4 Reviews by Eric Hansen
My Führer – the Really Truest
Truth About Adolf Hitler
Helge Schneider plays Hitler in "Mein Fuehrer." Despite flashes of humor, directorscreenwriter Dani Levy seems to avoid more opportunities for jokes than he takes.
Jan. 9, 2007 / By Eric T. Hansen
Bottom Line: "The Really Truest Truth" about Hitler might be
really true, but it's not really funny.
BERLIN -- The marketing concept is a sound one: Sixty years after the
end of World War II, Germans want to forget the shame and guilt of the
Third Reich and be able to laugh about Hitler.
That's the zeitgeist that almost certainly will make "My Fuehrer -- the
Really Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" (Mein Fuehrer -- Die wirklich
wahrste Wahrheit ueber Adolf Hitler) a hit in Germany, where it opens
Thursday, and it also provides a slogan ("Germany's first comedy about
Hitler!") that will generate respectable ticket sales in art house theaters
internationally.
The only problem is that "Mein Fuehrer" is not actually funny.
The film is being marketed as a comedy and is being compared to other
great Third Reich comedies, from Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" to
Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful." But it is not so much a comedy as
a bland, politically correct fantasy about a Jew who teaches Hitler how
to be Hitler.
As played by stand-up comedian Helge Schneider, Hitler is a lovable
sad sack who has lost his will to triumph in the final months of the war
at a time when the German people need him most. Goebbels has a great
idea: We'll take a Jewish actor named Adolf Gruenbaum out of a
concentration camp and get him to coach Hitler to make a single lastditch effort inspire the Germans to support the war at an upcoming rally.
What follows is a chamber play between the two, in which Gruenbaum
(played with quiet precision by Ulrich Muehe, fresh off his success in
"The Lives of Others") devotes most of his time to therapy, getting
Hitler to crawl around on hands and knees, barking, and to talk about his
relationship with his father.
There are flashes of humor: Hitler in a track suit, Hitler playing with a
toy battleship in a bubble bath or Hitler being humped by his dog
Blondi. But director-screenwriter Dani Levy seems to avoid more
opportunities for jokes than he takes. There are even flashes of
controversy, as when the dictator tauntingly asks Gruenbaum why the
Jews didn't fight back. (This question is mirrored in Gruenbaum's
situation: Although the opportunity is repeatedly handed to him on a
silver platter, Gruenbaum never has the nerve to kill Hitler.) But the
theme is neither developed enough to inspire controversy nor funny
enough to entertain.
Levy, a Swiss-born Jewish auteur who tackled German-Jewish issues in
his recent hit "Go for Zucker!" seems less interested in comedy than he
is in getting across a moral: We learn that Hitler had a small penis and
was compensating for an unhappy childhood. That might be true, but
we've heard it before, and from real historians. In the meantime, it has
lost its allure as history or as potential for humor.
The final joke in the movie is a pun: When Hitler loses his voice,
Gruenbaum has to bark the speech into a microphone while the Fuehrer
lip-syncs it. Gruenbaum takes the opportunity to instruct the German
nation to "Heal yourselves" (instead of "Heil Hitler," since heil also
means "heal" in German). It's an important message but a weak pun.
The mood is light throughout, production values are excellent, and the
film works as entertainment directed at an older set of viewers who are
opposed to excitable fare. (Three state-funded public broadcasters,
whose core audiences are largely older than 50, were involved in the
production.) But to duplicate the success of "Life Is Beautiful," Levy
would have done better to concentrate on the characters and comedy and
leave the preaching to others.
MY FUEHRER -- THE REALLY TRUEST TRUTH ABOUT ADOLF
HITLER
X Filme Creative Pool/Y Filme Directors Pool
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Dani Levy
Producer: Marcos Kantis
Executive producers: Stefan Arndt, Barbara Buhl, Andreas
Schreitmueller, Bettina Reitz
Director of photography: Carl-F Koschnick
Art director: Christian Eisele
Music: Niki Reiser
Costume designer: Nicole Fischnaller
Editor: Peter R. Adam
Cast:
Adolf Hitler: Helge Schneider
Prof. Adolf Gruenbaum: Ulrich Muehe
Dr. Joseph Goebbels: Sylvester Groth
Elsa Gruenbaum: Adriana Altaras
Albert Speer: Stefan Kurt
Heinrich Himmler: Ulrich Noethen
Rattenhuber: Lambert Hamel
Martin Bormann: Udo Kroschwald
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating
Downfall
Juliane Kohler, Bruno Ganz and Heino Ferch share a moment in Adolf Hitler's bunker
in "Downfall."
Sep. 16, 2004 / By Eric Hansen
Bottom line: Definitive re-creation of Hitler's last days in the
bunker features a powerful performance by Bruno Ganz and
should find its audience on the art house circuit.
BERLIN – One of the best war movies ever made, "Downfall" is a
powerful and artistically masterful re-creation of the last days of the
Third Reich. A film that will set new standards in the art of committing
history to celluloid, it is sure to spark strong word-of-mouth and
generate ticket sales on the art house circuit -- and could pick up major
awards.
"Downfall" tells not only the historically accurate tale of the last days of
Hitler and his henchmen, which they spent in a bunker under the streets
of Berlin, but also, in state-of-the-art battle sequences, of the civilians
and soldiers fighting and dying on the savaged streets above as the
Soviet Army turned the city into a pile of rubble.
The combined power of the chamber play unraveling in the bunker and
the horrible epic slaughter in the streets above (which, of course, Hitler
could have stopped at any time by surrendering) elevates the film from a
historical re-enactment to a full-fledged war movie, on par with "Saving
Private Ryan" and "Das Boot" in every regard. With its horrific and
realistic depiction of the human beings who caused all this, "Downfall"
could be the most important movie ever made about World War II.
The script, written masterfully by producer Bernd Eichinger ("The
Name of the Rose," "The House of the Spirits"), closely follows the
definitive book "Inside Hitler's Bunker," by renowned historian Joachim
Fest, as well as on the reminiscences of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge,
whose story was turned into an excellent interview/documentary under
the title "Blind Spot" (two sections of the interview frame the
dramatized action of "Downfall"). Although the young Junge acts as a
kind of main character, Eichinger has resisted the temptation to invent
any nonhistoric characters for the viewer to sympathize with. What we
get in "Downfall" is as close to what really happened as we will ever see
on celluloid.
The actors are on the money, which makes Oliver Hirschbiegel's
direction look nothing less than brilliant. And the same goes for An
Dorthe Braker's inspired casting. Indeed, a major difference between
this film and earlier depictions of Hitler is that these actors are all
believably German, neither just blond and blue-eyed stereotypes nor
craven caricatures of evil. It is easy to imagine any of them as the guy
next door -- or even as yourself, given the circumstances. This is
Hirschbiegel's artistic triumph: He makes sure we see that the "face of
evil" didn't come from outer space but from among us.
Juliane Koehler plays Eva Braun with a weird, demented carelessness -she is almost ecstatically happy to die with her Adolf (whom she
marries at the very end), but at the same time she seems stupidly to have
no real comprehension of the destruction going on around her. She is
Marie Antoinette in a dirndl. When Magda Goebbels, played dignified
and murderous by Corinna Harfouch, poisons her own children so they
won't have to face the disappointment of growing up in a world without
Nazism, you wonder whether the Third Reich was state or religion.
But the sensation of the film is Bruno Ganz ("Wings of Desire") in a
stunning performance as Hitler. Physically, Ganz slumps, shrinks and
scowls -- Hitler's health was failing at this point, and Ganz captures the
sunken little man perfectly. Most importantly, not once does he slip into
a caricature of evil. Ganz shows you a human being. When he refuses to
leave Berlin and save himself, you can see that in his mind he is
performing an act of heroism.
The perverted humanity of Hitler and his henchmen may be a problem
for some reviewers and community leaders, who may fear that neoNazis will watch the movie and be moved, not horrified, by Hitler's last
days. That's a small risk, though, for a film that succeeds on all levels in
saying so much not only about the horrors of the 20th century, but about
human nature as well.
DOWNFALL ("DER UNTERGANG")
World Sales: EOS Distribution
Production company: Constantin Film
Co-Producers NDR, WDR, Degeto Film, ORF and EOS Production and
RAI Cinema
Credits:
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Writer: Bernd Eichinger, based on the book "Inside Hitler's Bunker" by
Joachim Fest and "Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary" by
Traudl Junge and Melissa Mueller
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Production Executive: Christine Rothe
Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann
Production designer: Bernd Lepel
Music: Stephan Zacharias
Casting: An Dorthe Braker
Costume designer: Claudia Bobsin
Editor: Hans Funck
Special effects: Die Nefzers
Sound Design: Stefan Busch
Sound: Roland Winke
Sound mixing: Michael Kranz
Line producer: Silvia Tollmann
Cast:
Adolf Hitler: Bruno Ganz
Traudl Junge: Alexandra Maria Lara
Magda Goebbels: Corinna Harfouch
Joseph Goebbels: Ulrich Matthes
Eva Braun: Juliane Kohler
Albert Speer: Heino Ferch
Prof. Schenck: Christian Berkel
Prof. Dr. Werner Haase: Matthias Habich
Hermann Fegelein: Thomas Kretschmann
Helmuth Weidling: Michael Mendl
Wilhelm Mohnke: Andre Hennicke
Heinrich Himmler Ulrich Noethen
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 150 minutes
The Lives of Others
Ulrich Mühe ist listening.
May 16, 2006 / By Eric Hansen
Bottom line: The Stasi is listening, but will it make them better
human beings?
BERLIN – "The Lives of Others" starts out dark and challenging then
comes to a startlingly satisfying and warmly human conclusion that
lingers long after the curtain has come down.
Written and directed by first-timer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck,
the film supplies a precise snapshot of the omnipresent and omni-feared
secret service of communist East Germany, the Stasi. Although Henckel
von Donnersmarck's direction is convention, he does an excellent job of
portraying the communist state in its ugly, bureaucratic smallmindedness -- the Stasi comes across as if it really wanted to be the
Gestapo but didn't have the guts.
When a high-ranking politician casts an eye on celebrated stage actress
(Martina Gedeck), his Stasi pal (played with characteristic good humor
by Ulrich Tukur) jumps at the chance to make his career by putting her
boyfriend, the famous writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), under
surveillance with an eye toward getting him out of the way.
Set largely in sickly green and yellow neon corridors, the film is
oppressive and monotonous at times, much like East Germany was for
many people. To make the viewing all the more difficult, the characters
initially don't give us any real reason to like them until toward the end.
The writer around whom the plot revolves is not all that admirable.
Dreyman doesn't question the party that granted him his success until
the state begins persecuting a friend of his. But the main character we
actively dislike: Capt. Gerd Wiesler is a hard-liner who believes
eavesdropping on and interrogating his fellow citizens is in the best
interests of communism. It is he who is assigned the job of finding the
skeleton in Dreyman's closet.
Played nearly expressionlessly by an excellent Ulrich Muehe, Wiesler
doesn't have a life of his own, and he gets caught up in the sheer
humanity of the lives he is listening to every working hour of the day.
Eventually he becomes consumed by their lives, falls in love with the
actress and risks his own life to protect them.
This is where the film goes from grueling to fascinating: In his smallminded way, the Stasi creep is becoming a hero.
"Others" has stirred up controversy in Germany because Wiesler
reverses the neat stereotype of the evil Stasi officer. Since both the
former Stasi members and their thousands of victims are still living side
by side, that was bound to get emotions going. But it's precisely by
challenging our need for good and bad stereotypes that makes this film
ultimately captivating and, with the twists in the end, highly rewarding.
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)
Buena Vista International
Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion in association with BR Television,
ARTE Television and Creado Film
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Producer: Quirin Berg, Max Wiedemann
Director of photography: Hagen Bogdanski
Production designer: Silke Buhr
Music: Gabriel Yared, Stephane Moucha
Costume designer: Gabriele Binder
Editor: Patricia Rommel
Cast:
Capt. Gerd Wiesler: Ulrich Muehe
Georg Dreyman: Sebastian Koch
Anton Grubitz: Ulrich Tukur
Christa-Maria Sieland: Martina Gedeck
Minister Bruno Hempf: Thomas Thieme
Paul Hauser: Hans-Uwe Bauer
Albert Jerska: Volkmar Kleinert
Gregor Hessenstein: Herbert Knaup
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 137 minutes
Going for Zucker!
Jaecki just keeps rolling with the punches.
March 15, 2005 / By Eric Hansen
Bottom line: Jewish humor returns to Germany in this smile-outloud comedy.
BERLIN – Originally made for German TV, "Going for Zucker!" (Alles
auf Zucker!) is possibly the first German film about Jews made since
World War II that doesn't make Germans feel guilty about the
Holocaust. Although entirely nonpolitical, the film carries an innate
political message that hit Germany where it felt good: It's time for
Germans and Jews to behave like normal people again. It's a big hit
here.
Swiss-born German-Jewish director Dani Levy, who co-wrote the script
with Holger Franke, has said that he has long wanted to bring Jewish
humor back to German movies. He has achieved his goal. Even Paul
Spiegel, president of the Central Committee of Jews in Germany,
endorsed the film, saying it would help establish normality between
Jews and non-Jews in Germany. The film, winner of the Ernst Lubitsch
Prize for best German comedy, is playing the festival circuit and already
has been sold to Israel.
Title character Jaeckie Zucker (Henry Huebchen) is a German Jew
living in Berlin who has not only lost all ties to his Jewish heritage but
to his brothers and sisters as well. A lovable loser, Jaeckie's religion is
playing and betting on pool. His own family has fallen apart, but he's
such a charmer that they never can stay mad at him for long.
When Jaeckie's estranged mother dies, her will stipulates that her
fortune is to be divided up between the two brothers, Jaeckie and
Samuel, on the condition they reconcile during the traditional seven-day
Jewish mourning period shivah, to be held in Jaeckie's Berlin apartment.
Samuel happens to be strictly Orthodox. The clash of two worlds starts
from there.
"Zucker" is best when it pokes gentle fun at German-Jewish relations -like when Jaeckie, the nonpracticing Jew, invents a Holocaust story to
get the German head of a pool tournament to permit him to play, though
he did not fulfill the registration requirements. When the obvious ploy
fails, Jaeckie is almost relieved.
Direction and technical credits are not slick but good enough for a lowbudget TV production. The jokes are not laugh-out-loud funny, and the
film is not strong enough to stand on its own without the Jews-inGermany element. If Jaeckie and Samuel lived in New York, for
example, it would only come over as cliche. But the movie does work,
and much of the credit for that goes to a wonderful cast.
The core ensemble of Udo Samel (as Samuel), Hannelore Elsner (as
Jaeckie's German wife, Marlene) and Golda Tencer (as Samuel's
Orthodox wife) bring superb, natural and inherently funny performances
to the screen.
But the revelation of the film is Huebchen as Jaeckie. His face sagging
from too much alcohol and too many long nights (and bandaged for
much of the film for getting beaten up by various pool players he has
cheated), Huebchen's Zucker is a dreamer, a worn-out charmer and a
lovable fraud, even to himself. While German acting is sometimes stiff
or over-played for American tastes, Huebchen is right on the money. He
seems to know intimately who Jaeckie Zucker is. His is certainly one of
the best comic performances in Germany in the past few years.
GOING FOR ZUCKER!
X Filme creative pool in association with WDR, BR and ARTE
Credits:
Director: Dani Levy
Screenwriters: Dani Levy, Holger Franke
Producers: Manuela Stehr, Barbara Buhl
Executive producers: Bettina Ricklefs, Andreas Schreitmuller
Director of photography: Charly F. Koschnick
Production designer: Christian M. Goldbeck
Music: Niki Reiser
Costumes: Lucie Bates
Editor: Elena Bromund
Cast:
Jaeckie Zucker: Henry Huebchen
Marlene: Hannelore Elsner
Samuel: Udo Samel
Golda: Golda Tencer
Thomas: Steffen Groth
Jana: Anja Franke
Joshua: Sebastian Blomberg
Lilly: Elena Uhlig
Rabbi Ginsberg: Rolf Hoppe
Irene: Inga Busch
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 90 minutes