Nazism

A Hidden Life (2019)

André Crous

A Hidden Life may have relatively more substance than most of Terrence Malick’s other films, but the director’s immutable style is lazy at best and incongruous at worst.

A Hidden LifeUSA
3*

Director:
Terrence Malick
Screenwriter:
Terrence Malick
Director of Photography:
Jörg Widmer

Running time: 170 minutes

Most of us tell ourselves that we would have stood up for justice if we had lived in Germany under Hitler. While it is true that many Germans at the time were unaware of the full extent of the Jewish genocide, they knew enough. But what if your neighbours and friends also went along to get along, regardless of whether they believed in the Nazis’ hysterical nationalism and ideology of Aryan superiority? At what point would you have resisted the march towards groupthink? At what point would you have abandoned your principles?

A Hidden Life doesn’t get close to answering this question for us. However, this is a Terrence Malick film, so the question is not even evident at all. Nothing is, except the audio-visuals: In addition to reams of pages of voice-overs, which is, unfortunately, par for the course in a Malick production, there is also the expected curated selection of classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Dvořák) and other stunning instrumental pieces (Górecki, Pärt), as well as breathtaking emerald-green scenery that is far more complex than the film ever tries to be. 

Based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, a young Austrian farmer who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, the plot is more substantial than many of the director’s other recent films. And yet, because it is Malick, we get very few scenes of genuine drama. Instead, there are plenty of oh-so-serious voice-overs or off-screen monologues to convey romance and struggle. These narrations are delivered in English by German actors. And since Malick has never cared much for the realism of the spoken word, they all fall flat.

We first meet Franz (August Diehl) and his young wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner), in 1939, around the time Germany invades Poland. We don’t get to see any of this, however, because the camera is too busy roving the lush green hillsides and calling our attention to the prominent church tower in the small town of St. Radegund, very close to the former border with Germany. (Austria had been annexed by the German Reich in March 1938.) The town’s aggressively nationalistic and often drunk town mayor likes to rant and rave about how “foreigners swarm over our streets – immigrants who don’t care for the past, only for what they can grab”. And the townspeople appear to share these views.

But all the while, the taciturn Franz’s face is sombre. We see his stubborn resistance. We see the wheels turning in his head. And we see his unwillingness to take up arms against Germany’s so-called enemies. But whatever personal, emotional or intellectual motivation he has remains obscured all the way through. Why does he resist when no one else does? What makes him different? Where does he find the resolve to persist despite threats of violence and, ultimately, the certainty that this path leads to an early death?

At first, Franz is called up to do military training. Although he is against the idea of ultimately using this knowledge to fight for the Reich, he heeds the call. A few years later, with the war in full swing, he is called up to serve, but upon arrival at the garrison, he refuses to pledge allegiance to Hitler and is arrested. He says he would be willing to serve in a non-combat capacity, but for this, he also has to take a loyalty oath. Thus begins his incarceration, which quickly leads to a trial and, in short order, his execution.

While he is away, his wife, Fani, becomes the target of the villagers because her husband has a moral compass. On top of taking care of her three young daughters, she also has to plough the field, harvest the crops and draw water from a drying well. But the village turns against her, first with the scowling looks they give her, then by shouting at her in public and finally by shamelessly stealing produce from her field. She is even hounded out of church by the stares of her fellow congregants. She is othered because of her husband’s refusal to kill for their Führer and, more importantly, because of her love of and respect for Franz. But what her own views are is impossible to determine despite the hours we spend with her.

While Franz languishes in Tegel prison in Berlin, the soundtrack continues to be filled with his and Fani’s monotonous voice-over readings of their letters to each other. But because Franz speaks so rarely, at least outside the ethereal sphere of the voice-over, we don’t understand what he is really thinking in real time, and this ponderous approach gets us nowhere close to understanding what brought him to this point. “I can’t do what I believe is wrong”, he says. The Nazis are perplexed as to why he would risk his life to take a stand that is bound to be forgotten by history. Time and again, they tell him that his voice doesn’t matter. However, the question of why they should care if his actions are supposedly so insignificant is never addressed.

It goes without saying that this kind of bravery, especially in retrospect, is absolutely extraordinary. History provides us with very few examples of such men or women. And it is a shame that the film recounting his story is so empty. Over the course of its three-hour running time, we get to know every inch of the farm and the granite mountains but learn very little about the man at the centre. He is religious, but we never see him reading the Bible. He has no real answers to others’ questions, but he has no questions of his own.

Despite the vertiginous use of wide-angle lenses and restless camera movements, not to mention the frames that decapitate its characters, there are also countless beautiful shots. But presenting a film about suffering as if it were a spread in Outdoor Photography is highly questionable, particularly as these images have no discernible purpose other than beauty for the sake of beauty. Unlike The Thin Red Line, in which Malick depicted the Solomon Islands as an exotic utopia ravaged by the horrors of war, A Hidden Life never deviates from portraying Radegund as an aesthetically pleasing wonderland that is always lush and green, no matter the season.

By now, the Malick approach to cinematography has long run its course. A film cannot live off push-ins, pull-outs, jump cuts, low angles, a dazzling colour palette and endless voice-overs alone. Any five-minute extract will contain all of these elements. Sometimes, there is a surprise, but it is never a good one, as when the camera suddenly takes a first-person perspective for no other reason than to show off. The most memorable example is of a prison guard assaulting Franz, causing the camera to flail around violently on the ground. Or when a fade-out elides an expected confrontation before it even starts. Or when a Nazi officer quotes from Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.

The struggle and the suffering get lost in the poetry of it all. Whatever is going on, there will be a tiresome voice-over intruding on the action or a violin playing in the background. It’s all mesmerising and can lull us into a state of reverie but is completely lacking in immersion or immediacy. 

This is a story worth telling, but A Hidden Life is not the way to tell it.

The Book Thief (2013)

André Crous

The Book Thief, which seems to shift the blame for the atrocities of Nazi Germany to an offscreen character named “Death”, is one of the worst World War II films that have ever seen the light of day.

Book ThiefUSA
1.5*

Director:
Brian Percival
Screenwriter:
Michael Petroni
Director of Photography:
Florian Ballhaus

Running time: 130 minutes

There is something sadistic about the industry inflicting movies on us on a near-annual basis that have to do with Jews hiding from the Nazis. From time to time, these films have undeniable strength and importance – for example, films that are documentaries, like Shoah or The Night and the Fog, or those that veer close to being documentaries, like Schindler’s List or Europa Europa – but just as often, there are movie producers who are interested in the subject more as a moneymaking device than as a historical tragedy.

This is where things usually fall apart. If the subject of fear is used not to teach us about the evil of the past, but merely as a backdrop to a story about a Christian girl who falls in love with a Jewish boy, and who reads him bedtime stories when he is bedridden, it can only be described as abominable. And that is exactly what The Book Thief is.

The Christian girl in question is an orphan named Liesel (Sophie Nélisse). Her brother died recently in the arms of her mother, who has had to flee because she is a communist, leaving Liesel in the care of a parentless couple. Her new “papa” is the kind-hearted, patient and loving Hans Hubermann, played with grace by Geoffrey Rush. Her second “mama,” of course, is the strict and offish Rosa (Emily Watson), who is sharp-tongued, always finds fault with everyone else, and whom we never grow to like.

At her brother’s funeral, Liesel had picked up a book, and with this book her world, which has suddenly shrunk to a small home on a short street in a tiny swastika-emblazoned town in the German countryside, opens up again, and her relationship with her new father blossoms. She falls in love with books, and after the predictable scene of a Nazi-organised book burning in the town square, she can’t help but take one of the books, even as it singes under her coat, making her clothes billow with smoke.

The Book Thief, which is based on a novel by Austrian author Markus Zusak, may have had the best intentions, but when the street on which the girl lives is called Himmelstrasse (Heaven Street), and we constantly have a narration supplied by no one other than Death himself (voiced here by Roger Allam), and everyone speaks as if they’re on the radio, it is truly embarrassing. And the embarrassment is infuriating because of the importance of the historical context.

For a large part of the film, a young Jewish man, Max, hides out in the Hubermanns’ cellar, and Liesel’s fascination with him, mixed with the secret she has to keep – even from her best friend, Rudy, the boy from next door who never leaves her alone and who, from the way he is acting, apparently had decided to fall in love with her even before they met – could have been the source of an interesting story. But because of the terrible acting by almost everyone in the cast and the very one-dimensional characters they all portray, it is difficult to take anything seriously, despite the terrible setting of Nazi Germany.

The only time when the film packs a punch is near the beginning, shortly before the start of the war, when director Brian Percival intercuts the violence of Kristallnacht with a choir of fair-haired German children singing their hearts out, dressed in their Hitlerjugend uniforms with enormous flags of the Nazi Party draped on either side of them. It is a deeply distressing scene for the viewer, which seems to belong to an infinitely more capable film. It is also a scene whose gravity is almost entirely undermined by one a few minutes later in which Liesel and Max make fun of Hitler’s mother.

But the worst is yet to come. Never mind Liesel effortlessly wading into frigid waters halfway through the film and Rudy diving into the ice-cold river to prove his love/friendship, and neither of them so much as get gooseflesh from the cold: The film ends with almost an exact copy of the final scene of Titanic, in which the memories of a lifetime are exhibited on cabinets for our perusal so that we can all have a nice, warm feeling upon leaving the cinema, knowing that Liesel’s post-Holocaust life was beautiful.

The Book Thief is one of the worst World War II films I have ever seen. It is one thing to try to balance humour with the grotesque events that no man or woman – and certainly no child – should ever have to face, but it is quite another to essentially make light of the events by having a director who doesn’t seem to mind his actors sounding like they are reading from a page just out of reach of the camera, and a story that is incompetently vying for our emotions. Having Death narrate the events is silly, if not appalling, beyond belief, and the whole experience leaves the viewer immensely disappointed, with a desire that someone should have set light to the screenplay.

Heil (2015)

André Crous

Nazi satire is heavy on the jokes but makes no serious effort to convey a coherent message except to mock those seeking power.

heil-bruggemannGermany
3*

Director:
Dietrich Brüggemann
Screenwriter:
Dietrich Brüggemann
Director of Photography:
Alexander Sass

Running time: 100 minutes

Hitler seems to be all the rage recently, and not just because of the recent celebrations marking 70 years since the end of World War II. What makes the former Führer’s comical resurgence all the more interesting is that it originates in Germany, a country that has been ashamed of its Nazi past to the point that Mein Kampf is banned (copyright is held by the government until it expires in 2016), and any display of the Nazi salute is prohibited.

In the opening credits sequence of his latest film, Heil, the playful German director Dietrich Brüggemann intercuts the Nazi salute with Angela Merkel raising her hand to take the oath of office. Despite the provocative title, Hitler himself does not appear in the film, but the scourge of neo-Nazism is addressed in a very light-hearted way that basically makes caricatures out of any individuals with far-right tendencies.

The literary hit from a few years ago, Look Who’s Back, took a similar tack by having Adolf Hitler wake up from a coma in the present and work his way back into the public consciousness. One of the highlights of the book is a meeting between the principled, highly disciplined former leader of the Reich and a far-right party official who pretends to be in favour of Hitler’s policies but is only a few marbles away from being illiterate.

While it is debatable whether comedic simplification is the best approach to tackle this admittedly toxic subject, the issue has been topical for some time, and with the current emphasis across Europe on immigration, at least with regard to non-European or non-Western citizens, national identity is worth considerable discussion.

However, that is all far from the mind of Brüggemann, who plays up the sensationalism of Nazism in the opening minutes before he settles into a slapstick narrative that is always fun and has a booming soundtrack that pretends to propel the action forward even when little of note is happening.

The plot revolves around Sebastian Klein (Jerry Hoffmann), a handsome young Afro-German intellectual who regularly makes an appearance on the speaking circuit following the publication of his book, The Coffee-Stained Nation. Klein is about to become a father, but his (white) girlfriend and mother-to-be of his child, Nina (Liv Lisa Fries), still harbours fears he would break up with her and move back to his ex, Stella Gustafsson. When Klein is hit on the head, abducted by neo-Nazis, branded with a swastika on his forehead and turned into a zombie, the film enters the world of unbridled comedy that makes one or two points about how weak the characters on the anti-immigrant side really are.

Meanwhile, the not-quite-German-named Sven Stanislawski (Benno Fürmann), an ambitious but incompetent leader of a neo-Nazi cell, wants to impress his girlfriend by staging a false-flag operation that would lead to the invasion of Poland. However, he has his work cut out for him as at least two in his gang are informants, albeit with very little grey matter between them. In the opening scene, one of them, Johnny (Jacob Matschenz), struggles to write “White Power” correctly, and this emphasis on the stupidity of the neo-Nazis is a running joke in the film.

There is no question that Brüggemann’s gamble pays off, as his satirical take on Nazism – and the potential (or not) of a hate group to take up the mantle of the Führer once more – is uproarious and seemingly informed even though it is in fact little more serious than your average film coming out of Hollywood. Brüggemann seems to lose his nerve to address deep-rooted problems of integration in German society almost immediately after his opening credits, and while some of his comedy is rooted in (tragic) reality, as when we are reminded how much easier it is to get a gun in the United States than in Germany, most of it is purely for the sake of a quick laugh.

The most serious indictment of politics today comes in the form of a powerful song that accompanies the end credits. Performed by Adam Angst, the track “Splitter von Granaten” throws firebombs in the direction of Obama, the NSA and the German chancellor before this golden line is uttered: “Putin runs through woods and kills bears for pleasure and gives the green light to beat up homosexuals.” Heil briefly reminds us that while it is possible to be a (brainwashed) black Nazi, being gay is an unpardonable offence in certain circles; however, the only time a connection, tenuous though it may be, between the nationalist figures of Putin and Hitler is made is during the end credits, which appears to be another missed opportunity.

Speaking truth to power is not exactly what Heil is going for, and the film turns out to be infinitely less political than the viewer would hope for. But if you are looking for a comedy tinged here and there with an astute observation on what miserable creatures the neo-Nazis are and how they should be mocked instead of feared, look no further.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

The Fourth Reich (1990)

André Crous

The Fourth ReichSouth Africa
3.5*

Director:
Manie van Rensburg
Screenwriter:
Malcolm Kohll
Director of Photography:
Dewald Aukema

Running time: 183 minutes

South Africa’s most expensive film to date brought together the cream of the country’s film industry to tell the real-life story of Robey Leibbrandt, an Afrikaans boxer turned revolutionary, who was planning to assassinate the country’s pro-British prime minister, General Jan Smuts, shortly after the Second World War broke out.

Originally shot as a television series before being edited down and screened across the country to tepid public interest, the film ultimately wound up, two years later, on the country’s television screens. The Fourth Reich had an estimated budget of R16 million ($6 million at the time, around $10.5 million today, which is an enormous figure for a South African film; by contrast, the 2005 Oscar-winning film, Tsotsi, was made for $3 million). It is evident that a large amount of the budget was spent on set design and costumes, but the film also benefits from being shot on location very often, and the South African countryside, with its wide-open spaces and pre-war dirt roads, is well represented in this film.

The film opens in Berlin during the Olympic Games of 1936, where South African boxer Robey Leibbrandt is recruited by the German government when they learn of his affection for the National Socialist Party’s ideology and his admiration of their leader. “The Führer has created a miracle. That’s exactly what we need to happen in South Africa.” He spends the next few years training in Germany, until Germany invades Poland and Britain declares war.

In South Africa, the people’s state of mind at this time must be framed within the context of events at the turn of the century: South Africans had fought and lost against the British in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and even after becoming the Union of South Africa in 1910, a British colony, many South Africans still had little affection for the Crown. Shortly before WWII, the “Ossewabrandwag” (literally, the Ox-wagon sentinel), an ultra-nationalist organisation, was formed to resist cooperation with the British. However, General Jan Smuts, who was the country’s deputy prime minister at the time, opposed Prime Minister J.B.M. Hertzog (who advocated neutrality towards Germany), stating that, “in war, you are either friend or enemy”.

After Smuts defeated Hertzog in this matter, he was appointed Prime Minister and became an instant target for the Ossewabrandwag, who disliked the British as much as they idolised the German ideologies of nationalism and antisemitism.

The Fourth Reich focuses on Robey Leibbrandt’s preparations for the assassination of Jan Smuts (Louis van Niekerk, made up to look exactly like the general), and on the policeman whose assignment is to track down Leibbrandt before he can carry out his mission: Jan Taillard. In the first hour of the film, these two men’s journeys (and in particular, their gestures) are intercut in a way that binds them together. Ultimately, however, it is a German woman, Erna Dorfman (very often accompanied by the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2), whom they both encounter, who will introduce them to each other and play an important role in the development of the narrative.

Taillard is a very competent but badly mannered policeman; when he is called to Pretoria from his home in Queenstown, his wife kindly advises him: “Try and follow orders this time…” The mission, which he chooses to accept, requires him to locate whoever is planning to assassinate Prime Minister Smuts, without breathing a word to anybody, including his dutiful wife, Romy (played by Elize Cawood, whose voice is both golden and vulnerable). In the meantime, Leibbrandt sneaks into South Africa via South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) and seeks to incite members of the Ossewabrandwag to join him in overthrowing the government by committing acts of sabotage on power and railway lines. The faithful are asked to swear a blood oath with the following words, by Henri de la Rochejaquelein.

If I advance, follow me
If I retreat, shoot me
If I die, avenge me.

Ironically, de la Rochejaquelein had been a Royalist in eighteenth-century France, allied with the British to fight against the post-Revolutionary republican government with the aim of restoring the monarchy.

Ryno Hattingh’s performance as Robey Leibbrandt is commendable, but he is given too little to do. The man has to be charismatic, and while the character tries to emulate Adolf Hitler’s elocution when he makes important speeches, the result is not very moving; often he is presented as arrogant and the film does not seek to delve much deeper into his character. On the other hand, as Jan Taillard, Marius Weyers brings a quiet self-confidence to a very human character whose secret mission to defend the prime minister destabilises his life and alienates him from his family.

The film was clearly meant for television, as people usually speak in close-up and storylines that should have been left out completely in the theatrical version show up as unsatisfactory snippets, for example, Leibbrandt’s arrival in the Sperrgebiet of South-West Africa, of which a single scene survives, with actress Wilma Stockenström, that doesn’t lead anywhere. Another very bad moment comes early in the film when Frau Dorfman has a passionate encounter with Leibbrandt: While they make out in slow-motion, actress Grethe Fox’s otherwise stone-cold face is contorted and it seems like she is in agony, and yet the foreplay continues.

It is regrettable that director Manie van Rensburg chose to make a film in English, spoken by a cast of mostly Afrikaans players who all have a very recognisably Afrikaans accent. While an anti-British South African identity does not necessarily imply that the speakers be Afrikaans, it becomes difficult to suspend disbelief when English is used as the lingua franca between members of a very Afrikaans movement such as the Ossewabrandwag.

In the closing credits, the filmmaker seems to acknowledge that the film was made to rehabilitate the reputation of Jan Taillard, whose hard work to protect General Smuts was disregarded by the post-war Nationalist government. The film itself is a very good depiction of life in South Africa in the early 1940s, including the influence of Nazi politics on South Africa during this time, and it is always a pleasure to see individuals such as Smuts brought to life on-screen. The Fourth Reich was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by a South African director in his own country and while the film struggles to overcome its television origins, it is a marvellous reminder of the beauty of the South African landscape and the narrative possibilities that the country’s history offers to filmmakers.