far from Dachau, a circumstance that Eisenberg, who is Jewish, found “unsettling.”
Eisenberg, best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2011), has enjoyed a distinguished career varying his work between major studio productions (playing a thief in Now You See Me and Lex Luthor in Batman v. Superman) and acclaimed art house fare (The End of the Tour, The Double), as well as his Woody Allen movies (Café Society, To Rome With Love). is a hardcore Woody Allen fan.
The 36-year-old Jesse Eisenberg divides his time between homes in New York City and Bloomington, Indiana together with his wife, Anna Strout, and their three-year-old son, Banner…