"Elser" is a German movie from this year that runs slightly under 2 hours. The director is Oliver Hirschbiegel and you may have seen his Oscar nominee "Der Untergang" or "Das Experiment". This one here is his newest work and just like "Der Untergang", it is another movie closely related to Nazi Germany. Fred and Léonie-Claire Breinersdorfer is a father-daughter pairing and we will probably see more of them in the future. The woman has worked mostly on television so far, while her father has written the Oscar nominated "Sophie Scholl" among other films.
The lead actor is Christian Friedel, who you may or may not have seen in Michael Haneke's "Das weiße Band". Just like in that one, Friedel plays alongside Burghart Klaußner, who plays the biggest supporting character here. Of course, Friedel plays the title character in this one. Georg Elser was German resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Hitler long before Stauffenberg and yet the latter has many films (inclusing Tom Cruise's) made about him why Elser has almost none. I saw Klaus Maria Brandauer played him once roughly 25 years ago, but even that movie hardly anybody saw. So why isn't Elser more famous in film. I can only speculate here. Maybe there is not enough known about his life before or after the assassination attempt or maybe he simply is not an interesting character.
In any case, I just checked for Katharina Schüttler's character and I cannot find anything about a woman named Elsa in Elser's life. Also I cannot see how closely Nebe really was to Elser. Yes he probably played a role in a later assassination attempt, but did he really know and directly meet Elser? I guess it may be true that we simply do not know enough about the real Elser to make this a fascinating and authentic watch. About Katharina Schüttler, I kind of like her as an actress, but somehow I feel her characters, especially the historic ones, are frequently very similar, so that it looks to me that she keeps playing the same characters. I hope she will get out of that niche soon. I'm sure she has the talent. Burghart Klaußner is easily one of my favorite actors and I was certainly curious about him in this one as he also scored another German Film Awards nomination, but as a whole I was sadly fairly underwhelmed by him. I guess the character was not written interestingly enough for Klaußner to make a lasting impression like he did with Fritz Bauer recently. Johann von Bülow plays the epitome evil Nazi official, something we have seen a hundred times already in the same manner.
This is also generally the problem of the movie: The only thing somewhat innovative here is that the title character is fairly unknown today, but the story and everything they constructed around him was not innovative by any means. Of course, it's difficult to bring something new to the table with all these Nazi movies made, but Hirschbiegel has done it before, so I am a bit disappointed it became all so generic here. One interesting elaboration could have been for example why Elser wasn't killed right away after he confessed, but lived on for another 5 years. Pretty strange if you try to kill the Fuehrer isn't it? And maybe Neve should have gotten his own movie. He felt a bit wasted here. Still, all in all, not a bad watch by any means, just a mediocre script that does not do justice to the character of Georg Elser I am sure. Could have been a lot more this movie. Still worth a watch for everybody with an interest in German history of the 20th century.
The lead actor is Christian Friedel, who you may or may not have seen in Michael Haneke's "Das weiße Band". Just like in that one, Friedel plays alongside Burghart Klaußner, who plays the biggest supporting character here. Of course, Friedel plays the title character in this one. Georg Elser was German resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Hitler long before Stauffenberg and yet the latter has many films (inclusing Tom Cruise's) made about him why Elser has almost none. I saw Klaus Maria Brandauer played him once roughly 25 years ago, but even that movie hardly anybody saw. So why isn't Elser more famous in film. I can only speculate here. Maybe there is not enough known about his life before or after the assassination attempt or maybe he simply is not an interesting character.
In any case, I just checked for Katharina Schüttler's character and I cannot find anything about a woman named Elsa in Elser's life. Also I cannot see how closely Nebe really was to Elser. Yes he probably played a role in a later assassination attempt, but did he really know and directly meet Elser? I guess it may be true that we simply do not know enough about the real Elser to make this a fascinating and authentic watch. About Katharina Schüttler, I kind of like her as an actress, but somehow I feel her characters, especially the historic ones, are frequently very similar, so that it looks to me that she keeps playing the same characters. I hope she will get out of that niche soon. I'm sure she has the talent. Burghart Klaußner is easily one of my favorite actors and I was certainly curious about him in this one as he also scored another German Film Awards nomination, but as a whole I was sadly fairly underwhelmed by him. I guess the character was not written interestingly enough for Klaußner to make a lasting impression like he did with Fritz Bauer recently. Johann von Bülow plays the epitome evil Nazi official, something we have seen a hundred times already in the same manner.
This is also generally the problem of the movie: The only thing somewhat innovative here is that the title character is fairly unknown today, but the story and everything they constructed around him was not innovative by any means. Of course, it's difficult to bring something new to the table with all these Nazi movies made, but Hirschbiegel has done it before, so I am a bit disappointed it became all so generic here. One interesting elaboration could have been for example why Elser wasn't killed right away after he confessed, but lived on for another 5 years. Pretty strange if you try to kill the Fuehrer isn't it? And maybe Neve should have gotten his own movie. He felt a bit wasted here. Still, all in all, not a bad watch by any means, just a mediocre script that does not do justice to the character of Georg Elser I am sure. Could have been a lot more this movie. Still worth a watch for everybody with an interest in German history of the 20th century.