Max

Not very long ago several art historians sought an American publisher for a catalogue of paintings by Adolf Hitler that had survived the Gotterdamerung in the Berlin bunker and the acquisitive hordes of Russian occupiers, perhaps the greatest conquering locusts of modern times. No one would publish the book and several reasons were proffered. The most interesting was that it would be virtually obscene to examine a human side of the twentieth century's greatest monster (Stalin ranks up there too but this isn't the place for that digression).

Why shouldn't every aspect of Hitler's life be open for examination, including his paintings? Hitler was a human being: his younger years and his attempts to become an artist are part of the probably ultimately impenetrable mystery about his development. Let's study everything about him.

Director/Writer Menno Meyjes's "Max" brings the battle-scarred, thirty-year-old Austrian, Adolf Hitler, to turbulent 1918 Munich where he seeks to make sense of the battered city and country while pursuing his dream (fantasy, actually) of becoming a respected and original artist. So much of the film is true. The corporal, still in the army, largely but not exclusively painted the detailed but uninspired and flat urban scenes bought by tourists. Meyjes also has Hitler drawing his ideas about what would later be National Socialist iconography, a reflection of his increasing obsession witn politics..

"Max", a fictional character, is a womanizing, married art dealer. Max Rothman, like Hitler is a former soldier. Rothman literally gave his right arm for "Kaiser und Vaterland," but he seems to accept his sacrifice without deep bitterness. John Cusack as Rothman, the avatar of an emerging German Expressionism, is excellent as he enjoys his pre-Bauhaus mansion while seeking every opportunity to steal away from his lovely and devoted wife, Nina (well-played by Molly Parker) to exercise his libido with his mistress, Liselore (a sultry and cultured young woman whose spirit is captured by Leelee Sobieski).

Hitler shows up delivering a case of bubbly for a Rothman gallery soiree and a conversation begins a weird friendship. Max wants Hitler to be a better artist which in his view is synonymous with being a better man. What a project! Noah Taylor is intense, on fire, as the future fuehrer. Can this bantering Odd Couple seem real when we know what the future holds for Hitler and for Jewish families like the Rothmans who, both in this film and to a large degree in the Germany of the Versailles Treaty, had no inkling that anti-Semitism was being stoked and would emerge rampant before very long? Would we never have heard of the monster Hitler had he been accorded respect (and money) as a painter? That's the film's truly superficial question. Hitler's life wasn't that reductionist.

My answer is that this film should be absorbed as a bifurcated experience. As drama, the acting is compelling. The direction is strong and one scene in which Hitler's rants are rapidly alternated with a Jewish service is blindingly powerful. As German veterans decry a military defeat and the "Stab in the Back" theory begins its awful climb to a national excuse for losing the war the Rothmans, their children and extended family, seem to enjoy a barely inconvenienced life of sumptuousness. The story works well at that level.

Where it fails is that the projected Hitler-Rothman relationship lacks the depth some have found. More than a few critics have suggested that Meyjes sends a message about blindness because Max can't see the anti-Semitic screeching of Hitler as an adumbration of Germany's future. The real reason Max doesn't take Hitler all that seriously is that he himself isn't a very serious fellow except when he tries to sell art and pursue parallel but antagonistic romantic relationships.

How would a Max Rothman have divined the potential of a miserable, hungry corporal in a city where such fellows were common and where they constituted a public menace as the fear of communists and the shakiness of a wrecked economy brought disorder? Impossible. (A prologue title mentions that 100,000 Jews served in the German Army in World War I. My father was one of them and I recall his recollection of disarming warring, urban civilians and quasi-military bands after the Armistice.)

So Max puts his arm around Hitler, offers to buy him lemonade and tells him he isn't an easy guy to like. That brought one of the few guffaws in the theater today. It's not revelatory cinema, it's silly and superficial. The weakest parts of the film are when Max tries to be a pal to his new find.

Charlie Chaplin had Hitler's number and his impersonation of the by-then Nazi leader is an indelible screen classic, a work of acting genius. Noah Parker's younger Hitler is intense and mesmerizing. I wonder if an Oscar nomination can go to an actor portraying one of the most evil characters in all history, one whose mark leaves deep scars in many living today. I have my doubts. We'll see.

Original, different, flawed, often fascinating, in parts a bit foolish.

7/10.

These are stellar performances by John Cusack and Noah Taylor. The story draws you in such that when the movie abruptly ends, you want to see and hear more. What were Hitler's influences? Was he a product of his environment? Without a doubt, Hitler was an angry man when returning from WWI to nothing. Many were in the same boat. Anti-semitism was alive and well long before Adolf took it and carried it to the extent that he did. And Hitler, like many others, found solice in nationalism.

One criticism of this movie was its depiction that Hitler had developed his emotional oratory skills at a young age. The historical accounts (Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) seemed to indicate that he didn't really find his speaking voice until later. This was 1918 and Hitler is only 29 or 30 years old.

Also, the scene where Taylor riles up an auditorium full of Germans with an anti-semitic speach didn't fit with the rest of his portrayal of a timid, weak-minded, lost-soul, young Hitler. This scene seems to defy the rest of the image of Hitler we are given.

This is not to criticize Noah's portrayal. It is absolutely stunning. He had to have spent hours watching footage of Hitler in action.

This movie leaves you wanting more information. What else made him become the monster presented in the textbooks?

It is unfortunate that the Academy could not pay more attention to the performances in this movie, as both Taylor and Cusack both deliver. I believe that Hollywood has a fear of treading anywhere close to this subject matter except to deliver stereotypical portrayals of the historical people and events.

Overall, I would say the film wasn't bad. Full marks for embracing the radical concept that Hitler was a human being.

Reading many of the comments posted here, I would say that the film has been somewhat misunderstood. Understandably, the viewers focus on the portrayal of Hitler. But the film is titled "Max", not "Adolf." Max, the art dealer, is the focal character of the story, not Hitler. I think that the film shows the blindness of so many Germans in the interwar years, people who saw what they wanted to see in Hitler and ignored the rest. Max saw Hitler as an amusing ex-soldier artist and futurist, and brushed off the ideology underlying his futurist visions. Max is emblematic of an army that saw his desire to rearm and ignored the ideology that would strip the army of its historic identity, of business owners who saw his committment to controling labor but ignored the ideology which would also put a stranglehold on business, of ordinary Germans who saw a strong leader to deal with their country's problems but ignored his desire for war and conquest. As recently pointed out in Woody Allen's "Anything Else", there were German Jews who supported Hitler, because they saw a strong leader. To me, "Max" is the story of the blindness that overcame so many Germans, blindness that paved the way for Hitler's rise to power.

I've read in a few comments that Hitler claims, in the film, to have not been anti-Semitic. That is not correct. Rather, as he says in the barracks, he opposes "emotional" anti-Semitism. In his mind, anti-Semitism should be based on "scientific" fact rather than raw emotions. To him, it is a self-evident truth arrived at logically by observing the Jews and their ways. This is historically correct. His big anti-Semitic speech at the end of the film is taken straight out of Mein Kampf, and shows this approach.

This movie was fantastic if you are open minded enough to view it with a "what if" attitude. Of course there are plenty of people out there complaining because they cannot separate fiction from reality and entertain the idea of Hitler having taken a different path. However, this movie is worth seeing. Great performances by Cusack(Max Rothman) and Noah Taylor(Adolph Hitler).

Also people always wonder how Hitler could be so influential if he was so whacko and the movie gives a great insight as to how it might have happened.

If for no other reason, the movie is worth seeing just to hear the line "Come on Hitler, I'll buy you a lemonade..."

I never would have guessed I'd hear that line in a million years.

The tag line, "Art + Politics = Power," should give people some idea of the gravity of the film. This role may have been the Oscar that slipped through Cusack's hands due to the controversy surrounding the release. The sad part is, it was started by people who had not even seen the film, and when they had seen it, they retracted their statements. The movie was very well-executed and tasteful, and it was refreshing to see Cusack lose himself in a character. He does well with complexity, and it shows here.

Noah Taylor made a particularly realistic (and as a result particularly unsettling) performance as Hitler. Definitely see this film and don't expect blockbuster two-dimensional acting and predictable plot twists. Watch with a glass of wine and a group of friends who will explore the aspects and finer points with you. It's a conversational piece if nothing else, but one that will leave you on a tangent of what-ifs for quite some time.