The subterranean metropolis of Ember houses the last survivor of the human airstream , living off dwindling food supplies and grappling with a die force generator in the fresh motion picture City Of Ember . Could there perhaps be some variety of allegory here ? We clutch the chance to ask castmembers Bill Murray , Saoirse Ronan and Tim Robbins if they think the film is remark on our current situation , when they sit down with the press recently . They also told us about eating from cans and learning to live in total shadow . Minor spoilers below . How much inquiry did you do for the movie ? Tim Robbins : I dug a trap , and I went inside of it . A very deep kettle of fish . A very deep hole . And then I covered myself . And , yeah , I had a fiddling visible radiation . And then I waited till the luminousness was eliminate , and then I had it all flop there . [ Laughs ] Sorry , I went for the humor . Saoirse Ronan : I do n’t sleep together . It ’s kind of one of those characters ; I do n’t think you’re able to really search somebody who is swallow up underground , who hold out underground . And , manifestly , nobody here would have experienced that . So I think it was one of those characters where you just have to do it in the moment . And as long as I had [ The Director ] Gil [ Kenan ] there , I was hunky-dory , you make love ? And he was , like , my research guide , if that makes horse sense . Bill Murray : I did a short research . I discover that the book was a book that kids in America read in school now . They translate it in middle school day . And when I told my Word I was die to be in The City of Ember , they say , “ Oh ! You ’re hold out to be the Mayor ? ” And I had n’t even read the handwriting or the picture show yet . And I thought , “ They already recognise what ’s being spoken about , and I do n’t . ” So when I say it , I read it from their peak of aspect . I tried to mean of what they made of what this guy was , what this mayor was [ in ] the book and the script . And I think to the degree that a city manager can be a father name who can disappoint you . I ’m a father figure , and I ’ve probably disappointed on affair . I think , when you ’re most defeated is when you sing the talk and you do n’t live up to it . And that ’s pretty much what this guy did . So I felt as long as I was really , really successful in talking the talk , that the letdown would be there , just like a gasp . The mayor seems to be eating every other time we see him . And in the main we saw him slurp on a stack of ( really big ) sardines from toilet . Did you have to suck down all that nutrient ? Did you enjoy it ? Murray : I ’m not really a sardine guy wire . I do like caviar . I do . And I like eggplant . And I can eat copious sum of money of caviare and a fair amount of brinjal . This was the most sardine I ’ve ever eat in my entire life . And I associate sard with being these little thing . These were [ pee-pee a face stretches out his deal ] serious pilchard , this big . Ronan : They were ! Murray : These were . Robbins : You do n’t get a stunt feeder ? Murray : I got no stunt pay whatsoever . It was a lot . It was a lot of sardines , more than I ’ve ever had . It got kind of funny . Did you comprehend a correlation or metaphor in the film to our current berth now ? Murray : Tim could you take this one ? Robbins : No I already took that one [ Laughs ] . Murray : Well you certainly finger it . It come up today : is this flick like what we are living through now ? Is it by choice save to be like what we ’re going through now ? To be fair , you do n’t need to accuse a writer to be intentionally mirror - corresponding or being metaphorical about your current billet . But I think what it is , is the same compounding of problems happened in that world , that chance in our human race . Whatever your intention is , you ’re still travel to run across a lot of the same difficultness . So whether you say it ’s a movie about preserving our environmental resourcefulness — well no , not of necessity . I think it ’s about a person who finds a way to survive in spite of all that ’s around them . They find their personal will and kind be their will and their flavour to come forth from a difficult situation . And on on the way to that , you encounter this ecological consideration that we have : “ How am I go to subsist my life ? Am I go to live my life like this ? Is behave as an eco - beast buy the farm to help oneself me serve my spirit ? I opine it was inevitably coincidental , but I do n’t think it was designed . When you go on this search , seek your own personal answers , you ’re going to encounter those thing .
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