 |
FILM:
DVD:
SMUT QUOTIENT: NONE!
Directed
by Menno Meyjes
Everyone
loves a good Nazi movie. Whether it’s intellectual Nazis a
la Apt Pupil and The Boys From Brazil,
or bald, ripped, movie-star neo-Nazis a la American History
X and Romper Stomper, Hitler’s sons
and daughters continue to shift units for studios and independents
alike. They may have lost “The Great War,” but the Hitler
Youth continue to fight the Fuhrer’s good fight at Blockbuster
and Hollywood Video. To put it simply, Nazi chic never goes out
of style.
Two new Nazi movies are on your local DVD New Releases shelf this
month: Menno Meyjes’ Max (featuring John
Cusack and Noah Taylor) and Henry Bean’s The Believer
(featuring Ryan Gosford and Theresa Russell). Neither of them have
the sexy dinosaur-bone tattoos of young Russell Crowe’s Hando
in Romper Stomper, but they have other things going
for them.
 Max
deals with the life of young Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor)
in the years after World War I and before the writing of Mein Kampf.
These “forgotten years” were a crossroads in Hitler’s
life, where he was torn in two directions: art and politics.
The title character of Max (John Cusack) is a well-born Jewish artist
who lost an arm in World War I and has since turned to operating
an art gallery and dealing in paintings, since he can no longer
paint them himself. He takes the young Hitler under his proverbial
wing, trying to help Hitler express his true inner voice through
his art... while at the same time trying to steer the young Anti-Semite
away from politics.
With such a meaty story and compelling characters, Max seems like
it should be a great movie. Unfortunately, every time the story
seems to be locking into its own true inner voice, something steps
in and cockblocks it—resulting in a very frustrating film.
The interviews on the Special Features (which are truncated in a
very annoying way) shed some light on Max’s chief stumbling
block. In his interview, director Menno Meyjes explains that there
are two ways of looking at Hitler: either as a furious demon from
Hell spawned in a burst of fire and brimstone and unleashed upon
the Earth, or as a frustrated, failed artist who took the easy route
through life and, almost inadvertently, tapped into the latent hate
of his country, sending Germany into a tragic downward spiral of
fascism and atrocities.
 Meyjes
contends that we are generally only given the former perception
of Hitler, so he set out to dramatize the latter. The problem for
the viewer, though, is that the story does not support his thesis.
In the story they chose to adapt to the screen, Hitler is neither
demonic hellspawn nor frustrated failure, he is a far more complex
and compelling figure.
Max’s Hitler comes across as a strong artist who, still in
his late twenties, has not yet realized his full potential. While
pursuing his career in art, his superiors in the army have noticed
his powerful speaking voice and have enlisted him to be the spokesman
for their militaristic movement, which is given renewed energy by
the German people’s embarrassment at the terms of The Treaty
of Versailles. Without money, family, or possessions, Hitler faces
two paths: the life of a starving artist among affluent art dealers
or the life of a political force within the military.
The viewers’ perceptions of his life choices are, of course,
given added weight by the gravity of history—we know what
he will choose and we know what will follow. I can only imagine
that Meyjes just didn’t have the guts to express his story
as it wanted to be told. At every opportunity, Meyjes sterilizes
the dramatic moments, judging Hitler through the lens of history
rather than in the context of story. Meyjes seems determined to
counter one extreme with the other, turning Hitler from monster
to geek.
The character of a humanized Hitler, with both faults and talents,
hopes and fears, would be a far more terrifying assertion than the
bumbling fool whose rise to prominence is entirely the work of circumstance.
More important, the story of Max is the story of the humanized Hitler,
despite the filmmaker’s desire to interpolate his own contradictory
thesis.
Performances are generally okay, except for Cusack, who is weak
at best. I can’t figure out why he’s gotten such accolades
for this role, except that his support of the controversial film
(he was also Associate Producer) probably took balls. His performance,
however, lacked balls. While everyone else in the film talks with
a German accent, Cusack has no accent, which becomes disconcerting.
Is he German? His parents have accents. The weak performance isn’t
limited to the lack of an accent, but that’s as good an example
as any of Cusack’s uninspired, lackluster stroll through the
movie. He did a better job in Pushing Tin, which might very well
have been the worst movie of his entire career... if not the history
of cinema (no, that would be Ballistic: Ecks versus Sever).
On the other hand, Noah Taylor (best known as young David in Shine)
turns in a riveting performance as young Adolf. Cold, tortured,
frustrated, visionary, terrifying; it’s all there in his eyes.
His weathered, disheveled performance is a perfect image of the
Man Who Would Be Fuhrer, and the fire lurking within him, waiting
to explode once his tirades commence, is mesmerizing. There are
times when he is too over the top, but it seems so false to his
overall performance that I can only imagine it’s the result
of the overzealous director.
 Don’t
let my critique fool you, though, Max is by no means a bad movie.
It flirts with the sublime at times and, especially in this era
of talking heads proclaiming every bad guy the “New Hitler,”
it will probably make you rethink some of our cultural assumptions
about who these “evildoers” be.
Worst Part:
The climactic conclusion, when circumstance and heavy-handed plot
conspire to turn Hitler away from the art biz once and for all.
Best Part: When Hitler rants about politics being the
new art, it gives chills. His conceptual art piece that becomes
the framework for the Third Reich is also chilling. It is these
moments, when you recognize that Hitler’s political vision
is an overblown art project, that the mix of madness and genius
truly begins to shine and coalesce.
Special Features:
Poorly done, but important to get a better sense of what went wrong.
Pet Peeve: I despise Leelee Sobieski.
Memorable Line:
"C'mon, Hitler... I'll buy you a lemonade."
(Click
Here for DVD's Technical Specs)
TALIBANO
|
I
wouldn’t have told you that he was Jewish if it wasn’t
on the box. I think it is a dreadful spoiler, and I wish I hadn't
known. It would have been a killer twist in the watching of the film.
But I realize that there’s not a huge audience for straight-up
Neo-Nazi dramas, so you just have to give away some things in order
to get the movie seen.
The
plot concerns Danny’s recruitment by a fascist political movement
that sees him as the perfect spokesman and fundraiser, despite the
fact that even they are made nervous by his outspoken desire to kill
rich and influential Jews. Nonetheless, he joins them and the spine
of the film follows his relationship with the fascists cut against
his relationship with boyhood chums from Jewish School.
The
Believer is sparse and methodical in its production, somewhere between
a low-budget Hollywood movie and a big-budget indie. Ryan Gosling
can stand proudly beside Russell Crowe and Edward Norton in the elite
group of actors who have successfully played tough, cruel, intimidating
protagonists in modern Hollywood—and he had the fewest tattoos
to help him along. His “prison-style” fight upon arrival
to the Neo-Nazi retreat is uncommonly realistic, much moreso than
Edward Norton’s widely ballyhooed curbjaw (I mean, c’mon,
who would really bite down on the curb in this day and age? Didn’t
that guy see Red??).
What
makes The Believer so good is the complexity of
its dark protagonist. In Stomper, the weak-willed
half-Nazi Davey makes a weak protagonist, hugely overshadowed by
Russell Crowe’s Hando, who upstages him to the point of anti-hero.
But it is Hando’s utter simplicity that makes him compelling—which
works, but is no competition for the furious torment within The
Believer’s Danny. Edward Norton as History’s Derek Vinyard,
on the other hand, is the Hollywood archetype of the confused man
who made bad choices and is on his road to redemption. While he
is sympathetically and compellingly developed, he is also no match
for Danny’s tortured soul.