Max
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Movie Reviews of Max
Movie Review: Interesting Film Based on Fictionalized Pre-nazi Hitler
Summary: 3 Stars
MAX begins in a giant art warehouse and creates a stark atmosphere of post-WWI darkness and chaos. Max (John Cusack) is an artist who lost his arm in the war and he meets Hitler (Noah Taylor), depicted as a directionless artist. The film bases some of its ideas on reality (Hitler was an aspiring artist, but before, not after the war), but one problem is we like and feel sympathy for this Hitler. Noah Taylor doesn't resemble the real Adolph in the least; in the film he's an artist who isn't anti-semitic and he's too damn likeable and cool looking with his army trenchcoat looking and acting more like a post-modern beatnik than a Nazi. The Chaplin mustache isn't even here. (Though the real one donned a mustache from before WWI). He's coerced by the military into public speaking, and his speeches are interesting and comical. "I paid 10 marks for this coat" "You paid too much" "That's what I told the Jew who sold it to me."
Nevertheless, the point is made: had Hitler been prompted in another direction than politics the Holocaust may well have been avoided. And Max, now an art dealer trying to induce Hitler to pursue his art rather than politics is the focal point to the alternate reality. The ending is pretty predictable, and prompts one to ask, could something like this really have happened.
John Cusack does a good performance and his relationship with Hitler is what holds our interest throughout the film.
Movie Review: Historical accuracy is for saps
Summary: 3 Stars
Plodding, maybe. But innacurate?? Grow up. The movie is a fantasy which revels in its own speculation. A work of fiction is not responsible for historical accuracy, even one that purports to be historically accurate. It's only responsible for its own dramatic strength. To me, the drama has a tinge of the comic because it plays on what we already know about Hitler's future. It toys with the idea that he was on the fence about how to express himself and if this Max character played it differently, the 20th century could've turned out better. Cusack is successful in his portrayal of a man who's disturbed by Hitler but has no intimations as to what lengths he will eventually go. While on a sort of a double date, he says to the girls, "Hitler has this thing about blood purity. We think...we hope it's just a metaphor." And Noah Taylor is just brilliant, adding nuances and idiosyncrasies, fleshing out the character as a brilliant but pathetic wretch whose rage and resentment will eventually lead him to horrifying heights. The movie lags a little in places, but the direction is very sharp, as are the performances.Movie Review: It really fails to motivate you in being interested
Summary: 3 Stars
While the film is interesting from a conceptual point of view, it has a difficult time of pulling you into the movie. The film deals with the ficitous view of what if Adolf Hitler would have been an artist instead. Where it fails its point is that the anti semitic views were already there in the culture.
What you do see is an akward Hitler that while not anti semitic must choose which life he will lead. He seems to reluctantly to choose the military life, simply due to a tragic twist of events. I feel this premise is somewhat weak, but it does make for an interesting movie.
Performances are good from John Cusack, but the Adolf Hitler performance seems brilliantly akward and at times painful to watch. Adolf Hitler does not learn the oratory craft easily, it comes in time.
My opinion of this movie, is that unless this is a topic you are intersted in, or if you enjoy movies with the what if's, you may want to skip this movie. The scenery is excellent, and the acting seems quite good, the movie fails to be completely consistent to make it a good movie.
Movie Review: If only Hitler had more hugs...
Summary: 2 Stars
There is an annoying New Agey belief grown out of religious quests for redemption and salvation that states that not only can everyone be saved, everyone is wonderful and only big mean society makes them act badly. This is the kind of thinking that allows bad men (and women) to empty out bank accounts, kill their spouses and excuse every one of their actions.
This movie takes an intriguing concept - Portrait of Hitler as a Young Artist - and sinks it into the morass of this kind of thinking. He's an angry man trying to make it in the art world, but basically he's a good kid. He just needs a patron to support him. Unfortunately that patron gets the tar beat out of him before he can show Hitler's Autobahn as art. So Hitler decided to go with the more validating politics thing and see where that got him.
Not only do you never get the feeling that Hitler is anti-semitic or dangerous in this movie, you never get the feeling that he was a man capable of using rhetoric to excite or sway audiences. This is a man that convinced an entire country to commit mass murder and this movie portrays him as a slug.
Furthermore, Hitler never seems to take any responsibility for his actions. I know that sounds silly, but this movie has Hitler walking around, making speeches, drawing pictures and somehow the rising Nazism in Germany has nothing to do with him. It's just happening outside of his realm.
Worse, John Cusack plays the role as Rob Gordan from High Fidelity. Cusack is a good actor, but this movie takes place in 1918, not 1999. The character is not an angsty record store owner; he's a veteran whose seen more death than most can imagine. The movie doesn't even draw on the relationship between Max and Hitler as fellow veterans.
At the end of the movie you're left with the impression that Hitler was a sad little boy who could have been a great artist if only given half a chance. But instead, he went to the big speech making and killed half of Europe. Doesn't really play well.
For a good movie about Hitler that focuses on both Hitler as a person and a force of history (and a man capable of wooing others to his cause) try to see if the CBS miniseries starring Robert Carlisle of Trainspotting fame is available.
Movie Review: Caricature That Lacks Credibility
Summary: 2 Stars
After watching this movie I was left wondering who the monster was---Hitler-the-failed-artist-misfit or the effete hoity-toity bourgeois art community that was depicted. If the point of the flick was simple character assassination of Adolf, then it fails by presenting him in such caricature as to be hardly recognizable. The producers of this movie should have read The Young Hitler I Knew by August Kubizek, or even Hitler In Vienna 1907-1913 by J. Sidney Jones to flesh out AH's character with some reality. Instead they create a straw man, buffoon, fool, an utterly untalented artist loser who desperately seeks approval. Of course, such a one could never have risen to the dizzying heights of power that his real counterpart did. Except for the tirades and the hair, and of course the later speeches, one would hardly know who was being portrayed. It would have been far more effective had they sought to present a realistic study of Hitler the young bohemian postcard painter (a period of his life that predates the one falteringly portrayed in the film), showing his early fanaticism and unflinching determination. But that would have been much harder to pull off without the risk of appearing sympathetic. Instead, it takes the lazy route and goes for stock moralization and easy answers.
Of course I realize that this is fiction, but when using actual historical characters one should take pains to present them true to life, and not be tempted to rewrite history. Or else why use them at all?
This movie could have been an interesting study of contrasts, of art versus politics, of art as politics, and is not a total failure in that regard. As an idea it had promise, and is worth seeing once, but it fell far short of what it could have been.
© 2009 RAPWreckerds