Amen
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Movie Reviews of Amen
Movie Review: Indifference.
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on a true story, *Amen* is an important, and heretofore unexamined, angle in cinema's ongoing grappling with the Holocaust: the complicity of the Catholic Church with the Third Reich's "Final Solution". Important BECAUSE the subject hasn't been examined in film. Precise, too; the movie is concerned with the murder of the Jews in particular. Early in *Amen*, we see the German Catholic Church put a stop to the euthanizing of what the Nazi Party calls "unproductive citizens", e.g., people with Down's Syndrome and, indeed, any who suffer from mental illness. The local archbishop threatens the Nazi bureaucrats with exposure to world opinion, and thunders indignant, logical arguments from the pulpit ("'Unproductive!' And what of injured soldiers returning from the front? Are they 'unproductive', too?" etc.). But the thing is, these mentally ill were baptized as Christians. The JEWS, on the other hand. . . . Director Costa-Gavras gives them an unlikely champion: an SS officer and chemist Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) whose creation of a cleansing agent, designed to filter contaminated drinking water for the troops at the front, becomes a primary tool in the mass-murder campaign by the German government. The chemist, a devout Protestant, is horrified when he discovers to what uses his invention is being put. He is eventually brought to a concentration camp, and is more or less forced to view a gassing through a peep-hole on a gas-chamber door. Thankfully, WE'RE spared the sight. Indeed, we "see" almost no atrocities: Costa-Gavras assumes we're intelligent and moral enough to already know that genocide is evil. (Obviously a faulty assumption, considering that this movie received almost zero attention from audiences and critics. We clearly need piles of bodies displayed with Barber's *Adagio for Strings* swelling in the background, and a Schindler-like hero played by a robust and good-looking Irishman.) Instead, he shows us the hideous paperwork, the incessant criss-crossing of the cattle-cars (empty one way, full the other way) . . . the whole damnable mechanical PROCESS of the Holocaust. Gerstein decides to be the "eyes and ears" of this process, and even tries to slow it down in his fumbling way by hysterically claiming that THIS batch of chemicals is leaking from their canisters and must be destroyed, THAT batch won't be ready for months, and so on. Meanwhile, having learned that the Church managed to stop the murdering of the mentally ill, Gerstein appeals to the local diocese. Upon informing the local big-wig prelate that the Nazis are systematically wiping out the Jews, the prelate muses suspiciously, "Are you even Catholic?" But he DOES get the attention of a fictional young Jesuit, Father Riccardo (played with agonizing understatement by Mathieu Kassovitz). Riccardo becomes determined that Pope Pius XII should learn of the atrocities . . . and is fiercely checked by the Church bureaucracy and finally by the Pope Himself. *Amen* savagely attacks the Church in general and the Pope in particular: it's rather telling that Costa-Gavras could find no single figure to base Riccardo upon, but had to create an amalgam from various (and doubtless feeble) voices in the Church hierarchy at that time. Some may complain that Riccardo is merely a symbol of Good, and that another character in the film, known only with chilling anonymity as "The Doctor", is just Evil personified. But I think enough ambiguity is provided by Gerstein himself: we like him, we identify with him, we sympathize with his disgust, we encourage his attempts to alert the world, but we also feel uneasy that he remains in his position as SS Lieutenant. What IS the truth about Gerstein? We'll never truly know what was in his heart; we only know what he documented about the process of the gassings, after he was incarcerated after the war. Was he trying to condemn his murderous colleagues, or merely hoping to absolve his own continued participation? Or both? Perhaps Riccardo and the Doctor, both fictional, represent his own divided soul.Movie Review: Turning a Blind Eye to the Truth
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the story of German SS Officer Kurt Gerstine and his efforts to inform the world of the mass extermination of the Jews of Europe. The film has some historical inaccuracies as far as the events that really took place,(Zyklon B was only used at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek) but these shortcomings are easily forgiven just to have this story finally be told. Gerstines' actual written report about the gassing of a convoy of Jews in the Belzec extermination camp, using carbon monoxide chambers, remains one of the most horrifying documents ever to appear in print. In fact, one of the most disturbing aspects of this movie is the realization that there were thousands of people who devoted much of their time and effort to create a method of killing thousands of people at a time in mere hours, and then worked to streamline that process of mass murder to an industrial level. Through trial and error, they would, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, actually reach the point of being able to kill and destroy the remains of over 6000 people in just a few hours. Since the film at least tries to tell Gerstines' story, and makes it clear that at least one Nazi officer was truly haunted by the events taking place is a single fact, that alone, makes it worth the purchase. To learn that someone from the inside tried to muster the courage to inform the world, shows us that not all Nazi's were cold blooded killers. All evil needs to take root and grow is for good men to do nothing. It is those good men in this story, many of whom were in positions of real power, who, after being informed through first hand accounts of the horrific events taking place, then said and did nothing, thus allowing the mass murders to continue. To be a knowledgeable, but silent bystander of such horrible events has, through hindsight, cast a hugh blanket of guilt over those who found themselves in this very position, and it's changed the way they are now viewed in history. However, it is this kind of silence, and your reaction to it, that actually touches at the very heart of the story. It makes you ask yourself the question, "What would I do in such a situation"? Would I do the right thing? It also reminds us that there were indeed people at the time, who, often acting alone, stepped up and answered this moral imparative through heroic actions, rather than stopping at mere words. After seeing this film, you'll never look at a train made up of boxcars in the same way again. They send chills down your back every time one passes in the movie, and they pass with alarming frequency as the film progresses.
All in all, it's an excellent movie about a little known chapter in the history of the Holocaust. This may well be the only time Gerstines' story will ever be told in film.
Movie Review: A great movie on a grave topic
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie explores the theme of collective guilt in the Holocaust by focusing on two individuals who stand out of their collectivity, SS officer Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) and Catholic priest Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz).
A chemist by profession, Gerstein supplies zyklon B gas for the gas chambers of the death camps, but tries to alert the allies of the horror in which he is a willing participant. Hard to believe, but allegedly based on fact. A priest by vocation, Fontana tries to use his family contacts to alert the Pope.
Neither the SS officer nor the Catholic priest succeed. The Allies ignore the nazi. The Pope ignores the priest. The cowardly officer kills himself. The brave priest martyrs himself by boarding an Aushwitz-bound train.
Based on the movie's reconstruction, SS officer Gerstein was a coward and guilty through and through of high-level complicity in a Genocide. He would no doubt have received a heavy sentence after the war, and deservedly so.
This SS officer deserves no sympathy. The authors have therefore thrown in a few Faustian baits for those who need the idea of the good nazi.
The success of Schindler's Ark/List demonstrates the existence of a need for a belief in the good nazi. Here we have a would-be good nazi. He would like to be good, but he is so cowardly that he fails in his attempt to do good through the courage of others. In this sense, SS Gerstein is more interesting, dramatically speaking, than Schindler. He is a total loser and, in this, immensely dramatic. By Hollywood standard, not quite the ticket.
Catholic priest Fontana was a good guy who martyred himself in total despair. He is a modern version of Jesus, who died to expiate humanity's guilt. Fontana is a composite of several real-life catholic martyrs. The list of Catholic victims under the nazis is a long one, especially among the Poles. Not quite as long as the list of Jewish victims though. The complicit silence of the Catholic Church is well documented, but unfortunately not well publicized and occasionally denied.
If I dared to be controversial, I might write that Amen does to the Catholic community what Shindler's List did to the nazi community.
The greatest merit of a movie like Amen is to publicize Pope Pius 12's guilty silence while not, perhaps, alienating the entire Catholic community.
I also wish to add that Mathieu Kassovitz does an outstanding job as the Catholic priest. Another reader suggested otherwise. I have seen young Catholic priests in the flesh, and I believe Mathieu Kassovitz is perfect, a wonderful actor.
Great actors. True story. Great movie.
Movie Review: Compelling portrayal of the Vatican's indifference during the Holocaust
Summary: 5 Stars
"Amen" is a movie that is unrelenting in its pace, and the score only adds to the feeling of pervasive evil that seems to be engulfing the whole of Europe. Set during WW II, "Amen" veers back and forth between the two leads. Kurt Gerstein [Ulrich Tukur] is an SS officer/chemist who discovers that his chemical invention to destroy vermin is being used to eliminate Germany of those the Nazi term 'undesirables', i.e. Jews. When he witnesses for himself an actual gassing, he is horrified and his conscience as a Christian is aroused. Initially he tries to get help from his own church, but when his pleas fall on deaf ears, he brings the matter to the Catholic church. Here, Gerstein finds an 'ally' in a young, idealistic Catholic priest, Father Riccardo [Mathieu Kassovitz] who tries his best to get his superiors and also the Pope to intervene.
Well, we know the history - the Vatican was neutral during WW II, and Pope Pius XII basically turned a deaf ear to the plight of European Jewry. Perceiving the Third Reich's threat to the Vatican as being very real, the Catholic Church decided it was wiser to stay out of the entire mess and not intervene, even if condemning the Nazi atrocities would have sent a powerful message to the world and turned public opinion against the Nazis. Instead, disgusting politics won the day - the Vatican felt that denouncing Hitler was equivalent to allying with Stalin and Communism, and so between the two evils, the Vatican chose to be neutral, or rather indifferent.
This is a controversial movie in that it paints an unflattering portrait of the Vatican during WW II. Also, the delineation between good and evil is not always clear, and that makes for interesting viewing and debate. Kurt Gerstein was an actual historical figure, but the Catholic priest who tries so valiantly to publicise the atrocities and get help from his church is a fictional character [or rather a composite of a couple of real-life religious figures, i.e. priests who risked their own lives to denounce the Nazis, and suffered greatly as a result].
The scenes of serenity in the Vatican and its grounds are portrayed beautifully in full, rich color, contrasting starkly with the horrors inflicted upon the Jews by the Nazis. The score is not only haunting, it keeps one on the edge of the seat as the suspense builds up [yes, the viewer knows there is no happy ending, but one keeps hoping Father Riccardo at least comes out of it well].
Highly recommended for those interested in the Holocaust.
Movie Review: The would-be whistleblower of the Holocaust
Summary: 5 Stars
Amen. got an indifferent response from critics and box-office alike, but its easily Costa-Gavras' best film in a couple of decades. While it doesn't have is the rough and raw anger of his early classics, or the emotional weight of Missing, it's a compelling tale well told. Based on the true story of a German chemist and devout Catholic promoted to the SS who, on finding out what use the chemicals he inspected are really put to, tried to make the existence of the Nazi extermination policy known in the hopes of stopping it (not without precedent: as the film shows, the Catholic Church and public outrage did prevent the earlier extermination program for the mentally ill). Unfortunately for the would-be whistleblower, no-one wanted to know: they either didn't care or didn't believe the sheer enormity of the numbers of victims.
Ulrich Tukur is impressive in the lead, portraying the moral outrage and frustrated urgency without resorting to theatrics, though Matthieu Kassovitz's priest (a composite of several characters) is less convincing despite his best efforts. The most interesting character, however, is Ulrich Muhe's `Doctor,' a fellow SS officer unconvinced by the Nazi rhetoric but more than morally ambivalent and pragmatic enough to go along with his `unsophisticated' colleagues. He's a constantly unnerving presence because of his honesty and his playfulness: you're never quite sure what his position is, although you never doubt his own certainty in himself.
Much was made at the time of release at the finger pointed at the Catholic Church for their complicity by silence in the Holocaust, but the film doesn't limit its frustration to the Church - the Allies are equally culpable of pragmatic neglect. The script is an impressively constructed, with early scenes flowing effortlessly into each other as they demolish the concept that ordinary Germans were powerless to resist, establishing a moral framework for the drama that follows. The resolution of Kassovitz's character veers into cliché and the enormity of the main character's loss of faith is slightly taken for granted at the end (his final action is a total rejection of the fundamental principles of Catholicism that fuel his doomed efforts), but it's nonetheless a powerful movie that deserves to be better known.