Official Speech: Maus the Film

I am honoured that Maus has been nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards. I have received so many questions from you so I will answer the most frequent. When I had the opportunity to read the novel, overall I felt an extreme case of fear, violence, love and conflict, which I identified as the main themes of the novel. When I was thinking about how I was going to adapt the novel, I thought about focusing on the main themes and how I was going to share them with the audience. Within the Novel, I didn’t want to show some of the scenes because they might have not provided what I wanted to show or it didn’t deliver the same emotions I felt when I read the novel. I believed that this film should be shown to people of all ages except for those under 15, I wanted to show what it was like in Nazi Germany.

 

The use of film techniques helped me to efficiently portray the themes that I wanted to, in the film. Making the audience to see the messages of fear, violence, love and conflict like I saw when I read the book. The themes of fear was developed by the use of quick music like a heartbeat. Similar to the music in which was used in the film Alice in Wonderland where she gets caught by the Baber snappers. In the scene where Anja is running away from the Gestapo, you may hear the rushed music with the rhythm of the shots coexisting with the beat of the music, giving a suspenseful feeling to the scene. Violence triggers the fear of the Jews suffering in that time period. To get the audience to capture the violence appropriately, I used different types of lighting and angles to create emphasis upon the actor and to show power between characters. For an example, in some scenes that have the theme of violence, the lighting is gloomy and uses a lot of fading transitions when the Jew is to be beaten up and most likely, killed by the Nazis. The Nazis are shown as a prominent figure with low angles and backlighting. Meanwhile the Jewish population are shown on high angles and front lighting shining down upon the face. The technique helped me contrast the power between the Nazis and the Jews. That was how I wanted to portray violence. On a happier note, I preferred the theme of love to shown calmly, giving the audience a breather from the fear and violence the movie is screening. I noticed within the book that without the love that Vladek and Anja share, they might have not even lasted on. I immediately wanted to show this using soft lighting, eye-levelled angles and medium shots. To portray the theme of conflict the use of colouring, mise en scene, dialogue and sound effects. I wanted the theme of conflict to be shown as a distant memory, so I chose to colour the scenes in a light sepia. For an example in book two when Vladek is fighting against the Germans in the Polish army to stop them from coming across the border. Due to the decision, I was able to show contrast between present and past. This is a vital part of the film, which now leads me to the next most frequently asked question.



I have thought long and hard of the decisions I have made and I had to change and delete some scenes to create a flowing storyline. This important decision was to create a storyline that interests the audience. As I have explained to you before, the colouring for one of the scenes is used, as it is a flashback. The use of this flashback is when Vladek kills the man who has dressed up as a tree (found in Chapter three, Book two) and later on when he is taken prisoner, he brings the man’s body up to the van. So, whenever the Nazis were to shoot the Jews down or kill them, the scene of when he is prisoner of war comes back. Symbolizing that even though they are to kill others as a part of duty, that killing is not morally right in any cases. Another decision I have made was to swap around a few scenes in a way that interests the audience of over 15 years of age and creates a shock value. Shown within Chapter 2 book 2, Art Speigelman talks about his life after creating the first book, his father passing away and is continuing onto the second book. Artie was getting business propositions and metaphorically he was growing smaller, weaker and he was shown on top of a mountain of bodies. This tells the audience that what they are about to see is going to be confronting, creating a shock value. That is how I wanted it to feel. I hope many fans don’t go crazy over the fact that I deleted and swapped scenes around, to me this was a difficult decision that I had to think long and hard about.



Maus contains information of one of the saddest eras of history (PAUSE) and so I wanted everyone to know the potential of this book on how it expressed Nazi Germany. Who really likes History? Now don’t get me wrong, I like History but I believe that seeing History in a film other than studying it in books of size 8 font as it is a much faster way to learn. I believe that this graphic novel has potential in the education for senior students. Even the way that Art has set out the book has justified my reason. For instance, it is a graphic novel and the vocabulary is so easy that a 5th grader can understand. The story of Maus has expressed its knowledge in a way that everyone can read and a plus is that it is straightforward and doesn't take paragraphs of words to explain one thing. Education on one of the saddest eras in history shown within the pages of the graphic novel and adapted movie, Maus is crucial as everyone can share empathy of what happened.
To be a son of a Holocaust survivor, their very being would've been determined by the human nature’s will to survive. Without their ability to survive in such atrocious situations, Art Spegielman would not be here today. Thank you.