Max

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.

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.

First impressions can be deadly. Promises broken can cause real pain. Watch what you say and do because you never know who's watching. As a mainline protestant I believe that man, while he may strive to be good is essentially evil. `The road to hell is paved with good intentions,' if you will. I believe jealousy, greed, and avarice are very much a part of the human condition and its only through the grace of God we are not lost.

I say this to illustrate a point. MAX is the story of two men, each on a quest to do something good. Each has a noble goal and yet both end up on a collision course with History. The first man is Max Rothchild (John Cusak, High Fidelity) a German Jew who has just returned from WWI missing an arm. He has settled back into his comfortable life of wealth and prosperity, with his beautiful wife (Molly Parker, Kissed) and his beautiful children. He has a mistress (Leelee Sobieski, My First Mister), and is a chain smoker. He probably drinks more than he should as well. He is also unable to do what he really loves, which is paint, so he does the next best thing. He becomes an art dealer. If he cannot create art why not discover the next great artist.

The other man is Adolph Hitler (Noah Taylor, Almost Famous) a German, who has returned from the war with nothing. He lives in the army barracks because he cannot afford a home for himself. He follows the rules and is straitlaced. He will not smoke. He does not drink (not even coffee) and he loves his country, a German all the way. But he does long to be a great artist.

One day these two men start a relationship. It is amicable if strained. Max takes Hitler under his wing. Trying to get him to open up and embrace his art. Hitler becomes fed up and is dragged away from his art by the army. They have given him the platform he's always wanted, and with this platform Hitler begins to rail against the Jews, and those that threaten the great country that is Germany. In the end this one man is forced to chose between art and power. Real history tells us what decision he made.

MAX is a fictional account of the early life of one of history's most evil men. But what I really liked about it is that it makes an attempt to get to heart of why people make the decisions that they do. Why did German nationalism lead to violence and genocide? Why do some people who are tested by pain survive and thrive, and others can be in the same place and become bitter? Why and what turned Hitler himself into a monster? Did he have a run in with a Jew that broke a promise or treated him like crud? All these questions come to mind and MAX tries to come to gripes with them.

What I also like about this movie is it has no hero, but allows you as the audience to be empathetic to these men. Maybe Hitler has a point. Maybe he has the right the feel put upon by the world. Why, when he plays by the rules, does he live in the gutter, while a fast talking, hard drinking, chain smoking, adulterer has a warm bed? It would make me mad too and doesn't jealousy make us do some pretty drastic things.

Writer/ first time Director Menno Meyjes (The Seige `Screenplay') has crafted a compelling and challenging story. The film makes a monster into a human being, not by praising him but by asking the one question we all ask, why? It doesn't begin to editorialize on what Hitler became, but presents us with a man who can make the right decision or walk down the wrong road. Of course we can never change the past, but we can try to find out where it all went wrong.

John Cusack does a marvelous job of painting the picture of a good guy with a great heart, but too many flaws. There is a great scene near the end of the film where his wife confronts him with his adultery. Max never once says he's sorry, and I don't think his wife expects him too. But she loves him too much to run away. Will Max change his ways, maybe?

Noah Taylor's Hitler has the perfect nuance. On one hand he's a bottled up ball of rage about to explode, on the other he's this wide-eyed dreamer looking for a shot. This is the hardest kind of part to play because the audience already comes in with the picture of what and who Hitler is, and not who he is at this moment. While he is an object of scorn, and rightly so. You can and must empathize with him, or the performance is lost. Taylor plays the right chords, and it works.

My favorite scene in the films comes as Hitler is giving a speech about the supremacy of the Aryan race and Germany in a local bar and nobody is paying attention to him. Except one kid. Later in the film Hitler is giving a similar speech to a room of about a hundred people and guess who's sitting there. That single kid has turned into hundreds. An idea, no matter how wrong and misguided, has power. It reminds me of those KKK rallies, they show on the local news. Sure hundreds show up to berate these people, but if one person hears and is mad at the world, they can be easily swayed. Makes you think, that maybe what we say and do can have an effect on the people around us.

MAX was my favorite film from last year and rightly so. It's bold, controversial, and asks a lot of questions, other films haven't. But mostly it's a human story about two men and their unlikely friendship. It's about striving to do what's right and it's about the power of art. It's about propaganda and politics--Hero's and madmen. MAX is a great film. ***** (Out of 5)

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.

I thought this movie was quite profound, and heartbreaking. I thought the filmmaker was obviously trying to make the point that if only Hitler had achieved some success as an artist, and had at least one true friend who he could bond with (esp. if that friend was a Jew)then the events of the 20th century would have been far different. The scene where Max tries to get Hitler laid was incredibly funny and sad at the same time. One can't help but think, this pathetic loser is destined to rule Europe in 20 years?

The film also proposes that perhaps the whole thing (siezing power, the war, the holocaust, ...) was just an elaborate art project for Hitler and nothing else. This may be preposterous, but I give the director credit for at least trying to say something so potentially controversial. Clearly the events of post WW1 Germany were far more complicated than are expressed in this film, and clearly Hitler as a young man was far more twisted and ambitious than the character portrayed here, but nevertheless I think this film was brilliant.