Amén

"Amen," a film based on the largely accurate account of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's multiple attempts to alert the Vatican to the ongoing highly efficient mass slaughter of Jews and others - for which he bore no small responsibility as a technician facilitating efficient genocide - is well done with excellent acting. Yet in the end Costa-Gravas's film is somewhat unsatisfying and not sufficiently responsive to the viewer's need to know what Gerstein was all about. Why?

"Amen" begins with the Nazi euthanasia program aimed at murdering retarded and mentally ill Germans. A campaign, spearheaded by both Protestant and Catholic clerics and their flocks, forced the regime to end the killings. Some have argued that this sole widespread public rejection of Nazi homicidal machinations might well have been repeated if Germans were alerted - internally or through specific denunciations by the pope and foreign leaders - of the fate of deported Jews and those rounded up in conquered territories. "Amen's" Kurt Gerstein and his priest friend both believe that would have happened.

That argument is at best questionable and, more likely, reflects the human need for the wish to spawn the thought. Whether one accepts the Goldenhagen thesis of mass complicity by Germans in the Holocaust, the fact remains that when the slaughter began Germany was at war and, as a character in "Amen" notes, defending the Reich and winning the war, to say nothing of staying clear of what would be seen as treasonous ideas, was the only realistic option.

Kurt Gerstein is a mystery. As Hannah Arendt wrote of Eichmann as an example of evil's often banal incarnation, historian Saul Friedlander described Gerstein years ago in terms of the ambiguity of good. Gerstein sincerely and at risk to his life tried to warn the Vatican of the Nazi death camps. But he also worked efficiently to make those camps operationally efficient. "Amen's" Gerstein is tortured but also highly compartmentalized. He gives quick and accurate advice to improve destruction of the "units," as the Jews were referred to, and then tries to prevent use of the Zyklon B gas he helped develop with almost unbelievable declarations that shipments are defective and must be buried.

This film owes its origin not so much to Friedlander's compelling account but to Rolf Hochhuth's controversial (still so after many years) "The Deputy," presented as a play to the outrage of many. Hochhuth portrayed Pope Pius XII as insensitive and unwilling to use his moral authority to challenge an extermination program he knew to be in progress.

In the film Gerstein is aided by a young Jesuit priest whose remarkable moral and physical courage was demonstrated by a few, or perhaps too few, clerics who knew what was happening. The pope is shown as a remote, unemotional figure. The now standard explanations for the Vatican's unwillingness to take on the Nazis are included in catalogue format. Allied unwillingness to bomb the death camps or take in refugee Jews are recited almost for the record. Complex questions still debated are reduced to the equivalent of sound bites. They need no repeating here.

Hochhuth's thesis which outraged many decades ago and which still brings angry denunciations has been partially rehabilitated by scholarly works such as John Cornwell's provocatively titled study, "Hitler's Pope," an exaggeration which belies the serious research and analysis within the book's covers.

Cornwell's pope is personally unpleasant, haughtily autocratic, rabidly fearful of Communism, at least mildly anti-Semitic and certainly emotionally and politically pro-German if not pro-Hitler (he wasn't that). The Pope Pius of "Amen" lacks the depth a more accurate and compelling portrayal would have provided.

The strongest moments in the film are those briefly showing the efficiency of the death camps focusing less on the victims, most of whom aren't shown, but rather on the chillingly competent technicians and logisticians without whose efforts millions could not have been murdered.

Director Costa-Gravas deserves much credit for bringing a difficult to tell complex story to the screen. Ultimately, however, we know less about Kurt Gerstein than we need to and the Vatican, from pope to bureaucrat, is too colorless. Was Gerstein a victim or a collaborator with a schizophrenic sense of morality? Even scholar Friedlander couldn't answer that question. Did the Vicar of Christ shame his church's vision of Jesus by putting political expediency ahead of moral imperative? That is a very alive issue today but "Amen" gives us a largely one-dimensional Supreme Pontiff.

The cast is unknown to American viewers but all act with varying but generally strong ability. Gerstein and the Jesuit priest are especially well portrayed as men of deep conviction.

7/10

I was very surprised by reading so many bad comments about 'Amen.'. This is a breathtaking movie about a German officer who realises what they are actually doing to the Jews and who afterwards tries everything to prevent this murdering. Ulrich Tukur gives one hell of a performance. You really see this man suffering under the killings he cannot prevent.

Another perfect performance is given by the priest who tries to help the German officer. Mathieu Kassovitz (who also played the male leading role in 'Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain')is very convincing in his role.

I think this movie is highly underrated. Costa-Gavras has made an important movie with 'Amen.' which looks at the holocaust-tragedy from another point of view which is seldom showed. The movie gives a true although unbelievable answer at one of the most important questions concerning the holocaust: didn't anyone saw this coming? Couldn't anyone prevent this from happening?

If you really want to know the answers to this questions, you certainly have to watch 'Amen.'. This movie should at least have an 8 and I'll give you two reasons why: one because the story is unique and magnificently told; and two because the two leading actors are giving the performance of a lifetime. Highly recommendable!

9/10

'Amen' is a recent release examining the relationship between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. We follow Kurt Gerheim (an admirable performance by Ulrich Tukur), a perfectly Aryan, protestant SS-Officer who tries to speak out against Nazi attrocities, and Ricardo Fontana, a young catholic cleric (played to the utmost by the marvellous Matthieu Kassovitz) who joins him in his fight. Ricardo's dissolusionment in the Church (which acts more as an institution for self-preservation than for good in this film) leads him to irrational and useless acts which do not conflict with his morality, rather than to more useful acts which do. The interest lies with the deterioration of Ricardo's faith in the Church's moral station and that of Gerheim's faith in his fatherland. Both find solace in the hope that they will put an end to the holocaust.

This is noticeably a continental European film, with brilliant direction and dazzlingly good acting, more Gosford Park than Schindler's List in terms of pace. Indeed, this slow pace only highlights the frustration felt by the two main characters as they are continually beaten down by the well-meaning leaders of their Churches.

Frustration, interestingly, is the only lasting emotion inspired in the viewer. Dr Germaine Greer attributed this, wrongly, I believe, to the fact that the film "doesn't seem to go anywhere", highlighting the leitmotiv frame of a so-called 'goods' train on its way to an unseen destination as a representation of this lack of direction. I would venture to suggest, though, that a conclusion is precisely what the director, the justly renowned Costa Garvas, was trying to avoid - he does not straightjacket his characters plainly as either heroes or villains and the film closes with the issues of morality it has raised left open-ended. It is meant to be thought provoking, not moving; the viewer is meant to conclude for himself what was morally correct and what was not.

At the end of the film, I found myself wondering which of the characters was most right - for none, it would seem, have a sole handle on the moral high-ground and there are arguments that promote each character's actions over another's. Whatever way you see this film and whatever conclusion you draw, it is a production which will not let you sleep easy until you have been challenged on many issues of morality.

The new movie from Costa-Gavras is as believable as his former ones: Z, The Confession, State of Siege, Missing. Perhaps his tale about the role of the Catholic Church can offer some doubts to Europeans and North-Americans subscribers of IMDB, but people who lived in Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) can agree that there are coherency. In my country we had a lot of missing or killed Catholic priests and nuns. Riccardo Fontana represents them. Some bishops (De Nevares, Hesayne, Novak, perhaps another one) fought for human rights. But the official Church, including the papal nuncio, the rest of the bishops, and specially the "military vicars" (who gave "spiritual comfort" to torturers and pilots who threw human bodies to the River Plate) where in the same role that Pio XII and the Vatican staff. It is not an attack to Roman Catholics. Usually, the religious hierarchies are always in the side of the political power. You can see muslim priests giving spiritual comfort to terrorists, as rabbies in the Israel Army do to soldiers who killed a Palestinian family. "Our" soldiers are always dispensed from the observance of the Commandments.

Thoughtful and brooding film with excellent interpretations and horrible events . The picture talks an officer Gestapo named Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) in charge of Zyklon B , a deadly chemical gas used for killing Jews in the death's showers from concentration camps as Treblinka , Sorbibor , Auschwitz , Majanek , Manthausen ,.... , Gerstein contacts a Jesuit priest (Mathieu Kassovitz) who's related to a Vatican Cardenal (Michael Duchaussoy) and his father results to be Pope's assistant . He denounces and explains Pope Pio XII (Marcel Iures) the situation of the Jews's genocide .

The pic is correctly based on historic deeds and famous personages as Pio XII and Nazi chiefs who don't appear in the film but they're continuously named as Goering , Goebbles , Himmler , Eichmann ,thus as notorious events as Stalingrado (1943) where Nazis have the first important defeat and the bombing strikes over the Germany cities (Berlin , Dresde) . The movie is based on a play by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth which started a lot of heated discussions and arguments after its first release in 1963. The film blends drama , tension , historical events and in spite of the runtime is two hours and some isn't boring , nor dreary but happens enough interesting deeds . The Vatican did not give a permission to shoot the film in their buildings. After searching a scenery of adequate size for the scenes taking place in the Vatican, Costa-Gavras finally chose Europe's largest building, the House of the People in Bucharest . Some of the outdoor scenes were shot in Mogosoaia Palace, some fourteen kilometers northwest of Bucharest. The movie attained quite polemic but there's an accusation to Catholic Church for passivity on the crimes and mass slaughter . I really think that didn't have but lack of forecast . The motion picture was well directed by Constantine Costa Gravas who at all his films always gets controversy and dispute . Rating : Above average . Well worth seeing .