“The Housewife” director Ben Shirinian wanted to spotlight how hate can grow to be “normalized” in his new New York-set Nazi drama.
While speaking in TheWrap’s studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Shirinian broke down how his film – based on true events that took place in the 1960s – saw hate creeping out of the extraordinary and into everyday life. He added that today’s “grossly polarized world” only emphasizes the parallels to the Naomi Watts-starring project’s themes.
“I think we’re living in a in a grossly polarized world right now, where we’re seeing an upsurge of profound hatred of all kinds, including antisemitism and other forms of hate,” Shirinian said. “I was really interested in delving into the psychology of hate and how hatred could take hold, how we could become normalized, and what that could do to us.
“This became a story about how extraordinary evil can just hide behind this ordinary life, and I really took to some of the core themes in the story about how hate doesn’t announce itself. It can hide behind familiarity until it slowly becomes ordinary.”
“The Housewife” is based on a true story from 1964 and “follows a determined young New York Times journalist (Ty Sheridan) as he tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. But when he befriends the suspect’s elegant and charming wife (Naomi Watts), the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.”
As Shirinian worked with his cast on the film, he continued to return to fears of hate becoming more dangerous when it starts looking like everyday life. That became the takeaway he urged toward as things came together and the full story of Watts’ character revealed itself.
“I think the the main takeaway that I always felt strongly about with this movie was that hate is the most dangerous when it stops looking like hate, and that we need to be able to to detect it and be able to guard ourselves against it, and have the moral courage to stand up in the face of it,” Shirinian said.
He finished: “I did want the emotional takeaway for the audience – I wanted them to feel many emotions. I wanted the audience to feelthe discomfort for having related to her, this idea of being manipulated, complicit. I really wanted to force the audience to question their own perception. These are big feelings and emotions. Once the mask has been unveiled, so to speak, I wanted the audience to reckon with the fact that they empathize with her … The real horror isn’t only what she did, it’s that we felt for her.”
“The Housewife” will be distributed internationally by Neon and debuted at TIFF on Thursday.
