Max

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)

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.

Sight unseen, the Jewish Defense League has urged Lions Gate Films to shelve this movie, due to its radical notion that Adolf Hitler was shaped by the world around him rather than being born the Antichrist. Specifically, the JDL protests that there is nothing "human about the most vicious, vile murderer in world history." As a person of Jewish extraction who has seen the movie (at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival), I would take exception to this stance and urge Lions Gate to proceed as planned. This film is a brilliant, engrossing, thought-provoking work that does Hitler no favors and sheds light on the real-world forces afoot in post WWI Munich that only could have nurtured his worst beliefs and talents.

Dutch-born Director Menno Meyjes has shown an affinity for tough ethnic and cultural clash themes in his career as a screenwriter (THE COLOR PURPLE, EMPIRE OF THE SUN and THE SIEGE are among his credits). But here, in his first chance to direct his own writing, he's come up with what's certainly his most fully realized work to-date. Eschewing simplistic notions, he weaves a fascinating story that deals at length with the career as a painter that Hitler is known to have unsuccessfully pursued at one time.

The title character of the film is a fictional (but based on a composite of real-life characters) Jewish German WWI vet named Max Rothman. He's lost one of his arms in battle, but is able to return to a much better situation than the average German vet: a loving wife and family, a gorgeous mistress, and family wealth that enables him to start an art gallery that prospers dealing in modern expressionist works. Hitler, by contrast, returns to pretty much nothing, and at age 30 is desperate to finally make the grade as a commercial artist.

Sensing that Hitler has a passion that there could be a market for if only he could find some way to get it out onto canvas, Max encourages him to experiment with schools of painting that seem a better fit for his temperament than the traditional ones he's decided to limit himself to. Unfortunately, Hitler's real artistic gift seems to be for a then-new form of performance art known as `propaganda,' and his Aryan war pals provide him with support for pursuing this field while simultaneously fanning his smoldering anti-Semitic sentiments.

Noah Taylor - who many feel got robbed of an Oscar nomination for his role as the young David Helfgott in SHINE - is mesmerizing in the Hitler role. Even made up to look gaunt, pallid, and thoroughly unappealing (although not freakish), you still can't take your eyes off of him. With body language, countenance, and tone of voice, he's able to suggest a raging intensity lurking just below the surface of his character's socially awkward loner exterior. Taylor still won't come up with any awards recognition for this role (it's WAY too hot a potato), but that doesn't change the fact that he's brilliantly conquered a daunting acting challenge.

John Cusack, in a welcome change from the light roles he's been playing lately, is also excellent as the title character, skillfully portraying a worldly businessman who's too focused on artistic images to ever notice the big picture. The subject matter allows near-zero latitude for levity, but SOME mirth is needed to keep the proceedings from becoming unrelentingly grim. Meyjes ingenious solution to this quandary is wry comments on art and (especially) the business of art by Max - a perfect fit for Cusack's deadpan delivery.

Even though you KNOW which career path Hitler is ultimately going down, the equilibrium between the forces pulling him in both directions and the incredible `what might have been' fascination factor keep you thoroughly transfixed throughout the film's near-2-hour running time. NOBODY in the huge auditorium where I saw the film got up or stirred from the opening scene through to the supremely ironic ending - not even to answer the call of nature. MAX is sure not `the feel-good film of the year,' but if you've been longing for a powerful, all-encompassing drama that doesn't require you to check your brain at the door, this is the film you've been waiting for.

Why this film is so seldom mentioned and so often put down is surprising, when you consider how well-made it actually is... but I suppose the explanation lies in the controversy of it, and peoples' inability to accept an idea so unheard of as true. The idea in this case is that Adolf Hitler was not born the Antichrist, but shaped by the world around him. As several other reviewers mention, this film and the ideas it presents as well as the character study of a young Hitler is long overdue. The film revolves around Hitler, who recently returned from war(WWI) and his relationship with Max Rothman, a Jewish art dealer. Rothman senses much talent and promise in Hitler, and encourages him to follow up on painting. Hitler, frustrated with an inability to create anything, and a talent for public speaking leans more towards a political career. I guess we all know how it ends... but the story itself is still interesting, even though we basically know the ending. I don't know how authentic this film is, but I do know that it takes some liberties with history. That doesn't bother me. The important thing is the core of it, and whether or not it has some interesting ideas to offer. And I think it does. Most definitely. All the well-known(and some lesser known) traits of Hitler's personality are there. One could argue that the Jews in the film are somewhat stereotypically presented, but it's about the environment as well as the characters. The reason Hitler had such ease with blaming the Jews for Germany's problems, the reason he could turn an entire nation against them was that was how people saw them. If we didn't understand that, if we didn't get a clear image of that, the film would be worthless. The acting was very good; Noah Taylor pretty much becomes Adolf Hitler. I don't care what you say, I felt his frustration and outrage; he made me feel for this man, recognize him as a fellow human being, despite how much time so many people have spent trying to make him appear as some inhumane monster. He was a terrible man, yes... but he was a man. A despicable human being... but still a human being. John Cusack brings a fire to his character that pretty much carries the film. The direction was quite impressive for a first time effort; the writer/director showed great promise, and I hope he will make more films like this. We definitely need them. I recommend this to anyone interested in the subject who isn't put off by a fairly loose approach to history. 7/10

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.