“Frankly, I don’t quite see what I’m going to be able to tell you…” Mathieu Kassovitz is much less verbose in the interview than in the spectacular documentary series Apocalypse of which he has been the voice since the beginnings, in 2009. “The success ofApocalypse, it is the fruit of the work of the editing team, the archivists, and the gigantic work of Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle. My role is tiny, ”insists the actor. Yet if Apocalypse is today the best-selling French documentary series abroad and that each of its episodes is a hit with audiences, something tells us that it also owes it to the vocal incarnation of Mathieu Kassovitz who gave his tone to the story of WWII episodes.
While four new episodes, Hitler attacks in the West then Hitler attacks in the east, are already available on the France TV platform and will be broadcast on France on Monday 11 and 18 October, 20 Minutes still asked Mathieu Kassovitz a few questions.
For these new episodes, previously unseen private archive footage was used. Your comments on these images give emotional flesh to “Apocalypse”.
The only way to assimilate documentaries is to put people in them, a soul. What the commentary says is strong enough that my intervention is minimal. I put an intensity, an emotion, but it is measured. Daniel Costelle directs me in this placement. I also drew on the comments he made himself in his previous documentaries, I kept his tone. He passed this knowledge on to me.
Do you know why he chose you in 2009?
I imagine he needed a name that was a little known. And then I think he wanted someone who wasn’t too… frivolous.
How do you manage to have a voice that is not too frivolous?
Easy, every evening a glass of honey milk.
Ha? Isn’t that a cigarette and whiskey recipe?
Yes, that also works (laughs). Frankly, I say that without false modesty, Apocalypse it would work with any voice.
Have you ever listened to one of the many foreign versions of the series to hear the storytellers in Spanish, English or Korean?
Yes I listened to them, they are all bad, I do not understand why people do not make the effort to learn French to be able to benefit from my voice (laughs). More seriously, the success ofApocalypse export shows that I am a non-essential part of it. The main thing is what it says.
Do you think, like some, that we can learn from history?
It is always very useful to remember that Hitler, Mussolini and all those people, they were elected… That yes. But I don’t believe in the lessons of history, because that would mean that we could hide behind an ignorance of history to justify doing shit. But at a time when some want to rewrite history for political purposes, it is important to be curious.
Who are you thinking of when you say that?
Lately there’s this far-right TV presenter there …
Eric Zemmour?
Yes that’s it. He seems scholarly in historical matters, but he uses his scholarship to reform history and serve his political discourse. This is really disgusting. He makes a dangerous use of history despite his supposed intelligence. And conversely, one can make good political decisions while being ignorant of history.
Do you, on a personal level, continue to learn about WWII from Revelation?
Yes of course. Above all, I find that these episodes on Hitler’s battles in the West and then in the East allow us to understand how history has progressed, how everything played out and in what succession of events. We learn all this at school but I think that at 15 or 16 you cannot understand everything, integrate everything. It’s interesting to review all that later, as an adult, to analyze the repercussions in particular.
If you were asked to participate in a documentary on a historical period of your choice, which would it be?
I would love to do a 10 hour documentary on 9/11. Besides, we may wonder where the series will end Apocalypse. Because from 1945, everything is linked. One could imagine a 40-hour series over 50 years of wars and paradigm shifts that led to September 11. It is exciting.
What about older periods? Antiquity, the Middle Ages?
Everything interests me and there are things to explore everywhere, all the time. But during these periods there are fewer images, and I work on images… And then I find it essential today, when we know that we are killing the planet, that the economy is destroying us, of be curious about our contemporary world, not to hide from the reality of the world in which we live.