This pitch-black absurdist and surrealist comedy about the legacy of German guilt for the deaths of 6 million Jews is surprisingly funny and accessible -- for what is essentially a hyper-low budget experimental film about some very depressing ideas.
There are echoes of Bunuel and Beckett, and the dialogue is witty and often nonsensical on a literal level. But it never feels self-serious, self-righteous or 'good for you' in the way you might expect from an obtuse black and white film about a man tortured by the concept of responsibility and the holocaust.
Looking for a way to block his pain and sense of terrible responsibility, Nile drinks 40 pints of beer a day. If he drinks enough all the dead Jews who haunt him disappear for him for the day. But then at night they come back. He goes to a doctor who suggests he switch to drinking schnapps – better for forgetting. Each shot of schnapps will let Nile forget about one Jew. 20 shots in a bottle, so each bottle will let him forget 20. Nile just has to drink 300,000 bottle of schnapps and he will be able to finally, completely forget. So the doctor writes him a prescription.
That terrifically realized scene really captured what I admire and enjoy about the film. It's very funny and vaguely insane on the surface level, but there are deadly serious themes and ideas underneath the almost Monty Python level weirdness.
I hope it someday gets a DVD or streaming release that would allow it to be seen by a wider audience. It certainly has a critical reputation that would warrant that.
