Invencible

I just saw this touching movie at the Stockholm Film Festival, and I have to say Herzog is still as poignant, charming and direct in his storytelling as ever. Not afraid to cast people who just have pure feelings, no plastic acting-by-the-book moves and more than one and a half expressions on their faces.

The frame of the story is a little jewish village in Poland in 1932, where a big family lives a poor but happy life. The eldest and the youngest sons, Zishe and Benjamin, mocked by some people as the thick and the thin, lead us through thick and thin of their lives. Based on a true story, the legend of the Invincible Zishe Breitbart, played bravely and somewhat charmingly naive by Jouko Ahola (the 1997 and 1999 strongest man), still is told among the jewish people. A man who accepted his physical strength as the gift of God, and thereby felt obliged to define his goal by that call. When he gets hired at a varieté in Berlin, he finds himself confronted with the Nazis, his strange employer Jan Hanussen, played by the impressive Tim Roth, who wants to sell him off as Siegfried, a blond, germanic hero who can even lift an elephant. It is obvious that Zishe has to decide whether he wants to deny his identity or rather become a Samson and fight for who he is. A touch of romance is added by the real life concert pianist Anna Gourari, who is almost over-acting, almost resembling a silent movie actress.

A very international, very special cast. Told in a simple, poetic and beautifully photographed way, Herzog manages to make you overlook the only downside of the whole movie: the bad language, german spiced english.

For people who care more about the persons than the action, this movie comes highly recommended.

No director has more fascinating stories to tell than Werner Herzog. This one is about a Jewish blacksmith who finds his way from his village in Poland into a German propaganda show at a Berlin theatre which features a grim but locally beloved hypnotist, who claims he has seen into the future of Germany. The year is 1932, Hitler has yet to come to power.

For about fifty minutes, Herzog is able to keep the viewer in his/her seat. He stages a very eccentric show which at times allows for audience participation. During a hypnotism scene, Herzog has chosen the camera angle to be a P.O.V. of the volunteer. Tim Roth faces the camera, and as he starts to work his magic, it is us the viewers who are being hypnotized. But while the show goes on, the spectacle disappears. Invincible looses direction and starts becoming draggy quite quickly. Tim Roth's character is presented to us with so much flair and presentation that we are led to believe that the story is heading more in his direction, but it doesn't. Invincible might have worked better if the movie was about him. The last section of the film is clunky and overlong, and it feels like another movie. When looked at in its entirety, Invincible is almost a docu/drama. Some parts are very interesting but, it lacks important cinematic ingredients; the most important of which is structure.

Invincible could use a major reworking. It is clumsy in direction, unable to generate much emotion, and does not have much to say. This is NOT one of Herzog's more impressive works

Werner Herzog has always been one of my favorite filmmakers and it was hard to keep up with him when I joined the military so this was the first film of his I have seen in a theater since "Fitzcarraldo". I did like this film but its clearly not one of his best. As I watched this film I could not help but think of the other actors Herzog has used in the past and how they could be cast in this film. Of course Tim Roth would have had Klaus Kinski in his role. Eva Mattes would be Marta who's played by Anna Gourari and how many times has Herzog used a non actor in the lead? The cinematography is terrific and the period is beautifully detailed. The music is by Hans Zimmer and he is a legend but his score doesn't evoke the same haunting sounds that Popol Vuh did. I didn't mind the fact that Jouko Ahola as Zishe cannot act. He really isn't suppose to. Herzog is going for a more realistic response to the complexities of what is going on around him. Herzog has done this before with Bruno S. Tim Roth is excellent and I also liked the charm of Anna Gourari. And its always good to see Udo Kier! This film is certainly not up to "Aguirre" or "Nosferatu" or "Fitzcarraldo" but it is better than "Kaspar Hauser". Not great but its pure Herzog.

Zishe is a Jew living in Poland and working with his family as a blacksmith. When a fight breaks out in a local restaurant, Zishe uses his impressive strength to fend off his attackers but finds himself facing a bill for the damage. To make the money to cover the cost, Zishe enters a local circus to challenge the resident strongman. Easily winning, he draws the attention of a talent scout who offers him the chance for more work in Germany. Despite the reservations of his parents, Zishe travels to Berlin where he joins the high-class show of mystic Hanussen. Playing to mostly film stars and members of the ascending Nazi party, Zishe plays the role of an Aryan strongman. Initially happy to do so, the deception and denial of self gradually eats at him as he performs on stage.

I may not be the most cine-literate person in the world but I know enough to give any film from Werner Herzog a try to see what happens. With this film I was interested from the very start as it throws up an interesting "true" story that I had never heard before. It opens well but it only manages to hang together until the middle of the film, at which point the direction of the story starts to badly waver and, with a mostly amateur cast and some clunky dialogue, it cannot do anything to really turn it around. After a while it does become dull and rather aimless which was a shame given the potential that it showed early on. The problems of narrative will probably worry Herzog's fans less than the casual viewer though but what will surprise them is how visually ordinary it all is. It all looks good and has some nice use of locations but generally it lacks imagination or the flair for the unusual, with only the out-of-place use of the crabs sticking in the mind as an image.

The cast are mixed, with some good performances and some terrible ones. Ahola falls somewhere in the middle; he is not the most expressive man in the world but he has a good presence and his gentle strongman performance works for the majority – it is only in the latter stages where more is asked of him where he comes up wanting. Roth is impressive of course and he does add a much needed professionalism into the film when given the chance. The rest of the cast are mostly average at best – not a major problem but few people will defend the bland and flat deliveries of people like Gourari and Wein – both of whom come over as if they would struggle to read a traffic sign in a convincing manner.

Overall this is an OK film at best – starting with potential but fading away long before the end. The performances are mostly average but what is more surprising is that Herzog doesn't really make the film his own – some of it looks interesting but it lacks the visual style that I had hoped for and it doesn't offer a great deal in its place.

A film broadcast at 2am on channel 4 and starring Tim Roth ! I remember the last movie broadcast on channel 4 with Tim Roth in the credits which was THE WAR ZONE , one of the few movies I've regretted watching due to the depressing content and since INVINCIBLE centres around the birth of Nazism I wasn't expecting too many uplifting moments but I certainly recommend Werner Herzog's strange and interesting drama based on a true story

!!!! SPOILERS !!!!

In a Polish town the circus arrives and blacksmith's son Zishe Brietbart beats the strongman in a competition and impressed with Zishe's physical strength a theater agent signs him up where he performs at Berlin's Cabaret Of The Occult which is owned by Danish nobleman Hanussen . Since it's 1932 the Nazis are on the rise so Hanussen reinvents Zishe as " Siegfried " and shows his predominantly Nazi audience the physical strength of this Ayran . Hanussen shows this as proof of Ayran superiority while at the same time impressing his audience with his own occult powers . However despite his own naked opportunist agenda Hanussen has a secret of his own that he doesn't want known to his audience ...

Some people may claim how ridiculously ironic it is having a Jew pretending to be an Ayran strongman in order to put forward a racist agenda but this I feel is the whole point of the story which one has a feeling has been turned into a fable rather than a story that has stuck to rigid facts . Certainly the most bitter irony about the rise of Nazism is that one of the architects of Nazi philosophy Alfred Rosenberg had a Jewish name while Hitler , Heydrich and Eichmann were of Jewish descent themselves ( Though technically not Jews - According to tradition if your mother wasn't a Jew neither are you ) so people with an irony deficency will have a problem understanding this beautiful and intelligent film

And I don't apologise for thinking this is a beautiful and intelligent film , it might not have the reputation of Herzog's other films like the painfully overrated FITZCARRALDO but it's one I can certainly recommend for a mainstream audience . However there is one serious flaw that stands out and that is the casting of Jouko Ahola as Zishe . You do get the gut instinct that Herzog wanted to cast a certain Austrian body builder turned politician in the lead role and it's impossible to watch Ahola without being reminded of Big Arnie except Ahola is an even more wooden actor and his lack of thespian skills is made even more obvious when he's playing opposite Tim Roth is one of his most impressive roles which slightly damages the movie