In Germany.

When it comes to movies, the talk in Germany these days is, for the most part, about Der Untergang. It's enough of an event to warrant a cover story in Der Spiegel and even a bit of press in the UK (see, for example, the BBC and Kate Connolly's piece in the Telegraph), even though it won't open in cinemas until September 16. In part, because this is another Bernd Eichinger production, in part, because it's directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, but mostly, of course, because the center of gravity in this story of the final days of the Third Reich is Hitler himself, portrayed no less by Bruno Ganz who rarely fails to drag a ton of pathos with him to whatever role he takes on. Pathos plus Hitler equals... a very touchy equation, to put it mildly.

I've seen comments pointing out that Hitler has been portrayed in movies before, naturally, and even in a few German films, but they're missing the point. In these films, Hitler is usually raging far outside the constellation of the main characters, a destiny-forging force rather than a presence. Even if you don't speak German, the trailer alone ought to alert you that this is something entirely different, and for me, far more frightening: a reminder that Adolf Hitler was actually a human being.

I remember attending a symposium at which Slavoj Zizek, whom I still very much enjoy reading and listening to, was going on about a doc he'd seen about neo-Nazis, and he was disgusted at the filmmaker's trying to dredge up his subjects' human qualities. He didn't want to see neo-Nazis as humans, didn't want to relate to them in any way, shape or form. These comments were met with enthusiastic cheers, as many of Zizek's often are. As for not wanting to relate, fine, but as for the refusal to recognize the humanity in anyone, well, I find that both wrong and dangerous.

I can't help but see a relation to the way politicians and pundits, with increasing frequency since Reagan, casually toss around the word "evil," sling it at anyone from those merely in the way to those who truly have done some very hideous, almost unthinkable things. But dehumanization is the easy way out, sliding what we don't want to contemplate into the category of the supernatural, as if places and times like Stalin's Gulag or Hitler's Auschwitz were an anomaly, a tear in the space-time continuum through which the devil himself arose and roamed freely until we put him back down, never to arise again.

Of course, he always does. Because it ain't him. It's us. Human nature is the constant in our world and we've seen many, many scouts throughout the centuries exploring its edges, discovering new things it's capable of, sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, sometimes utterly amazing. (For what it's worth, I have the same problem with the whole idea of "genius"; as if Einstein or Leonardo were mutant offspring of a completely different species.)

To get back to the point, it's understandable in the years, even decades after WWII and the end of one of the most horrendous chapters in human history that filmmakers, especially German filmmakers, didn't want to look Hitler in the face. Or, the few of those that did knew their audiences wouldn't want to. But it's high time we got over our reluctance now that what some have called the second Belle Epoque (1989 - 2001) is well over and the new century has been blasted wide open to reveal itself as potentially every bit as gruesome as the last. We'll need to recognize certain faces.

Speaking of which. Another film being talked about around here is Das Goebbels-Experiment (or Inventing Dr. Goebbels, which must have been the working title in English), a documentary by Lutz Hachmeister. Yesterday, Perlentaucher pointed to a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Nils Minkmar and plucked a quote from it I think warrants translation:

Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to produce a film comprised exclusively of quotes from Goebbels and without showing the famous images of the piles of corpses at Bergen-Belsen and the liberation of Auschwitz. Today these images are deeply anchored in the collective consciousness and the film can make use of that. One sees Goebbels in February 1933 standing in a sports stadium, his arms akimbo, wagging a finger, smiling and saying, "Some day our patience will come to an end, and then the brash lying mouths of the Jews will be stuffed shut." The horror with which one sees this smile can hardly be conjured by any other image.

Posted by dwhudson at August 26, 2004 7:38 AM