***/****
starring John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Parker
written and directed by Menno Meyjes
by Bill Chambers This portrait of an Angry Young Man posits Hitler as a starving artist. Living in squalor at an army outpost, feeling burned by the Treaty of Versailles, he befriends the fictional composite Max Rothman (John Cusack), the dashing, one-armed Jewish gentleman who runs the local art gallery–an abandoned warehouse with a leaky roof. (Working conditions are tough in postwar Munich, even for the upper class.) The result is an exercise in dramatic ironies, as well as the kind of thing you watch with your hands over your eyes but peeking between your fingers: Hitler (Noah Taylor) is determined to prove to Rothman that "I'm not an anti-Semite," partly because he's desperate for Max to exhibit his expressionistic pencil sketches. What I can't wrap my head around–and what I appreciate–about Max is its sticky conclusion, a misreading of which could easily find acclaimed screenwriter Menno Meyjes, making his directorial debut here, blaming his title character for the existence of the Third Reich. With said ending, Meyjes also follows Billy Wilder's final rule of screenwriting–"Don't hang around"–to striking effect. John Cusack is likeable as Max, but the role adapts to his tiresome persona; while the normally droll Taylor finds little humour in Hitler, playing him like the self-serious nerd with aspirations to student-body president. Max avoids historical smugness if not reams of somewhat dull exposition, though any film that can be said to feature a sequence in which teddy bears are fed to a meat grinder definitely brushes up against greatness. PROGRAM: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
