Russell Crowe shaken by Nazi role, Angelina Jolie reflects on family cancer history at Tiff

TORONTO, Canada – Russell Crowe’s nerve-shredding portrayal of a notorious Nazi on trial and Angelina Jolie’s deeply personal dive into the world of French fashion led a busy Sunday of world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) on Sept 7.

The New Zealand actor’s depiction of the second-ranking Nazi, Hermann Goering, in Nuremberg, as he plays a cat-and-mouse game with a psychiatrist (Rami Malek), drew an unusually lengthy standing ovation at North America’s biggest movie fest.

Based on American author Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, it depicts Goering as a charming, smart and wily prisoner, while not shying away from the colossal evil in which he played a pivotal role.

Crowe, 61, told journalists on the red carpet: “You can’t play a character like this and not walk away, at the end of the day, feeling things that maybe shake you about what went down.”

He speaks German in parts of the film, depicting how Goering believed he could use the post-World War II Nuremberg trials to justify his actions on a global stage.

The Oscar winner signed up after reading the script, in which he could see Goering’s ambition bloom and “how his egotism told him that he could control the narrative”.

The movie contains devastating archival footage of Nazi concentration camp victims being bulldozed into their graves – the same film reel that was shown in the real Nuremberg courtroom.

American writer-director James Vanderbilt said he asked his actors not to research the footage before they were confronted with it on the day the scene was filmed.

Crowe’s role was “a dark person to play – that takes an emotional toll on an actor”, said Vanderbilt. “He was game for all of it, and I’m eternally grateful to him for that.”

In an early review, news site Deadline called Nuremberg unrelenting and enormously effective, praising Crowe’s stunning performance.

On the same day, American actress Jolie premiered Couture, a drama focusing on some of the human stories behind the often superficial world of fashion.

Set in Paris and coming from French writer-director Alice Winocour, it follows an American film-maker who is diagnosed with cancer as she prepares for a runway show. She is told she needs a double mastectomy – echoing Jolie’s health issues.

“It’s about couture. In French, it means stitches,” said the Oscar-winning actress.

“So stitches, when you think of our surgeries, our bodies, the way our lives and stories are sewn together, you understand what the film is.”

She had a strong message about hope and living her best life as she reflected on her family’s history of cancer.

“I’m 50 now. My mother and grandmother by this age were in chemo,” Jolie said. “We all have these things we worry about or people we love. And it’s either going to make us slow down and almost feel we can’t move, take a step, or we’re going to make the most of this life before it’s over.”

Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy in 2013 after learning she had inherited a high risk of breast cancer, and said she hoped her story would inspire other women fighting the life-threatening condition.

She went through with the operation in part to reassure her six children aged 17 to 24 that she would not die young from cancer, as her mother, American actress Marcheline Bertrand, did at age 56.

Meanwhile, at a Tiff press conference, American stripper-turned-actor Channing Tatum said his performance in Roofman had helped him overcome imposter syndrome. The film tells the true story of a man who robbed dozens of McDonald’s in the 1990s by entering the fast-food restaurants through the roof.

Jeffrey Manchester famously built a secret hideout at a Toys ”R” Us store in the city of Charlotte, coming out after closure at night to wash in the bathroom and surviving largely on snacks such as M&M’s.

He was arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, but broke out in 2004. The film centres on the months that followed the prison break, before his rearrest in 2005.

Manchester would call Tatum often from prison as the actor prepared for the role.

“For the very first time, maybe even on this movie, I feel like I’ve earned my seat at the table,” said the 45-year-old American star.

He also voiced sympathy for a man who made a series of disastrous choices in an effort to earn enough money for his three children.

“Look, I was a stripper,” said Tatum, whose experiences at a Tampa, Florida nightclub partly informed his 2012 film Magic Mike.

“Sometimes the slippery slope just gets more and more slippery, and then you find yourself at the bottom not knowing how to get up again,” he said. AFP, REUTERS