Elser, un héros ordinaire

Unlike so many subsidised movies about the Nazi era, this one isn't superficial and moralistic. Instead it tries to, and succeeds in, painting an authentic portrait of the prewar Nazi era in a village in rural Germany. Most of all, the movie is captivating. We get under the skin of this idiosyncratic carpenter who missed changing world history, and possibly saving tens of millions of lives, by a margin of just 13 minutes.

The movie stands of as one of the few who manage to depict what it could have been like to live under the Nazi dictatorship. What would you do if one of your friends was sent off to do forced labour, or another one was pilloried for her supposedly immoral behaviour. As the benefactors of a free society, we would like to think that we would stand up against such injustice. This movie conveys how difficult, how impossible it was to be decent under the Nazi yoke. It goes much to Georg Elser's credit that he tried to do the impossible nevertheless.

I was lucky enough to see this film on the big screen during the brief period that it played locally. I didn't know any more about it than the basic subject, and I'm glad about that, because the film got some strangely negative reviews in the U.S. Some critics seemed to complain that it wasn't a Jason-Bourne-style thriller. Instead, it's a careful portrait of one man, and shows how both he and his village were changed by political events in their country.

I was surprised to find out the movie was originally released in Germany in 2015, because it included so many events that are happening in 2017 America: left-vs-right street violence, religious intolerance, disagreements about which party represents workers, and government officials who think torture is the best way to get the truth.

The photography is beautiful and the storytelling clear but unusual. For example, an explosion is shown from a far-off POV, as a small part of a beautiful landscape shot, instead of up close to the blast. The production design is thoroughly convincing (though I may not be a perfect judge of the authenticity of period films set in Germany), and the settings are lifelike. When a character swims in a lake, it reminds you of just what that feels like. The violence works that way, too. Though it's not gruesomely detailed and exposed in a Tarantino kind of way, you'll probably feel it more.

The acting is excellent overall. The leading actor comes across as more babyfaced and less worldly than the real Georg Elser, just judging by their respective looks, but he creates a memorable character that is never a stereotype, yet is not merely a movie eccentric. Though the brutality of the Nazis' actions is never toned down, there are still moments when some of them display a believably human sense of doubt. A minor character has his own complete arc, from downtrodden village man to local Nazi leader to someone unsure if the party has gone too far. I completely disagree with one reviewer who thought the movie was too sentimental. It doesn't lionize even its main protagonist, and shows the problematic aspects of his violent political act.

Afterward, I read about the real Georg Elser, and I was disappointed at a few of the fictional changes. I was sorry they cut out the character of Georg's sister Maria, who seems to have been important in real life, and since everything is seen through Georg's eyes, and he has limited knowledge, and we don't hear about some of the other people the Nazis persecuted and even murdered after the bombing. But you can read about this. I never would have known the story was worth investigating further if I hadn't seen this compelling film.

Great acting for a story worth knowing. Elser is a true hero that understood early the extreme danger the Nazi was for Germany itself. Effectively, the germans had lost their minds to think they would not have eventually to pay for their murderous rampages. However, historically, if his murder had succeeded, germany could have done better during the war and maybe even won it, since a few bad decisions were later attributed to Hitler himself, like the attack on Russia instead of England.

Wow, well those were definitely the unluckiest 13 minutes of all time. 55 million deaths could have been averted.

A really well made and acted movie about a story that I didn't know but certainly is worth knowing.

Well paced and edited. Usually historical jump cuts don't work but they really worked well here.

I thoroughly recommend this movie showing that it's in all of us to change destiny if we truly follow our convictions.

Some assassins (and would-be assasins) are highly politcally motivated. Others are just crazy. Oliver Hirschbiegel's film about Georg Elser, who single-handedly attempted to Kill Adolf Hitler in 1939, suggests he was neither; or at least, that his political antipathy to the Fuehrer was driven by a more generalised disgust at the sheer ugliness and banal brutality of life under the Nazis. Hisrschbiegl previously made the brilliant 'Downfall' about Hitler's final days; this film is somewhat less awesome, in part because it focuses on Elser's arrest and interrogation, and tells the story of his earlier life in flashback, removing some of its sense of immediacy. It's still an interesting story, not about a hero in the classical sense, but about a good man, and a brave one.