Der Musterschüler

"Apt Pupil" is well directed, with some interesting themes of power lust and evil feeding on itself, and great acting by Brad Renfro and Sir Ian McKellan, but I was put off by the very loose holds on reality. The plot alone is full of insane coincidences (a kid obsessed with the Holocaust just happens to bump into a Nazi war criminal, and that war criminal just happens to share a hospital room with one of his victims), but even the characterizations are a stretch. Renfro's character is very odd, and there is no given reason for why he is so naturally evil. And while it is hard enough to accept that McKellan would be bursting with evil 40 years later, with no hint of remorse (or even insight) about his past, it is completely ridiculous to assume he would be spending his evenings gassing cats and killing homeless people. The direction and acting make it worth watching, but in the end, I just couldn't take this overly serious movie seriously.

`Apt Pupil', based on the Stephen King novella of the same name, is a wicked little film that delves into an unholy relationship between two evils, one young and hungry, the other old and experienced . . . . and both dangerous. This relationship is what drives the film, and is what ultimately makes `Apt Pupil' a fairly compelling film to watch. The film fails, however, to deliver a satisfying payoff at its conclusion. While there's a lot of patience and care taken to build the story, there's a feeling of incompleteness as `Apt Pupil' eventually grinds towards its ending. `Apt Pupil' takes its audience on a wonderfully acted journey . . . and then stops short of its final destination, as if it couldn't find the final ounce of courage near its end to push beyond good, ordinary film-making and into the realms of film greatness.

`Apt Pupil' is the story of Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro), a seemingly bright, normal, All-American high school student with one secret quirk – he's morbidly fascinated by the Holocaust, viewing it as something dark and cool rather than as something horrifying. He's also incredibly knowledgeable about the Holocaust, which is why he's able to recognize a local old man for what he truly is -- Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellan), a Nazi SS officer wanted for his crimes against humanity. Todd confronts Dussander, telling the old war criminal that he wants to know what happened in the concentration camps – `the stuff they won't tell you in books', as Todd says. Dussander wants nothing to do with this, but faced with having his identity exposed, he is forced to accede to Todd's demands. What follows from there is a malevolent, almost symbiotic relationship that begins to grow and spiral rapidly out of control -- for Todd, it's an introduction into understanding the real face of evil, and for Dussander, it's a reacquaintance with a dark side of his past that he quickly learns to embrace once more. While Todd and Dussander do not necessarily trust one another, they soon realize that they need each other if they want their secrets protected -- namely, Dussander's real identity and Todd's failure to reveal that identity to the proper authorities -- and people are starting to come dangerously close to learning these secrets, such as Todd's parents, and Todd's high school guidance counselor Ed French (David Schwimmer) . . . .

The relationship between Todd and Dussander is the heart of `Apt Pupil', and it's here where the film really shines. Admittedly, the film does open in far too rushed a fashion – it's pretty much Todd immediately confronting Dussander about his true identity; some build-up to such an important moment might've been nice -- but once it stumbles past this rushed opening, it's a joy to watch the cat-and-mouse relationship between Dussander and Todd. Todd thinks he has the upper hand over Dussander, but he literally has no idea about the slumbering evil he's managed to awaken until it's far too late. Meanwhile, Dussander is initially a pitiful man, desperately trying to forget the atrocities he's committed . . . but the pity doesn't last for long. Once Todd forces the old man to acknowledge his past, Dussander realizes that he likes what he used to be – a monster. Both Renfro and McKellan are fascinating to watch as their respective characters; Renfro because he's so chillingly believable, McKellan because he runs the gamut from being a pathetic drunk to a devil reborn. Both characters struggle throughout the film to dominate one another, and that conflict – which, in essence, is the foundation of their twisted relationship – is what sets `Apt Pupil' apart from other films as something worth watching.

The main problem with `Apt Pupil', though, is that besides acting as a wonderful showcase for this evil relationship . . . `Apt Pupil' doesn't really go anywhere. In particular, the character of Todd Bowden doesn't go anywhere. More the fault of the script than of Brad Renfro, Todd never comes across as depraved. He's certainly evil – as some of the acts he commits in the film certainly show – but part of the film is about how monstrously depraved the Holocaust was. Todd is portrayed as a monster, someone who born in a different place and time certainly could have been a Nazi war criminal, but he does nothing to show that monstrous nature. I kept waiting for Todd to commit that one unspeakable act of pure evil that would truly make him Dussander's `Apt Pupil' – and never saw it. Without this unspeakable act, the audience never gets the opportunity to see that Todd really learned anything from Dussander. (Todd's slightly sick and twisted? No kidding! We knew that in the opening credits!) There's a few other things that bring down `Apt Pupil' as well; there's a chance meeting between Dussander and a hospital patient that seems entirely too fortuitous and coincidental; and the casting of David Schwimmer as the guidance counselor is just way, way off the mark.

The ending of the film `Apt Pupil' is markedly different from that of Stephen King's novella. In fact, the novella contains the `unspeakable act of pure evil' that I wanted in the film. Perhaps if I'd been unaware of the existence of the original novella, I wouldn't have felt that the film was missing anything . . . but I doubt it. `Apt Pupil' is a good, solid film that touches on some disturbing issues – but it could've been great, had it chosen to closely examine evil instead of just scratching its surface. `Apt Pupil' is a decent, if somewhat incomplete, movie. Grade: B-

I read the novella in high school, and I found it scary, disturbing, and a real grabber - I couldn't put it down until I was done.

As for the movie version, I'm sorry to say it doesn't work. While there have been much worse Stephen King adaptations, this is still pretty weak. Someone else here said it's been sugarcoated, and I agree. It's been watered down so much, that character's actions that were easy to understand in the book become "Whaa - why did he do that?" here. The ending is the worst part - though I can understand why they may not have been able to recreate the novella's original ending onscreen, couldn't they have thought of a new ending that was better than the one they used here?

The acting is good, one of the few things that works here.

In short: if you have read the novella, do NOT watch this movie - you'll be horrified in a way the filmmakers didn't intend. The positive comments here seem to come from people who haven't read the novella. I still wouldn't recommend this movie even for non-readers, but if you must watch this movie, I strongly urge you to read the novella after you've seen the movie. It'll really open your eyes (in more ways than one), and you'll see how much better the movie could have been.

The underlying theme Apt Pupil maintains throughout is attention to texts and attention to texts that can inspire and influence but for all the wrong reasons. Apt Pupil does not have a set up; it jumps right into its narrative from the very beginning as close to perfect student Todd Bowden (Renfro) sits there having gone through a lecture on the infamous Holocaust that took place during the 1930s and 40s in Central and Eastern Europe. Todd looks disturbed and yet intrigued at the same time; the opening credits roll after the teacher rubs out 'Jews' written on the chalk board, with the credits doubling up as a montage as Todd goes deeper and deeper into the history of the Holocaust and picks up on lots of information.

From here, Todd has had his mind polluted with a text he has done every attempt to read up on and is now in a different sort of mindset but since we did not know him before the film started, it is his psyche that has been attributed to him. Similarly to the American couple who went on a spree after seeing Badlands; similarly to the French couple who shot and robbed a liquor store after seeing Natural Born Killers and similarly to the hoodlums in Britain who dressed up and beat tramps after seeing A Clockwork Orange, media texts and texts in general can inspire and influence. Todd's story is a study of this and it become doubly dangerous when he realises local neighbour Kurt Dussander (McKellan) is an ex-Nazi in hiding.

From this intriguing set up comes a film that unfolds at a satisfying pace, delivers shocks and the odd surprise whilst maintaining a healthy amount of suspense. The film spends most of its first third informing us that the Holocaust was a 'bad thing' with its trailing off of stories that Kurt delivers to Todd and its dream sequences that Todd must endure. But at the same time, this only further emphasises Todd's fascination and displays how vulnerable he really is. There are two scenes in which Todd hallucinates about the Holocaust; one of which is when he is peering into a window at a dying Jew who cries out for help but Todd awakes in a cold sweat – he didn't enjoy it. The second of which takes place in the shower when he imagines he is a Jew himself. But he snaps out of it and pants in relief it's over.

These reactions display fear and anxiety toward such visions but it is not long before he is treating friends like dirt, participating in animal cruelty and wanting to witness first hand a Nazi drill from the real thing. There are two symmetrical scenes during which both Todd and Kurt partake in animal cruelty emphasising that Todd is perhaps entering the mindset of a Nazi whilst one who has already been there and been one also tries his hand at animal cruelty – disturbingly fitting how it involved an oven. But at this point, Todd has already bordered on the insane since his readings of the subject and the stories of the ex-Nazi have deterred him from the straight and narrow; it echoes the scene in Taxi Driver when Travis pretends to 'shoot' the porn stars on the screen in the cinema – he has seen the filth and the bare bones of the subject first hand and is now building up a fascination; albeit and 'anti' fascination as opposed to Todd's fascination which makes him want to hurt, upset and maim.

And so as the film progresses, so does the intrigue and the deception. One of the films more memorable scenes involves a homeless man who for one reason or another gets in on the blackmail and believes he'll be permitted to stay at Kurt's house given a twist that occurs. Kurt may have other ideas and the scene in which he strokes the man's bald head (probably echoing the way he did for the Jews following their head shaving) is tense and unnerving. But the student/pupil relationship takes a bizarre route and Todd buys Kurt a uniform, demanding to see him in it and demanding a performance – I don't think there is much of a homo-erotic 'gaze' that follows but there is certainly a lot more 'I'll look out for you, you look out for me' emphasis and everything gets a little more 'touchy-feely' if you know what I mean.

Despite, in my opinion, one of the biggest mis-castings in a film from last decade; David Schwimmer turns up with a silly looking moustache and some tacky looking glasses and plays a school counsellor. His presence adds another ingredient to the boiling pot but just when the game looks up in a forgettable scene, Todd is quite literally saved by the bell. Then there are the lingering close ups of the handshakes, the creepy smile and those eyes behind those glasses – is there something we should know? Apt Pupil is engaging and good fun for what it is but there are some sloppy scenes and some incidental occurrences but what good there is, is either nerve jangling, tense or unpredictable.

Stephen King's Apt Pupil, which is part of the novella collection Different Seasons (alongside the stories that inspired The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me), is a valid example of how you don't need things to be openly supernatural to have a good scary tale: a "human" incarnation of pure evil will do just as fine, and few images are more effective than those of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during WWII.

Okay, minor correction: WWII has virtually nothing to do with this story, given it takes place in 1984. There is a Nazi involved, though: his name is Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen), but he's been living quite peacefully in your average American neighborhood under the name Arthur Denker. However, a young boy named Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro from the Grisham-inspired The Client) manages to uncover the old man's real identity thanks to some thorough research and tells him about the discovery. The unexpected thing is, Todd doesn't want to report Dussander to the police. What he really wants is to learn everything - and he repeatedly emphasizes the word "everything" - about the former Nazi's work under Hitler's regime. Soon enough, the perverse bond between the two starts affecting the boy's grades and behavior, and Dussander isn't unaffected either: somewhere deep inside lies the old Nazi, and that part of his personality would like to come out and play.

The film's screenplay sticks quite faithfully to the basic idea of King's story and reproduces some of the most famous scenes verbatim (except for one moment of animal cruelty, which had to be softened), although a few subplots are excised, presumably for the sake of length and pace. The downside of that is an occasional lack of detail, especially when it comes to the development of Renfro's character. Director Bryan Singer, who obviously found himself in an uncomfortable position to begin with, having to live up to the success of The Usual Suspects, makes up for this flaw by constructing a genuinely tense and unnerving atmosphere, adding to the moral ambiguity by highlighting the homosexual subtext already present in the book (when Todd tells Dussander to f*ck himself, the latter replies: "My dear boy, can't you see? We're f*cking each other.").

Acting-wise, the limelight is inevitably placed on the leading duo, even if the supporting cast, which includes fine character actors like Bruce Davison and Elias Koteas, is quite strong (with the exception of David "Ross" Schwimmer, who isn't entirely at ease in a serious role). Renfro's performance is solid and captivating enough, but like his character he is completely overshadowed by the superb, unsettling McKellen, who inhabits the role of Dussander with his usual Shakespearean grandeur. Case in point: the unforgettable moment when the old man is forced to wear an old SS uniform Todd got his hands on. McKellen carries out the assignment with the dignity of a great tragic thespian, nailing the scene as one of the essential samples of his film career.

Apt Pupil distances itself from The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me in that it isn't as accomplished, most notably when it comes to the inevitable book/film comparison. Then again, it tells a much darker story, which asks the audience to root for a psychotic teenager and an aging Nazi. Flawed it may be, but it certainly is interesting (not to mention carried by an astounding McKellen). It is indeed a different season.