Interview with actor Jonathan Rosenthal about his new movie THE ABANDON, Out In Select Theaters on tomorrow July 19th and On Demand and Digital July 30th , 2024
Injured U.S. soldier Miles Willis awakens after witnessing a blinding white light on a battlefield in Iraq to discover he is trapped in a mysterious cube armed only with his combat gear. His dire situation escalates as the cube begins to change with violent shifts in gravity and the appearance of cryptic writing on the walls. As Miles begins to question his sanity, he finds a lifeline – a voice on the other end of his satellite phone who claims to be a prisoner in a similar space. As the walls close in, these two strangers must put their heads together if they are to outwit their captors and unlock this deadly puzzle.
Criticólogos:
You are carrying the movie from start to finish, for the story to work it was all on your shoulders, what we saw is your emotions telling the story. What were the challenges of making sure that all those things work throughout the movie?
Jonathan Rosenthal:
I think the biggest challenge was we had a very limited shooting schedule. We shot the whole film in about 16 days, so there was really no room for error. Luckily we shot consecutively or chronologically, so that kind of helped us rehearse. We rehearsed the film almost like a play, so we were able to just kind of execute it, scene by scene, and then progress the physicality of the room along with it. But I think that, my co-star Tamara Perry, having her actually on set there to play out the scenes, even though she’s not on camera for most of the film. Spoiler alert. really helped in bringing, like a Life to the film and the character of Miles. but yeah, no, it was challenging.
Criticólogos:
This story it’s all about mental health and the mental state of the soldier. How much of Miles you see yourself in Miles or what is something you took away from him?
Jonathan Rosenthal:
Oh, boy. I mean, I think that was actually the biggest challenge for me approaching this character was I really don’t have that much in common with Miles, and he’s the sort of guy that, he could be in a room full of people and totally alone and in approaching putting the characters together, I realized that I had to find a way to manufacture that isolation. And for me, the way I accomplished it was I essentially turned my friends and family who are so loving and supportive, which I’m so fortunate to have them, and said “I don’t think I could talk to you while we’re shooting this film.”
And I did it for about two and a half months. I just cut contact with everyone in my life and kind of put myself into this wallowing hole that this guy exists in, and I think in a lot of ways, helped me achieve what was necessary to be more like him. Other than that, I feel like we can both take a punch and can both be thrown against the walls of a cube for days on end without, you know, putting up a fuss.
Criticólogos:
If you had a chance to talk to him, I gave him some advice, given the situation that he was on, what type of advice would you give him?
Jonathan Rosenthal:
Oh, boy. I’d probably give him a hug and then tell him to, uh. You got to trust somebody. And that that person can be yourself.
Criticólogos:
Piggyback riding on my previous question what about soldiers are going to identify with Miles, when they go to war, when they come back, they don’t see themselves. They see themselves somewhere else. What would you tell them?
Jonathan Rosenthal:
I probably tell them that it’s okay to ask for help, and it’s okay to open up to those around you. I think it’s a big Paramount piece of this film, which is that PTSD up in the period of time our Miles exist in was still called, or was yet to be called Gulf War Syndrome, so there wasn’t really a diagnosis for it yet for soldiers returning for more. And this, this movie kind of, in a lot of ways, earmarks that chapter in history where it he’s right on the precipice of after the soldiers that came back from Iraq were finally diagnosed with PTSD, which was something that only existed socially in communities, but not in regards to war trauma.
So, I think the film is really important for that reason, to calling out that. I think it’s the fact that it’s not really maybe known by many people that PTSD is somewhat of a present-day phenomenon as far as diagnosis go.
See the interview below:
Trailer:
