Le roi des aulnes

This 1996 film, which was not released in the U.S. until 2000 in the rental market, offers a fresh German perspective of World War II. It puts a more human face on the people of the Third Reich, much in the same way as ‘Das Boot'. We are used to depictions of German soldiers as brutally evil, soulless killing machines (and there is a bit of that here) but this film mostly presents a softer more balanced portrayal.

This is the story of Abel, an affable simpleton from France with a love of children and animals (no, there are no undertones of pedophilia). Prior to WWII, he is wrongly accused and convicted of child molestation. While working in the work camps, he is captured by the Germans and through a series of events ends up as a prisoner of war worker in a training school for Hitler youth. He is emotionally seduced by the romantic notions of Hitler's national socialism and the great devotion to the fatherland that is being taught there. And of course, he loves working with the boys. The Germans notice this and how much the boys like him as well, so they ask him to recruit more boys for the school from the local countryside. Things go along well until the Russians invade and the only defense of the school must be made by the students (who are well trained in the art of war).

This is a terrific story that gives us a more realistic look inside Germany during the war. No, it wasn't an idyllic free society. But it wasn't exactly a factory for mechanized inhuman killers as it has been routinely portrayed either. We come to understand that what we considered evil was being presented to the children in terms that seemed good and noble. They felt as if they were on an idealistic quest, not on a diabolical mission of subjugation.

The direction of this film was expertly done. Volker Schlondorff's presentation of the story, though slow moving at times, offered an excellent character study of Abel and was patient in proffering revealing looks at the people and the feelings of those around him.

Malkovich is fantastic as the naïve and slow witted Abel. He is wonderfully childlike and sincere in his portrayal; reminiscent of his role in ‘Of Mice and Men'. This is the best I can remember him in quite some time.

This is a poignant and compelling film of substance. I rate it a 9/10. The sophisticated viewer will enjoy it.

Known in English as "The Ogre" this has got to be John Malkovich's finest film to date. He plays an ignorant man, Abel, living in a small town at the dawn of the Nazi movement. He seems to be mentally slow, but emotionally heightened as has a great passion for the vitality of the children in the town. He is fond of photographing, especially children. However, due to a mis-understanding, because the people of the small town are so ignorant and afraid of the quiet lumbering Abel, he is sentenced to jail (undeservedly) for the crime of molesting a child. He is transferred to help with the war effort in France, and eventually comes to work for the Nazi party, "recruiting" children for the cause. He, however, does not seem to know what the Nazis stand for, or why he shouldn't be taking in children. He cares for the children as if they were his own, and is eventually persecuted for harbouring a young Jewish boy, which is when he begins to realise the ramifications of his plight.

A brilliantly scripted film (filmed in English despite the foreign origin). A must see. It saddens me, though that it is so difficult to find, and that it was never released in the US (as far as I know).

-jjj

One published reviewer said that Goring's character was written, and played, for comic effect. This complaint sounded plausible, but a glance in Encyclopedia Britannica reassures our confidence in the production's respect for authenticity. It suggests that Volker Spengler's characterization may be on the mark.

During Hitler's Putsch in 1923, Goring sustained a painful injury whose relief by means of morphine turned him into a drug addict nearly the rest of his life. This influence, in turn, made him "alternately elated or depressed; he was egocentric and bombastic, delighting in flamboyant clothes and uniforms, decorations, and exhibitionist jewelry." We see all these traits in Spengler's scenes, e.g. in his drunken alternation between a tirade and a blue funk at the fact that someone else had shot a stag that he wanted to shoot. When a soldier enters to bring him some really bad news, Goring is already so gloomy that he barely raises his hand from the table to salute, and his "Heil Hitler" is just a slurred grunt.

The article also establishes his corpulence and luxuriousness, to a point resented by his colleagues in the party. "His hunting interests enabled him to obtain a vast forest estate in the Schorfheide, north of Berlin, where from 1933 he developed a great baronial establishment" called Carinhall, full of artistic war booty, to which he retired whenever he could.

The film showed Goring as an often jovial man given, like Hitler, to occasional fits of imperious screaming. This behavior, according to one book I read recently, was to be expected of any top leader of the Third Reich not merely as a habit but as a deliberate technique. People outside of Germany were slow to take Hitler seriously as a threat because this conduct was so strange to them. They did not realize that German culture of the time regarded it as a standard part of the fatherly role. Therefore, as Hitler understood well, the more he screamed and shouted at his countrymen, the more closely they would identify him as a father figure and the embodiment of Der Vaterland.

Many superstitious beliefs have been associated with precious stones. The novel explains that Goring was not unique in imagining that plunging his fingers into a bowl of gems would drain away nervous energy and uncomfortable emotions. Other sources recount that when Hugo von Hofmannsthal's first poems appeared, under a pseudonym, they were so heavy with sensuous Weltschmerz that one critic declared they must have been written by an opulent old man while dipping his fingers in jewels. (He would soon be surprised that the poet was still a youth). So even this strange indulgence of Goring is in keeping with the ambient culture among those few who could afford the experience.

One could say much, much more about this complex film, but perhaps this elucidation of just one minor aspect suggests the multilayered care with which it has been put together.

John Malkovich is doing a fine role here, as expected, and the movie depicts Europe around 1940 from the viewpoint of an emotionally challenged French orphan. You might have thought from the plot that it is about pedophiles or something similar. It is not. This guy moves from "prison" to prison, while happily doing the work assigned to him, all the time seeing the world as no one sees it. All his good deeds result in punishments and all his bad deeds make almost no impression on him. He perseveres in both.

The movie is spanning a few years of time and the rhythm is slow, as one would expect from a film made from a book, and, while a little boring and depressing, it is a nice movie.

Bottom line: imagine Forrest Gump in Europe. No humour, no hope, no cares in the world. Oh, except the war. ;)

Three actors that I love are here: John Malkovich, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Gottfried John. There is also Dieter Laser, doing a role like only him can do. It's the work of a fine expert in cinematographic art, Volker Schlöndorff, who, in his youth, was the assistant of Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais, three huge talents. Schlöndorff's "The Tin Drum"(1979) is his masterpiece but, "The Ogre" too is also a great achievement and, this especially because of Malkovich, he is a human-locomotive for any film in each he is the lead. When he has a small role or just a cameo, he steals that film.