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Max

2002, Movie, R, 108 mins

Max: Review

MAX
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Speculative biographies are a risky business, particularly when it comes to a figure of such enormous historical consequence as Adolph Hitler. Writer Menno Meyjes (THE COLOR PURPLE, THE SIEGE) makes his directorial debut with just such a project: a fictionalized imagining of Hitler's life as, in the aftermath of WWI, he attempts to establish himself as a painter while refining the ideas that would later infect a nation. Were the two related? Munich, 1918. Germany's humiliating defeat in the Great War has stirred deep discontent among the populace, at the same time it excites new currents in modern art. Artists such as George Grosz (Kevin McKidd) are bringing the brutal truths of the battlefield to bear on the everyday horror of modern life, and forward thinking Jewish dealers, like the wholly fictitious Max Rothman (John Cusack), are bringing these new works to the people. It's shortly after an opening at Rothman's gallery that he first encounters the 30-year-old Hitler (Noah Taylor), a hollow-eyed veteran who's been skulking around Munich with his portfolio of postcard paintings tucked under the tattered arm of his Army issue coat. The penniless, would-be artist has been bunking with his garrison, which has become a festering hotbed of wounded nationalistic pride and virulent anti-Semitism. Most of Rothman's circle find Hitler repellent, but the dealer is sympathetic to his fellow soldier — Rothman himself is a frustrated artist who lost an arm on the battlefield — and he encourages Hitler to break through his parochial ideas about art and tap into what's deep inside. Ironically, Hitler's army captain (Ulrich Thomsen) is encouraging him to do the same, but for a far darker purpose: He sees in Hitler the blazing eyes and rabid mouth of a fanatic, and urges him to unleash his inner anti-Semite to become the spokesperson for a frightening new future. Meyjes's received a firestorm of prerelease criticism from critics who feel it's somehow indecent to treat Hitler as a human being with a past, as if it's easier to cope with inhuman monsters who sprang fully formed from some mythic darkness than with monstrous men. That's nonsense. But what does make the film disturbing is the way in which it positions Hitler as a mere mouthpiece for what was already in the air, a role he was convinced to play after suffering one disappointment too many at the hands of Jews like Rothman. If only Adolph had been encouraged to paint his pictures, the film comes dangerously close to suggesting, 10 million might not have died. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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