Director: Joachim Lang
Year: 2024
Country:
Germany
Rating:
7.0
In Germany, as in America, fascism is
once again raising its vile racist pointy head. The Nazi Party there - the
one Elon Musk endorsed and that Vance visited - has done much better in recent
elections than ever before and they are doing well in the polls with another
election coming up. It isn't the Jews this time, it is immigrants that they
use to scare people. I expect to some degree that was the impetus behind
this German production. A reminder of the banality of evil as the famous
phrase goes. How even the most average person can do astonishingly evil things
to other humans. Your neighbor, your cousin, the baker, the butcher are all
capable of evil. In Germany between 1938 and 1945 most Germans did so. Complicit
in the deaths of millions of Jews and wars that killed millions more.
This film received some condemnation in
Germany because its portrayal of Goebbels and Hitler is very matter of fact.
Not the usual characterization of Hitler screaming and foaming at the mouth,
but one of a man with some charm, lucid, calm and ordinary - while at the
same time telling his men in quiet conversations to execute the Jews and
invade Russia. Goebbels who ran the propaganda arm of the Nazis is like the
guy at the neighborhood barbecue, chatting everyone up, a big smile, full
of himself, insecure at times, fooling around on his wife but he very effectively
rallies the German people around hating the Jews and worshipping Hitler and
the war machine. These guys could almost be running a car company as they
are portrayed. There are times when the film turns into a soap opera as Hitler
tries to manage the marriage of Goebbels and his wife. Interspersed within
the film is archival footage of the real Hitler and Goebbels and certain
historical events - and the executions will turn your stomach.
This is why the film was attacked by many.
They feel that Nazis are pure evil and should always be portrayed that way.
The director Joachim Lang says no, they are pure evil, but they appear like
everyone else around us. That is what makes them terrifying. The film is
shot primarily from Goebbel's point of view with Hitler and other factual
characters making appearances. It begins in 1938 and ends with Goebbels in
the ruins of Berlin killing his very cute children and then his wife and
himself. Hitler killed himself the day before. Watching them from their highs
when they take Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and France to the slow collapse
as they are defeated at Stalingrad and bombs drop on the country. The film
at the beginning claims that as much as possible they have kept to the facts
and the conversations are real. Maybe.
I Googled some of it and it all turned out
to be true. Goebbels had an open affair with a Czech actress named Lida Baarova
that Hitler put a stop to because he was fond of Gobbel's wife and because
the actress was Slavic. She was driven out of the film industry and basically
went into exile. In a conversation with his wife, Goebbels tells her that
her Jewish stepfather died in a concentration camp. He was kind to me she
replies, but Hitler comes first. Another old Jewish friend asks for her help
and she informs on them. Ernst vom Rath was in fact the German diplomat
assassinated by a Jewish teenager in Paris that Goebbels used to incite Kristallnacht.
Goebbel's next door neighbor was a popular film star named Joachim Gottschalk
who had a Jewish wife that he refused to give up. At one point Goebbels chuckles
that he was able to buy Gottschalk's property cheap because of the Jewish
factor. As the Gestapo are coming for him and his family, Gottschalk turned
on the gas killing them all. This may not be what people wanted from a film
about these two characters - but it is probably fairly accurate and there
is still great satisfaction in watching the Third Reich crumble and all these
men die.
