Bleibtreu: When I said that I wanted to do the movie, Oliver had just sent me the novel. I just read the back cover and said, "I want to do it." I was sure that this was going to be a great script and a great story to tell. This is one of those parts where it's not so much the part that I thought was interesting, it's more the story itself. It's just one of those stories that I think needs to be told. It's a story about human nature--a very universal thing, and an important issue in this world and in the life of everybody. If people would take more responsibilities for their own actions, I think this whole world would look different. So I just thought that this is a story that needs to be told. That's also one of the reasons for the success of the movie, it's such a universal story.
AboutFilm: What do you hope audiences will take away from this film?
Bleibtreu: Well, what I really hope is that, well�K If I speak to people, most people come up to me and they say, "Listen, toward the end, I had the feeling I just wanted to scream, 'Kill the guy! Kill the guy! Kill the guy!'" That, of course, is something that we intended, but what we hope is that if you get this feeling of saying, 'Kill the guy,' then I hope that something is going to snap your brain [snaps fingers], and you're going to say, "Wait a second, but... if that guy had been the guardian, and the other guy had been the prisoner, I would be yelling at the other one now." This is the thing that we intended in this movie. We wanted people to understand that it's not about these people. It's about the roles that you put them in, and it's about how these roles create their own energy, and an energy that cannot be stopped at a certain point. We wanted to get people very emotional, but then hopefully make them think about what happens. If you get aggressions towards the guardians, this is exactly what's not good. What would be good is to understand that this is a man-made conflict.
