Moloch

Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about when people say this is a boring and pretentious film. Yes, this is an art-house flick. It's beautiful purpose is to make you think in many different ways and about many different aspects of Nazism; for instance, look how the throng assembles like one of Rembrandt's paintings of the ruling council when 'Adi' slumps into the chair. A very telling reference out - but this film doesn't restrict its references to 'highbrow' themes. In its stylised portrayal of Goebbels and Bormann it manages to suggest the stereotypes of American cinema, which is meant to generate insights into how to view this centre of evil. As the synopsis says, Hitler et al have come to Berchtesgaden for R & R, right? Not much fun, is it? At the centre of this empire, there is simply a void of yes-men who cannot relax in each other's company, who cannot even break out the wine until der Fuhrer has gone to bed, and who for whom every day is an exercise in the most intense nervousness *with no way out except through der Fuhrer's whimsical violent rage.* This movie is one of the driest I've come across. If Mel Brooks was the slapstick Nazis, this is Nazis as 'Big Brother' contestants. So underplayed, it's not exactly surprising many people complain there's nothing going on here - but then, the evil of the Nazis is a strange and unwanted gift for artists and filmmakers who want to get as damn near to Eliot's 'Objective Correlative' as possible, so they can play with a collective, coherent response. In this case, it begins with, "The Nazis were awful, awful people. When did their punishment happen, eh? How was death truly a punishment for their particular evil?" This movie shows, by making fun of them from several perspectives, exactly what their punishment was. When the film moves into the relationship between AH and EB later on, it is further complicated by the fact that Eva is the only one who has even seen what they are doing. Note the subtlety of the exchange which ends in Adi saying, "That's the right answer," or the weird symbolism of their body language when he finally catches up with her in the bedroom. Sokhurov is not trying to portray realistically what happened; he is using the space of Berchtesgaden as a space for a symbolic expression of what Nazism did to the Nazis themselves. Their hell began when they imposed it on others, and they only discovered it later, by which time, one of them was a doddering old neurotic wreck, another one way out of his depth, and still another one abandoned by his old comrades and desperately trying to curry favour. And the whole thing adds up to something ludicrous. I have read on another critique here, that Hitler was considered to be very boring. Well, he can't have been that boring, if you could provoke him to send you to the Russian front simply by criticising his ambitions - but then, the boredom angle is catered for in the first ten minutes with Eva's listlessness. This film is classic.

Part of a tetralogy that includes the recent, amazing "The Sun" about Hirohito (2005, shown at the New York Film Festival but as yet without a US distributor), as well as "Taurus" (Telets, 2002), about a mortally ill Lenin. (The fourth I think is not yet made.) All concern men of great power at decisive and tragic moments. "Moloch" concerns Hitler in 1942 in an eagle's nest castle in the Bavarian Alps, isolated, as in other portraits, among his cadres and Eva Braun, indulging in grumpy vegetarian dinners and tossing about weird racist remarks about other nationalities. This is acted by strong members of the theater of St. Petersburg, Elena Rufanova as Eva Barun, Leonid Mosgovoi as Hitler, Leonid Solol as Goebbels, Yelena Spirindonova as Frau Goebbels, Vladimir Bogdanov as Martin Bormann, whose lines are dubbed by German actors, and this is done well. The whole is bathed in a murky green-gray or verdigris fog -- saturated, someone has written, with a kind of patina characteristic of old Agfa films -- the fogginess typical also of Sokurov's style elsewhere, with (as in The Sun) a sumptuous feel in the mise-en-scène and amazing, evocative period realness to objects (photo books, ashtrays, serving dishes) which seem at once solid and delicate. Yes, this is remarkable film-making. But the film as a whole is yawn-inducing. Hitler spends most of his screen time moaning about his health. Ten minutes are devoted to Eva's wandering around naked without a word spoken. She is graceful and athletic; but why? Well, to evoke the boredom and idleness of the isolated concubine -- but is such length necessary? "Moloch" is very different from, and rather disappointing in comparison to, "The Sun's" stunning, touching portrayal of Hirohito, which dwells also on trivial moments, but always in the cause of a sensitive exploration of character and situation. There is a hushed intimacy about "The Sun" that "Moloch", though it has a few grand moments and may even evoke Lang's "Metropolis," never attempts. Hitler doesn't even really talk enough, and this brings us to the inevitable fact that at this date, 2006, "Moloch" is thoroughly overshadowed by the far more conventional, sometimes heavy-handed, but nonetheless richly detailed and accurate and breathlessly exciting recreation of the last days in the Bunker achieved recently by Oliver Hirschbiegel in his "Downfall" ("Der Untergang," 2004), released in the US last year and containing Bruno Ganz's powerful performance as the Nazi dictator.

If you remember Casablanca, you'll recall that Rick is a man who begins the film dead on the inside. His heart is broken, he is an alcoholic, he's perfectly neutral, and he doesn't stick his neck out for anybody. But as the film progresses Rick rediscovers his own life again and goes on to take a roll in the war.

"Moloch" shows us this reverse story of the anti-hero Rick. Hitler is the negation of an anti-hero, someone who probably began life off-screen perfectly moral and alive. But his desires and fears have made him a monster, dead on the inside.

People who destroy life do so because they are afraid of their own deaths. Any child who has a momentary fright in contemplating death may respond by killing an insect or a small animal and taking succor in the control over life and death. This is how evil might begin. Thus Sokurov films the vulnerable, underwear-clad Hitler of the everyday in a state of child-like fear of his own death, nearly all the time.

But the real damnation of the killer is that in the end even perpetrating destruction will not ward off the ghosts of the mind. "Death is death," reminds Eva Braun, helpfully. Like Rick's Ilsa, she knows the whole time the true source and purpose of life, knows it down in her bones. But poor Eva has no Rick to work with, and eventually her efforts to liven Hitler only bring up her own worst fears.

Pretty nice example of classical plot structure with negation of the anti-hero!

Sokurov is alone in the universe of known-to-me filmmakers in that he comes up with wonderful ideas for movies but is terrible at making the movies themselves (for a demonstration of both, see especially Russian Ark). So much so, in fact, that letting someone tell you the central concept of a Sokurov movie is pretty much the same experience as watching the movie, except, of course, for the duration. On the one hand, that's good, because very few people can come up with a truly poignant movie concept. On the other, it's bad, well, because the movie itself is.

So what is the central concept of this movie that's so wonderful you say? It is this: that Hitler, Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi high command were just people, and not particularly extraordinary or intelligent people, either.

Some of you will go "no f***ing kidding!" but really, that's something that is forgotten too easily and is a frightening fact. The atrocities of the Great War and Holocaust are somewhat explainable if one considers Hitler to be an insane genius, a man of pure evil. To see him as a dumb short guy who likes to get his belly poked by fat blond women, well, that's much scarier, because then how do you explain that this man caused the deaths of tens of millions of people? The thought is a harrowing one, but it is immediately understandable in the movie, and so there's no real reason for about 100 of the 108 minutes of its length.

Moloch is the cinematic equivalent of a post-it memo to yourself that you wrote some time ago and see just in time to act upon its instructions. If you remembered the contents, you're annoyed at having wasted the time to write (watch) something so obvious. If you didn't, you're very thankful for the note, and yet annoyed at yourself for needing the note in the first place.

So should you see this movie? Not if you've read my review or had someone tell you the gist of it. If not, it is necessary, if boring viewing.

Molokh is an intimate portrait about the state of torment of a reduced delirious aristocracy. The limits of the characters are often confused with the environment, with the unreal atmosphere of the landscape. It is important to highlight its fine technical work and especially its cinematography: a very careful composition in each scene. The cold way in which the light is treated and the density of the environment in each picture are the perfect frame to explain the morbid delirium of a group of attenuated and bizarre figures confined to their desolation. The dialogues have a certain dynamic and despite their absurdity and pathos they maintain enough dramatic tension so that the film is not lost in boredom. An original movie with an independent way to explore, from the formal simplicity of its cinematic, the hypochondria, the mania and the phobia of the main character and his naive and wicked chorus.