Yet Van den Berg plays with time and memory so skillfully that the movie's occasionally confusing forays into fantasy aren't a major problem. De Lint, who was required to be rather glum as the repressed hero of The Assault , is allowed to open up and give a more vital performance - this time as a restless Holocaust survivor who resists rather than accepts the past. Paul represents a generation of people who lost their families and are doomed to carry that knowledge with them. Although Van den Berg was not born until 1949, his own parents were Dutch Jews who lived in hiding from the Nazis and filled his childhood with their stories. But I wanted you to leave the theater with any feeling you want.
People can live with that desire, that uncertainty, all their lives.
We'd all like to see the two brothers meet, but I knew I couldn't do that. It's the whole point of departure of the story. It's really comparable to my making the film. You have to live with what you know, you have to give it form, and art can become a way of comforting yourself. The book is actually less Jewish than the movie - I tend to see the world in the microcosm of Jewish life.