Mefisto

Another disturbing film about the complicity of ordinary people in fascism, which explores similar territory to "Cabaret", "The Conformist", "The Leopard" and "The Remains of the Day". It argues that fascism demonstrates how difficult it is to separate one's public and private roles and beliefs from politics. The title character, an actor, starts to realise how his "make believe" public role has very real, tragic consequences. In this sense, the film has merit beyond its superb acting and other technical features: it subverts the liberal pieties of Hollywood drama which resolve all conflict within the confines of the existing social system. It undercuts the banality of much film criticism which says it is "just entertainment" with "no subtext"- as if produced in a social/historical vacuum with no point of view. In short, the film argues that artists, like everyone else, have to take some responsibility and assume a critical role or risk being haunted, like Mephisto, by the awareness that they have become pawns in a dangerous game.

This is not as deeply felt as Tarkovsky, nor as ambiguously sketched as Resnais. It works from a 'real world', a historic one at that. But it's a good film because it's committed to clearly spin and align the different layers of self.

The story is Faust, both the film and the play-within. Our film is about an actor who sells his soul for a gilded life on the stage, the play is where he is Mephisto - not Faust - and tries to reason with his decision to be Faust, and a third layer is about an era, Nazi Germany in the early years that was also about a Faustian bargain and staged images of power. The protagonist is an actor from the German stage and plays one. It has a Hungarian filmmaker at the helm who knows probably too well the type of life from the Eastern Bloc.

So this succeeds where Hollywood's Cabaret felt contrived and false, because everyone is a step closer to the nervous soul of that world.

Something is quite brilliantly handled here, and I believe it's this; one of the conceits of our actor, a leftist in the early days, is for a Peoples Theater that directly involves and agitates into action. Of course that's all gone when the Nazis come into power, with their Wagnerian notions on the ideal and the pure. He has to do Hamlet, the ambition however is still the same, a play that involves the audience, but in this environment seems ludicrous and hypocritical. It's a state-sponsored event after all.

Now we see several excerpts of Faust, and more shots of our man backstage in pale Mephisto make-up acting the role in real life, but we never see Hamlet. We never see just how he intended this Peoples Theater. We skip to the curtain call and rapturous audience applause.

But of course, the main thrust of the film is that of a man, and later society, that simply doesn't know where the stage ends and life begins. His way of involving the people, in a broad sense, is acting out in this world that is all about posturing and pretending, but doing so in a way that actually saves lives.

The man can thrive in this world, because the world has shifted to align with what he was all along. He doesn't become true, the world becomes as false as he is. It's the stage and lights that shift, so when the narrative planes align for us, we understand that all along he was a decent human being. The chilling finale has him on that stage that is the yawning void where the machinery of self is decided.

Just who controls the lights that he acts to?

Everyone knows the story of Faust: a man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for something. Well, as we learned in the Rolling Stones' song "Sympathy for the Devil", the Prince of Darkness doesn't necessarily appear as a mustachioed red being with a bifurcated tail. In "Mephisto", the Devil appears as an ideology-turned-governmental-system: Nazism. And in this case, the Devil doesn't request your soul, but rather a favor: that you work for it. Such is the fate of actor Heinz Hoefgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Hoefgen has felt shame all his life and has often worn white make-up, as if to hide behind it. But the Nazis make him feel powerful, and so he works for them; metaphorically, he sells his soul to them.

"Mephisto" proves not only the mastery of Germany's film industry, but also what a great director Istvan Szabo is (also shown in "Sunshine" and "Being Julia").

...and be careful what you wish for. A German actor, in the 1930s, against best advice and with only himself in mind, continues to pursue his thespian fantasies while his friends and colleagues flee.

We're all familiar with the archetypal Faustian Bargain, where, in exchange for your soul, the devil grants your wishes. But Why might someone might want to make such a bargain? I mean, there are the common lusts and desires; but, the question still remains: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Mephisto suggests an answer. And it's not to be found in evil machinations of the Prince of Darkness and his minions, or any such nonsense. It's found in the human psyche.

Brilliantly played by Klaus Brandauer (Out of Africa, White Fang), Hendrik Hoefgen is a man haunted by insecurity. At the core of his being is shame. From the age of twelve, he tells his wife, he's always felt ashamed. So he always wears a mask, because he dare not expose his true identity to anyone, for fear of rejection. To hide himself and to medicate his feelings, he adopts a strategy that is all too common: he overcompensates. He buries himself in his work, identifies himself with his work, and becomes an empty creature playing to the crowds, a social chameleon who's a nobody adroitly playing a role. He constantly works on and perfects his social image, alert to the smallest hint of disapprobation in anyone. In this endeavor, his practiced talent of self deception aids him: He says to himself, after he's sold out to the Nazis, that he's satisfied with his success, because it means that many people love him. He's the perfect actor, even for himself. He's a public persona, nothing more. In the flower of his fame, he's a hollow shell. Mephisto is the most brilliantly produced drama on this subject I've ever seen. It's absolutely enthralling. I highly recommend it as one of the best films ever made, by anyone.