Will Arnett called Alone in Berlin one of the best second halves of a book he has ever read. Emma Thompson said the novel and the film she made from it speak to World War II traumas that the UK has never properly addressed.
Where this was said
At 31:48 · chapter starts 29:25
Will mentions that he recently discovered Emma's adaptation of Alone in Berlin — Hans Fallada's novel about quiet resistance to Nazi Germany — and watched it unaware she had made it. He calls the book one of the best second halves he has ever read, and the film beautiful. Emma, visibly touched, asks whether Will is really one of the three people who saw it. [1] — Will Arnett "Will Arnett called Alone in Berlin one of the best second halves of a book he has ever read. Emma Thompson said the novel and the film she …" 31:48 The conversation opens into a broader discussion about how Emma selects projects across wildly different genres. Her answer is intuitive and almost mystical: things come to you at moments when you need them, and 'something will come across my bowels' and she knows instantly. She links her attraction to Alone in Berlin to a larger obsession with the two World Wars, which she argues left traumas in the UK that have never been properly healed — a particular resonance for someone born in 1959, just 14 years after VE Day.
Emma Thompson, born in 1959 just 14 years after the war's end, says the UK has never properly healed from the traumas of both World Wars. That unresolved grief is why films like Alone in Berlin keep drawing her in.
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Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
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