War Archives - Page 7 of 9 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Foreign Correspondent (1940) – DVD

September 7, 20041940s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Romance, Thriller, War

***/**** Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
screenplay by Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison; dialogue by James Hilton, Robert Benchley
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Largely dismissed as a jingoistic anomaly in the generally anti-establishment Hitchcock canon (and dwarfed by the meatier fort/da of the same year's Rebecca), Foreign Correspondent is arguably a superior representation of the screwball genre to which the later Mr. and Mrs. Smith aspired. That it has political undertones is undeniable (its spies and hunters plot a throwback to Hitch's Gaumont years), but most conspicuous is the kind of macabre visual wit that would define the bulk of Hitchcock's early American output. Consider a haunting sequence with titular journalist Huntley Haverstock (Joel McCrea) trying to find a missing getaway car in a Dutch field dotted with windmills that begins with a gust of wind blowing off his hat (a castration metaphor–the film is full of them) as his girl-Friday Carol Fisher (Laraine Day) laughs uncontrollably, proceeds to the inside of a false mill where Haverstock is nearly discovered when he gets his coat caught in gears, and ends with an exchange with non-English speaking Dutch police resolved by one of Hitch's precocious little-girl characters. With an intimidating self-possession, an already mature Hitchcock presents in fast fashion a dizzying series of technical gags (the suspicious windmill suspicious because it's turning in the wrong direction–compare to the tennis crowd of Strangers on a Train and this film's own chase beneath a canopy of umbrellas); a preoccupation with birds as representatives of the corruption of social order (introduced in Young and Innocent, it became a central throughline in Hitchcock's career); a serio-comic scene of near-discovery; and a slapstick vignette that makes asses of the police, Hitch's favourite target.

King Arthur (2004)

July 6, 20042000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Ireland, Theatrical, UK, War

*/****
starring Clive Owen, Kiera Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen Dillane
screenplay by David Franzoni
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw King Arthur wants to have it both ways. It wants to be smart and it wants to be stupid, too. It wants to appeal to eggheads, so it opens with a title card that promises what follows is based on "new" archaeological evidence; then, for the alleged delight of the peanut gallery, it trots out the same period epic dog-and-pony show to which we've been repeatedly subjected since Zulu Dawn. Strangely enough, this new archaeological evidence apparently dates feminism back to the fifth century (witness the dominatrix version of Guinevere, decked out at one point like Grace Jones), in addition to facilitating a clumsy political satire of twenty-first century America's religiosity, arrogance, and imperialism. Needless to say, when something tries to please everyone, everyone is seldom pleased; King Arthur is both stupid and boring, and the revelation that, stripped of tragedy, controversy, and resonance, Arthurian legend is as banal as and similar to Tears of the Sun (director Antoine Fuqua's previous film) displeases indeed.

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

July 2, 20041960s, Algeria, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, Italy, Theatrical, War

La battaglia di Algeri
***/****
starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Samia Kerbash
screenplay by Gillo Pontecorvo & Franco Solinas
directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Questions abound during a screening of The Battle of Algiers, first and foremost: what the hell is it? It’s not exactly agitprop, not quite a thriller, not really a historical epic–it’s a strange bird that combines each of these forms into a one-off genre all its own. The film has a reputation as high as the ceiling (as the multiple screenings in my film-school days can attest), and given its singularity, it’s not hard to see why: this is not some dowdy history lesson or humourless political screed, but a swift, shapely love letter to those who fought and died in the name of Algerian independence. As a love letter, it’s so typically wrapped up in its own feelings that it can’t relate the struggle to something outside of its own borders–but there’s no denying the writers’ commitment and depth of feeling, as well as the significant impact of The Battle of Algiers‘ bullet to the heart of empire.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) + Control Room (2004)

June 24, 2004****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical, War

FAHRENHEIT 9/11
*½/****
directed by Michael Moore

CONTROL ROOM
****/*****
directed by Jehane Noujaim

by Walter Chaw Shame on Michael Moore for the sloppy, sprawling Fahrenheit 9/11, and shame on President George W. Bush for being such a reprehensible dimwit target that the existence of such a film is possible. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a long, strident preach to the choir full of misleading juxtapositions and sarcastic asides that weaken what should be die-cast condemnations. A better film would have been two hours of just letting W. talk: drivelling his unique drivel that not only makes him sound stupid, for sure (and that's no crime), but is also dangerous and offensive to the 90% of the world (including 52% of the United States) who think he's a Gatsby with a great big sword. Bush describes going into the Middle East as a "crusade," he talks about leaving decisions to a higher power (something that Ron Reagan chose to address in the eulogy for his father), he rationalizes war by saying, "Hey, they tried to kill my daddy."

Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973) – DVD

June 23, 20041970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Italy, UK, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Graham Faulkner, Judi Bowker, Alec Guinness, Leigh Lawson
screenplay by Susio Cecchi D'Amico, Kenneth Ross, Lina Wertmüller, Franco Zeffirell
directed by Franco Zeffirelli

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover So: how do you get the young people back into church when they'd rather be out running wild and getting it on? If you're Mel Gibson, you break out the whips and chains and pour on the gore (an effective approach, to be sure), but if you're Franco Zeffirelli, you choose another path. You'll recall that Zeffirelli was the chap who brought kids back to Shakespeare by turning Romeo and Juliet into a make-out movie, scoring a few Oscar nominations in the bargain–but you can make certain sexy allowances for Shakespeare that you can't with the word of God. Against all odds, the man managed to make a religious tract in tune with the hormonal post-hippie youth of 1973 called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which cleverly addresses the tender feelings of burgeoning bodies while glorifying a chaste life in the service of the Lord. Like Romeo and Juliet, though it's ludicrous in the extreme, its combination of low cunning and gawky earnestness makes it fascinating as a curio, if not as a fully functioning film on its own.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) [D-Day 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition] – DVD

May 24, 20041990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Spielberg, War

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Robert Rodat
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. One is tempted to speculate that, perhaps even more than his father's tour of duty, something that inspired the teenaged Steven Spielberg to shoot a succession of WWII docudramas on 8mm (since he had authentic props–Dad's medals–at his disposal), lingering guilt over his dismissal from the U.S. Army after a military shrink deemed him unfit for the battlefield accounts for Spielberg's frequent digressions into the war genre. As reductive, nay, Freudian as this may seem, for one thing, it has the potential to dilute the vitriol commonly reserved for the bookends of Saving Private Ryan by bringing them into autobiographical relief. Certainly ignoring the picture's prologue and epilogue altogether doesn't help: I once programmed my DVD player to do just that and the result felt surprisingly incomplete, as the context for a WWII narrative with a conspicuously anecdotal quality had all of a sudden disappeared.

Too Late the Hero (1970) – DVD

May 19, 20041970s, Action, Drama, DVD, War

***/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Ian Bannen, Harry Andrews
screenplay by Robert Aldrich and Lukas Heller
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Too Late the Hero is the consummate "solid flick"–sturdy, well-written, and just thoughtful enough to keep its machinations from working on autopilot. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it is suffused with a dread and a tension that lift it out of the bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission ghetto and into something more sober and dignified. Whether or not it is the subterfuge Vietnam allegory of cult legend, it's a war film about people–not iron-jawed superheroes–whose selfless deeds have all the more impact when placed in context with the cowardice and stupidity of others. In the end, it does mouth certain pieties about that heroism that keep it from being too corrosive, but in this age of Black Hawk Down and Iraq prison scandals, it's refreshing for its refusal to knuckle under to the myth of the glorious warrior.

Eastern Condors (1987) – DVD

January 22, 20041980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Hong Kong, Martial Arts, War

Dung fong tuk ying
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ (DD)/A- (DTS)
starring Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo Ping, Mina Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah
screenplay by Barry Wong
directed by Sammo Hung

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover "It's The Dirty Dozen meets Rambo meets Apocalypse Now!" screams the back cover of the Sammo Hung vehicle Eastern Condors, and that's true–the film caters to all of your war/Vietnam film needs, managing to be completely parasitic of the abovementioned pictures while throwing in scenes from The Deer Hunter at no extra charge. Unfortunately, Eastern Condors doesn't also manage to be as good as any of its sources. An incongruous pairing of heavy combat violence and chirpy innocent characters, it's completely divided against itself: the wafer-thin plot renders the often impressive action scenes null while the scale of these set-pieces wipes the piddling stick-figure characters straight off the screen. And though the resulting tinny irritant is too penny-ante to be painful, the film's petty annoyances far outweigh its limited and meagre virtues.

Cold Mountain (2003)

December 25, 20032000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Italy, Road Movie, Romance, Romania, Theatrical, UK, War

*½/****
starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Charles Frazier
directed by Anthony Minghella

by Walter Chaw Existing in an awards-season netherworld where the ugliest girl is Renée Zellweger (or Jena Malone), dad is Donald Sutherland, and Odysseus is Jude Law, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain is a tarted-up march to the awards-night podium starring Nicole Kidman, possibly the most over-exposed actor of the last five years. Everything about the film is careful artifice, from its casting to its grandiloquent direction to its half-baked dialogue ("Small moments like a bag of diamonds," indeed), with only Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the magnificent Brendan Gleeson emerging unscathed from the golden wreckage. What Minghella seems best at is recasting edged, emotionally tumultuous novels into sun-kissed temples to the cinematographer's craft, the more dappled sunlight in the eye with which to bedazzle awards-season voters. The strength of Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning source material lies in its socio-political details of America's Civil War period, but Minghella has focused his picture unerringly on the overrated novel's weaknesses instead: its dialogue, its clumsy Homeric riff (for better country-fried Odyssey, stick to O Brother Where Art Thou?), and its sweeping gothic romance, which finds its characters, at one point, reading the real deal in Wuthering Heights. The result is, like Minghella's previous literary adaptations (The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient), lavish, lugubrious, and off-target.

Teknolust (2003); In July (2000); Taking Sides (2002); Monster (2003)

December 25, 20032000s, Adventure, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Music, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, War

TEKNOLUST
**/****
starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak, Karen Black
written and directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson

Im Juli.
***/****
starring Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul, Mehmet Kurtulus, Idil Üner
written and directed by Fatih Akin

TAKING SIDES
**/****
starring Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birgit Minichmayr
screenplay by Ronald Harwood
directed by István Szabó

MONSTER
**½/****
starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson
written and directed by Patty Jenkins

by Walter Chaw As the year winds down and distributors great and small try to cram their films into rotation for possible awards consideration, the truism that there are just as many mediocre foreign and independent films as mainstream ones proves sage for a quartet of minor releases. Lynn Hershman-Leeson chimes in with Teknolust, another of her riffs on Derek Jarman, this one obsessed with Tilda Swinton and eternity through technology. Fatih Akin’s second film In July (Im Juli.) is essentially a German The Sure Thing with elements of After Hours, obsessed with eternity through an immortal beloved lit by the nimbus of various suns. One-time Oscar-winner István Szabó offers Taking Sides, a morality tale plucked half-formed from the stage, questioning the eternity of art against the requirements of morality. And Patty Jenkins weighs in with Monster, this year’s Boys Don’t Cry; it’s vérité as lower-class urban ugly, with Charlize Theron seeking eternity through a performance that breaks her out of her starlet mold, Halle Berry-style. Only time will tell if any of it keeps.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

November 14, 20032000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, War

***½/****
starring Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D’Arcy, Edward Woodall
screenplay by Peter Weir & John Collee, based on the novel by Patrick O’Brian
directed by Peter Weir

by Walter Chaw By turns brutal and majestic, Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (hereafter Master and Commander) reunites the antipodean director with Russell Boyd, the cinematographer with whom he shot The Last Wave, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously, and the two have produced a picture on par with those films: historically aware, but more notable for its epic beauty and scope. The effect of Master and Commander is rapture–it engulfs with its detail, finding time to flirt with the secrets of the Galapagos as parallel to the unfolding mystery of technology that finds the HMS Surprise outclassed by the French Acheron, stealthy and peerless enough to inspire speculations of supernatural origin. Issues of the old at war with the new (superstition vs. science, instinct vs. calculation) are nothing new for Weir, who is, after all, at his best when examining the dangers of individuals at odds with tradition, and the rewards for modern men able to assimilate the ancient into the new.

Beyond Borders (2003) + Radio (2003)

October 22, 20032000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Germany, Romance, Sports, Theatrical, War

BEYOND BORDERS
*/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache, Teri Polo
screenplay by Caspian Tredwell-Owen
directed by Martin Campbell

RADIO
*/****
starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Riley Smith, Sarah Drew
screenplay by Mike Rich
directed by Michael Tollin

by Walter Chaw Some pharaohs spent their reign building mighty pyramid tributes to themselves, so in that respect we should feel lucky that Angelina Jolie and Cuba Gooding Jr. have only used up the latter part of their plummeting careers constructing towering monuments to their splendid ideological isolation. The real wonder of it all is that there's room enough in the universe for both of their dangerously inflated senses of self-satisfaction, simultaneously reaching their respective pinnacles in a pair of atrocious films that at least have the virtue of being really funny, albeit for all the wrong reasons. For Jolie, her desire to save the entire third world, one orphan at a time, manifests itself in a picture that poses the big-lipped beauty carefully as a fashion plate and a sainted martyr; a debutante with an amazing wardrobe and a UN worker with a streak of activism; and a figure in its way as ridiculous as Gooding Jr.'s caricature of a severely mentally-disabled man (James Robert Kennedy) that reminds, of all things, of that acorn-crazed, pre-verbal prehistoric squirrel from Ice Age.

Enigma (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD

September 23, 20032000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Germany, Mystery, Netherlands, Romance, Thriller, UK, War

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows
screenplay by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by Robert Harris
directed by Michael Apted

by Walter Chaw The easy thing to say is that the Mick Jagger-produced Enigma is enigmatic–it's more difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons why. Stars Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, and Jeremy Northam are fine, Tom Stoppard's screenplay would on the surface surely seem fine, and Michael Apted's polished, if unremarkable, direction is the very definition of just fine. So the onus must fall on the material adapted, Robert Harris's follow-up to his much-lauded Fatherland, which promised a Ken Follett romantic espionage page-burner while delivering a staid and occasionally incomprehensible period bodice-ripper crushed under the dual gorgons of the sophomore jinx and the Tom Clancy "guess I'm not very good at dialogue" bogey. Enigma's problems begin and end with its inability to overcome the essential faults of its inherited plot, its most interesting aspect–WWII cryptologists at London's Bletchley Park–subsumed by a run-of-the-mill mystery and a never-in-doubt love story. It appears the curse of many historical fictions that attempt to familiarize the "long ago" with a "universal" romantic story arc dooms Enigma's period and historical detail to function as mere decorative flourish.

TIFF ’03: Bon Voyage

September 7, 20032000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, TIFF, War

*½/****starring Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, Yvan Attalwritten and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau by Bill Chambers "And I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll boorrre the hell out of you." Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage labours harder than any film in recent memory to entertain, but the result is so draining I don't remember grooving with it once. In the opening scene, the latest vehicle for champagne starlet Viviane Denverts (Isabelle Adjani, who at 48 should be too old to play an ingénue, but looks at least half her age--it's quite miraculous, really) leaves rapt the attendees of a French…

Four Faces West (1948) + Blood on the Sun (1945) – DVDs

August 26, 20031940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller, War, Western

FOUR FACES WEST
*/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Charles Bickford, Joseph Calleia
screenplay by C. Graham Baker, Teddi Sherman; adaptation: William Brent and Milarde Brent, based on the novel by Eugene Manlove Rhodes
directed by Alfred E. Green

BLOOD ON THE SUN
**½/**** Image F Sound B+
starring James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney, Porter Hall, John Emery
screenplay by Lester Cole, with additional scenes by Nathaniel Curtis
directed by Frank Lloyd

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Auteurism giveth, auteurism taketh away. It’s generally assumed that if we gravitate to the director with the greatest skill and the most obvious “personal” style, we will be doing ourselves a big cultural favour and putting ourselves on the side of the angels. And indeed, we generally strive for the power and aesthetic purity of those “originals,” as they give us the most pleasure. But if we declare–regardless of whether that personality has anything to say or says anything halfway coherent–that the only criterion of value in a film is a director’s personality, we will be shutting ourselves off from the other thing that artists do, which is interpreting the world for us. And sometimes lesser filmmakers take on subjects that great artists ignore–creating, if not brilliant analyses, something to stand for or against.

The Cuckoo (2002)

August 1, 20032000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Russia, Theatrical, War

Kukushka
**/****
starring Anni-Christina Juuso, Ville Haapasalo, Viktor Bychkov
written and directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin

by Bill Chambers As with the ineffably similar No Man’s Land, Danis Tanovic’s “Twilight Zone”-esque morality play in which a Bosnian and a Serb duke it out while the dead body of a Serb soldier threatens to detonate a landmine between them, when you’re done watching The Cuckoo, you’re done thinking about it as well. Both films make their points too baldly–the stress of analysis and the joy of drawing conclusions are pleasures you won’t much experience after a viewing of The Cuckoo despite its having the pretense of being profound. An awkwardly-translated quote that writer-director Aleksander Rogozhkin provided for the film’s North American pressbook–“I don’t write scripts, I write novels for cinema… I could just note ‘Sniper Veiko shoots from a rifle,’ but it will be an absolutely different approach if I write ‘Sniper Veiko shoots from old Austrian rifle, with optical sight rifle'”–is telling: he’s not a man who likes to leave many doors open to interpretation.

The Pianist (2002) [Limited Soundtrack Edition] – DVD

May 26, 20032000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Music, Palme d'Or Winner, Poland, UK, War

***/**** Image C Sound A Extras B+
starring Adrien Brody, Daniel Caltagirone, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman
directed by Roman Polanski

by Walter Chaw It comes as little surprise that when the Nazis begin to build a wall around the Warsaw ghetto is also when Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama The Pianist becomes distinctive, as the director is at his best bound by the endlessly symbolic edifices and crannies of architecture. The story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) and his survival under the auspices of the Polish underground, serendipity, and fear is almost anti-heroic, its central figure passive like the most memorable of Polanski’s heroes (Rosemary, Carol Ledoux, Trelkovsky, even Jake Gittes after a fashion), and its indignities more intimate than the grand tapestry of the Holocaust generally allows. The loss of Szpilman’s entire family to The Final Solution is less wrenching than the line that precedes it as Szpilman says to his sister, “I wish I knew you better,” and less difficult again as the musician’s inability to play a piano he’s imprisoned with in a tenement flat while in hiding. Far from insensitive, The Pianist is actually intensely humanist, focused as it is on the little indignities that bring a man from his comfortable environment to the furtive edge of capricious extinction.

Das Boot: The Director’s Cut (1981/1997) [Superbit] – DVD

March 19, 20031980s, 1990s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, DVD, Thriller, War, West Germany

***½/**** Image A Sound A+
starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, Hubertus Bengsch
screenplay by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the novel by Lothar G. Buchheim
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

by Walter Chaw The curious mental state of German submariners in the waning days of the Second World War is reflected in the general malaise of the United States in the weeks following September Eleventh and the hours preceding our unpopular pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Caught in the maddening doldrums between one act of unimaginable violence and its inevitable aftershocks, America’s implacable disquiet is one part anticipation of the inevitable, multiple parts cynicism, and, for a large portion of the population, a dollop of distinct lack of faith in the motives and competency of our leadership. A closer examination of the similarities pithy but perhaps unfruitful, sufficed to say that revisiting Wolfgang Petersen’s masterpiece Das Boot (in its Director’s Cut form) at this suspended moment in time is not only rewarding as great cinema can be, but also current and amazingly poignant.

Tears of the Sun (2003) + Bringing Down the House (2003)

March 7, 20032000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, War

TEARS OF THE SUN
*/****
starring Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Fionnula Flanagan
screenplay by Alex Lasker & Patrick Cirillo
directed by Antoine Fuqua

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
*/****
starring Steve Martin, Queen Latifah, Eugene Levy, Joan Plowright
screenplay by Jason Filardi
directed by Adam Shankman

by Walter Chaw Antoine Fuqua’s curiously timed Tears of the Sun is an unpleasant bit of jingoistic bullroar that seeks to redress the Clinton administration’s refusal to intervene in the Rwandan genocide by offering up a small band of American special forces soldiers as saviour bwana bravely risking all for a white woman and, incidentally, restoring the son of a slain tribal leader to power. A lot like Schindler’s List, for all the devastating scope of human tragedy involved in its story, the film is about the survivors and the white heroes, not the victims.

Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (2002)

February 28, 20032000s, Austria, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Theatrical, War

Im Toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin
Blind Spot. Hitler’s Secretary
***½/****
directed by André Heller & Othmar Schmiderer

by Bill Chambers A significant source of Blind Spot. Hitler’s Secretary‘s power is the au naturel form it takes. There are no re-enactments, there are no such visual cues as photographs or stock footage; there isn’t even any underscore–only the talking head of Traudl Junge, who, with her rotating cluster of sweaters and ascots, is the film’s aesthetic. Directors André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer (Heller interviewed, Schmiderer shot) either believe Junge to be so compelling a presence as to challenge the need for newsreel aids, or fundamentally appreciate that they risked depersonalizing Junge’s fresh, intimate perspective by going the History Channel route. I only skimmed the press notes (which are rather regrettably written: “Like Adolf Hitler, [Heller and Schmiderer] were also born and raised in Austria,” begins an introduction to the filmmakers) to keep from cheapening Blind Spot‘s enigmatic approach–that ambivalence–for myself: The film casts a spell as fragile as that of an ILM spectacle.