Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sympathy for the Devil, 17 Mar 2005
I never thought I'd see a movie that actually tried to portray Hitler as a decent chap, but this one pulls it off in style. It would have been good with a "happy" ending, but maybe that's just too far-fetched for what the film was trying to do - understand the conditions in which young(ish - Hitler is already thirty) minds are so easily warped and twisted until they become monstrous.Cusack is Max Rothman, and he makes a good job of it - I didn't realise he could do both this and "Being John Malkovich" and ace them both. Noah Taylor makes a convincing Hitler (without the trademark moustache), a small grey splotch in an otherwise colourful milieu. The director has gone to inordinate lengths to distinguish between Rothman's whirling, fresh, high society, and Hitler's miserable, colourless and ugly barrack life. The film is expertly constructed, with every second filled with tension, and a genuine question mark over the ending. I have never watched such an unpredictable film; there are shots which play with this ambiguity throughout and the characterisation of the Jews as loyal subjects is pleasing, having seen so many films in the past where history is projected backwards, the most obvious of these being the line in "Onegin" where early nineteenth-century gentlemen "predict" the Russian revolution. A word of warning, though - make sure you have something lighter to watch (e.g. an episode of your favourite comedy) afterwards, as you will need reassurance that the world is not all bad.
|
|
|
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Max is really really really really really good. Really good., 29 Feb 2004
This, along with The Singing Detective (nullify my opinion now, if you like) was one of, I think, the best films of last year. The film follows Max (John Cusack), a Jewish art dealer, and his fraught relationship with an angry, angry Hitler (Noah Taylor), living in squalid barracks and carrying a huge chip on his shoulder. With the guidance of his Jewish mentor, he gains some semblance of control, but we know he won't maintain this pretense of reason...
So the film is scary, teetering on the edge of hysteria, blending 1930's suburbia with omnipresent anarchy- a clashing of naïvity and genocide (strangely poignant in a rather bizarre Aryan puppet-show) and it's cast, from bit-parts to starring roles flesh out brilliantly- the films' adpetness at creating thumbnail portraits with a few words and a side-long glance is astonishing.
There have been gripes about it- that it's unfulfilling of it's huge potential, that it's historically innaccurate, that Hitler's eye-brows were slightly better trimmed, but I think the deft way in which the film handles small issues while still dealing with far-raching themes and, at the end of the day, a topic that has scarred the last century is admirable- and as for accusations of innaccuracy, I believe Hitler abandoned any thoughts of a career in art before the first world war, so the film doesn't pretend to be text book.
'Tis a work of art, a labour of Bohemian love and one of the few films I've seen with the line 'Hitler, c'mon, I'll buy you a lemonade' in it. It's fiction... It's been a while since I saw it at the cinema, but I'm fairly sure that none of the events portrayed happened- I have a GCSE in history to prove it- so let's sit back, enjoy, spook ourselves with Taylor's frightening performance, bask in the warm glow of Cusack's benevolence, and wallow in the sheer perfection of acting in general, atmosphere and attention to (purely fictional, mark me) detail.
James says: let the few descrepancies they take with history pass, and enjoy this thought-provoking flight of fantasy, I mean, we all know Hitler couldn't paint- but if John Cusack told me he was my father, I'd believe him.
|
|
|
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The birth of futurism..., 28 Dec 2004
This film captures the reeling dysphoria of what I always imagined as the grimey, freezing, post-Versailles Germany unerringly... This is no biopic, Adolf Hitler is here used more as a trope for the inevitability of military-modernism, futurism from the sludge and despair of a country squeezed "till the pips squeek[ed]".The two lead performances are magnificent; Noah Taylor's ranting importunate Hitler gathers malignant stature as he slowly falls into the beligerant mood of the time; Cusack's, slick, thoughtful lothario convinces throughout and underlines his position to the fore of American acting talent. Highly recommended viewing.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![Max [DVD] [2003] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517959CPWKL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [1998] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GE8505QZL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![Grosse Pointe Blank [DVD] [1997]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CXNEJGDFL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![High Fidelity [DVD] [2000]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZP93RYH4L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [1998] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GE8505QZL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![Say Anything [1989] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZBD6N3G7L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![Grosse Pointe Blank [DVD] [1997]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CXNEJGDFL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![Better Off Dead [DVD] [1985]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41MP40X2XFL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![High Fidelity [DVD] [2000]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZP93RYH4L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
With an Amazon.co.uk 
