Reviews

A complex film with good performances all round, but Karoline Herfurth as Lilli (a young dance student) is quite outstanding, expressive in face and physical movements. My only criticism is her terrible diction. My German is good, but without the English subtitles I would have understood very little of what she said. The suicide of her brother left her with very mixed emotions: she loved him but at the same time was jealous of him because he was their parents' favourite. The parents, whose relationship with each other is also fraught, never ask her anything about how she feels. An elderly painter who has been asked to paint a double portrait of the siblings (her from life, him from photographs) is the only person who is interested in finding out what she felt about her brother - and that is initially only so that he can get some idea of how to portray them. She is rebellious, vulnerable, and looking for love (in the wrong quarters). The film is very long, (two and a quarter hours?), partly because there are a couple of sub-plots which might perhaps have been cut, and the ending is also rather drawn-out, with one mawkish false note (in my view) right at the end.

This is one of the very rare films which does full justice to the book on which it is based; and since that book was superlative and packed a tremendous emotional punch, so does this film. The acting is outstanding. Zekeria Ebrahim, playing Amir as a child, shows just the right kind of weakness which leads to the betrayal of his plucky friend Hassan, played by Ahmad Khan Mahmidzad, who in turn shows a touching dependence on young Amir. As the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father leave for the United States where the young Amir turns very credibly into the adult Amir (Khalid Abdallah). Called from America to Pakistan by a dying family friend, Amir finally summons up the considerable courage it takes to go from there back to Kabul to rescue Hassan's son from the Taliban.

Homayoum Ershadi as Amir's father has the strength, dignity and sense of honour, both at home and later in exile in the United States, which one associates with the Afghans at their best. Abdul Qadir Farookh as General Tahir, the adult Amir's father-in-law, also has a commanding presence. There is a powerful performance in the short role of Zamad, the Director of the orphanage in Kabul: I cannot find the name of the actor in the IMDb cast list. But really there is not one weak performance in the enormous cast. Many scenes are very moving or very tense, and the film is ravishing to look at. Most of the dialogue is in an Afghan language, with subtitles; on the relatively few occasions when it is in American English, the diction is rather poor.

I went to see this film with mixed anticipation because it was said to be a comedy about Hitler; but it had the great late actor Ulrich Muehe in it, and I was intrigued by what I had read about the plot of this film: a few days before the end of the war Hitler is a nervous wreck and incapable of making the inspiring speech which Goebbels has written for him. He needs coaching by an actor, and it must be someone who can rouse him to new heights of hatred which Hitler's favourite actors are said not to be able to do. So Goebbels gets a formerly famous Jewish drama teacher, Professor Gruenbaum, released from Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the task of coaching Hitler.

The acting was superb: Muehe's as Gruenbaum, of course, and also Helge Schneider's as Hitler, Sylvester Groth's as a smooth Goebbels, Ulrich Noethe's as Himmler (though it was surely unnecessary to have him have his arm strapped in a permanent Hitler salute), Stephan Kurt's as Albrecht Speer (not at all shown as the least guilty of the Nazis; and the members of Gruenbaum's family: Adriana Altaras' as his wife and Shawn Karlborg as his eldest teenage son. The production was also first class - excellent photography and absolute clarity of diction.

I think the film works very well except on the several occasions when the 'comedy' ('irony' would be a better word) tips over into slapstick which really should have been cut, both from the point of view of good taste and also because I think they weaken the film. The way in which Gruenbaum gradually acquires mastery over Hitler is beautifully paced and in terms of the film is even psychologically credible. Of course Gruenbaum, urged on by his wife, should use the opportunity of being so near to Hitler to kill him, and he twice comes near to do it; but in the end of course he doesn't - too proud of his success as a coach? And how does one end such a film? The climax is well staged, but doesn't, I think, quite come off.

With the reservations I have, I am glad I saw the film. There was little laughter during the showing I attended - and I think that was right and not a criticism of the film: the slapstick didn't deserve it, and the 'comedy' had of course underlying it a serious idea which forbids laughter.

Sven, a young German (Alexander Fehling), electing to do civilian work for his national service and hoping to be sent to Amsterdam, is sent, without any preparation, to Oswiecim (Auschwitz), where he is to act as the helper of an octogenarian Polish former inmate (Ryszard Ronczewski), who has chosen to go on living on the camp site, repairing disintegrating suitcases for the exhibition there and occasionally speaking as a witness to tourists.

The young man is gradually sensitized to the situation; the old man, crusty and unfriendly towards the young German, hardly changes in his attitude. Both performances were quite magnificent.

The ordinary citizens of today's Oswiecim are reminded when they are asked where they come from that they live in a place whose name is associated with infamy; but otherwise they live very normal lives, and there seems to be no incongruity in the fact that the young people of Oswiecim dance the nights away in bars and pop venues just as young people do in other places. Some, like the young woman who becomes Sven's girl friend (Barbara Wysocka), who are good linguists, make a living out of conducting guided tours through the camp.

I think it is an ALMOST perfect film, sensitive, bringing out the relationship between the two main characters, with straightforward and ungimmicky filming. But, without forgetting that there were many non-Jewish Poles who also suffered in Auschwitz, it is all the same somewhat astonishing that Jews are nowhere mentioned in the film. The old man presumably was not Jewish; as a Polish inmate he had been given the job by the Nazis to collect the suitcases from the new arrivals. Repairing the suitcases for the exhibition is his mission in life. The only indication of the Holocaust is the fact that one can read the Jewish names on the suitcases.

An interesting if somewhat conventional story. A jolly, slightly raffish, can-do, insensitive but loving father is resented by his son, especially during the son's teenage years. These are recalled by the son when he comes to visit his father on his death-bed. He wants to make peace with his father who has never realized how much his son had resented him. A shame that the fine and expressive acting by Jim Broadbent (father), Juliet Stevenson (mother), Matthew Beard (as teenage son) and Colin Firth (as adult son) is swamped by 1. an unbearably gimmicky production (multiple images in mirrors - pointless; jerking too abruptly from scene to scene; excessive chiaroscuro; 2. diction, as so often these days, not always clear; 3. subsidiary aspects of the plot ditto. I can remember the days when such a subject would have been presented much more simply and straightforwardly and would then have been very much more moving. A great disappointment.

With all its expensive production values, this film, like so many others, did not insist on clear diction, even in important scenes. Keira Knightley was a particularly bad offender; but there were many others.

The camera work was often arty but irritating and restless, and I am sorry to say that on the whole I thought it was a meretricious film. A blessed moment of clear diction and moving acting came nearly at the end, in the brief scene of Briony as an old woman (Vanessa Redgrave), and that was then promptly followed by the last few corny and sentimental shots on the sea shore.