Hôtel Terminus

This is a riveting film from start to finish. Marcel Ophuls very personal and wry take on the unfolding horror of Nazi Klaus Barbie's long and unimpeded criminal career exerts a powerful hold. The movie exudes a weird, creepy humor throughout, beginning with its title, the actual name of the French hotel which was the location of Barbie's headquarters in Lyons. "Hotel Terminus" is filled with unforgettably bizarre, real life characters. The voices of Barbie's torture victims and pursuers are given equal time alongside those of his collaborators and defenders. This is an important movie. It stands as one of the best documentaries of the twentieth century and of all time. The film is as much or more about French history as well as American and German. The United States ugly,collaborative role in Barbie's eluding of justice for so many years is revealed in terms like "ratline". The ratline was a transportation corridor set up by the CIA to funnel Nazi war criminals safely out of Europe to South America. This operation functioned with the help of the Vatican.It was fueled by the turn of the political tide after World War Two when fear of Communist takeover took hold over Europe and the West, and the Nazis were seen as specialists in their ability to ferret out Communists. There are numerous subtitles throughout, especially in Part one, but these do not detract from the film's unstoppable momentum. Parts of this true story seem almost unbelievable. Hannah Arendt's observation and comment on the banality of evil is again and again underscored in Ophuls extraordinary film.

Marcel Ophuls' mammoth four-and-one-half hour-long portrait of Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie, the notorious Butcher of Lyon, is more than just a biography of another Nazi mass murderer. The film also provides a meticulous study of the forces which allowed him to survive for so long, from wartime anti-Semitism to post-war Communist paranoia to a prevailing what's-done-is-done attitude of retroactive amnesia. Ophuls is not so complacent, and makes no apologies for his sometimes confrontational approach to the subject. In his mind those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and the sheer volume of verbal testimony, from enemies and friends alike, is only the director's way of ensuring we neither forgive nor forget. The scope of the film is vast, covering over forty years and spanning several continents, but the scale is intimate: one voice, one detail at a time, making it an exhaustive but hardly exhausting account of one monstrous but admittedly small cog in an evil machine, pieces of which are still well-oiled and operating even today.

Marcel Ophuls is an obnoxious jackass (think of a European Michael Moore), and he is overly obtrusive in this film, but it is a must-see nonetheless. We all know what Barbie did, but the role of the US government in shielding him from French authorities after the war is not so commonly known. This film leaves no stone unturned, and the bittersweet conclusion--Barbie finally was imprisoned, but only for four years, and after he had already lived free and wealthy for forty years--is sobering.

Although this movie is quite disturbing at times, due to its subject matter, I would go as far as saying I enjoyed watching it. It has left me quite shaken up and I know I will be thinking about this film for a long time. As a lover of languages, I appreciated the jumping back and forth between French, German, and English. Overall, it is very well done. For such a serious topic, it is done with appropriate humor and pauses for reflection. It's intense, but not unbearably so. Because it made me want to learn more, to do research even, I have given Hotel Terminus a 10.

I found this on Hulu, and I am obsessed with movies about WWII (the Holocaust in particular). Armed with my smartphone, I dove in. Initially, I was confused because the director/interviewer jumps into the French Revolution shortly after having some associates of Klaus Barbie describe his childhood. Then these leaders of the Revolution start talking about the betrayal of Jean Moulin. I had to hit pause and check it out on the web. After getting a bit more background, I moved on. I was disgusted when I heard back pedaling from Rene Hardy and Francoise Hemmerle. Ultimately learning that Hardy was framed, and seeing an interview with him towards the end of his life, I did start to pity him. However this Hemmerle woman would chuckle when talking about atrocities of torture then say "oh, I helped I the resistance, then proceeds to refer to the film 'Night & Fog' as "propaganda". This is where the running theme of "oh it was so long ago." This seems to be a running theme with the people who helped this butcher later on. The narrator really doesn't talk much about the Holocaust too much during the film, but focuses on the CIC (American intelligence) utilized Barbie as an informant. Woah, stop the bus! Then what really foxed me was if you Google any of these Americans, not a whisper. The person who drove me insane with his non-answers was a certain Eugene Kolb, who was Barbie's handler. He states that based on his relationship with Barbie, he doesn't believe he needed to use torture to get information out of people. I think that is similar to saying the Holocaust didn't happen. Every word out of his mouth is a contradiction or a back pedal. I knew that the US wanted nothing to do with the Jews until the very end of the war. This disgusts me as a human being. The film moves along with more people who "were just doing their jobs" (much like those who dropped Zyklon B into gas chambers) in the hunt and capture of Klaus Barbie. Turns out, that Barbie was involved in the capture of Che Guevara. The film alludes to this, but that was another topic of my own research. One person who is actually more candid than you would think is Barbie's former bodyguard. He was apprehensive at first, but through his story he tells of how he has to get people to go shopping for him as he was persona non grata in Bolivia. I think he realizes as he is speaking with Maurice that if he tells the truth, it may benefit him. It's a bit of a buildup, but watching him break is rather interesting. Well, as most know, there comes a point Barbie needs a lawyer at his trial. This lawyer is Jaques Verges, a well known defender of terrorists from Palestine and Algeria, and also a cohort of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge (this I learned more about from another film, Terror's Advocate). He did what he did more because he wanted France to acknowledge what they did to the French in Lyon and in Algeria. This is touched on, but never fully explained. The jury to me is still out on him, only because there is logic behind his intentions, even though I don't agree with him politically, or on a level of humanity. I won't ruin the end, but this four hour documentary is well worth the watch. I will say that it would be wise to get caught up on the French Resistance a little beforehand. Because I was so interested, I purchased The Sorrow and the Pity, so stay tuned for that review!