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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: But what made you want to take on this subject, especially for your first go as a director?
VIGGO MORTENSEN: Well, it’s something that’s — I have a lot of intimate experience with, dementia, in both my parents, my stepdad. Many members of our family, both sides of my family have had this illness. And I have seen it up close over a period of many years, decades in different people, even in a caregiving role. And it’s not something that you automatically know how to deal with. You learn as you go along, and maybe you can learn from other people that have had the experience. It’s a — I mean, it’s a movie that is about communication in general, how difficult that is sometimes with certain people. And, certainly, when someone has dementia, it adds another layer of complication to that. And I wanted to explore that. I wanted to explore, what do you do when it seems impossible to communicate with someone? There’s also another aspect. This particular character who has dementia, the — my father in this story played by Lance Henriksen, who you just saw, who does an amazing job, he’s a very difficult person to deal with even before he had dementia.
AMANPOUR: Oh, yes.
MORTENSEN: He’s irascible, isolated, an embittered old man in many ways. And one of the questions that come up really is, are there people that you just can’t communicate with, whether they have dementia or not? Are there people that don’t deserve to be communicated with? These are not things I’m giving answers to. I’m just posing the question. I happen to think that there’s a possibility to communicate with or at least to listen to and try to understand something about them with anyone, no matter how opposite their views. And I think that’s a timely thing, I mean, in society right now. It’s almost like another pandemic, the poor communication or nil communication problem that we have.
MORTENSEN: Well, he’s a — it’s a conscious effort. It’s not like we were trying to paint a portrait of a saint.
About This Episode EXPAND
Bob Menendez; Nury Turkel; Viggo Mortensen; Ibram X. Kendi; Keisha N. Blain
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