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Apt Pupil

1998, Movie, R, 111 mins

Apt Pupil: Review

APT PUPIL | UN ELEVE DOUE
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A somber and deeply creepy adaptation of the Stephen King novella (from the 1982 Different Seasons collection, which also produced the stories on which STAND BY ME and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION were based) about an alienated teenager and the Nazi war criminal whose atrocity stories feed his twisted imagination. Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) discovers former concentration camp commander Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen) living in his sleepy California home town under an assumed name, Albert Denker. Morbidly fascinated by the Holocaust -- not because he's an anti-Semite, but because its horror speaks to some deep-seated need for intense emotional experience beyond the pale of his cosseted suburban existence -- Todd quietly assembles enough evidence to denounce the old man to Israeli war crimes investigators, then uses the threat of exposure as leverage to get what he really wants: Dussander's firsthand account of his crimes against humanity. At first reluctant to disturb the demons of the past, Dussander slowly falls under the spell of his own worst nature. And so does Todd: Dussander and Todd are permanently, dangerously, bound together by their secret life. Though the film is genuinely disquieting, it's undermined by the fact that neither Renfro nor the filmmakers seem to have any idea what's behind Todd's latent sociopathy: Maybe this is a movie about the banality of evil, or maybe it's about the banality of the popular imagination. And the only hint of psychological subtext is a really disturbing one; Todd's relationship with Dussander is played out like a deeply pathological homoerotic seduction, with Todd in the role of an aggressive young hustler and Dussander playing the part of an apparently passive older man who's far more dangerous than he seems. Do director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Brandon Boyce really mean to suggest that the roots of genocide lie in homosexual desire? leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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