It's not hard to resurrect Hitler, even easy, I think, to put him through his paces in encounters with current fashion and events. But it's not so easy to get rid of him once he has been summoned for whatever metaphorical or political or artistic purpose. This message is clear enough from both Timur Vermes' bestselling comic novel, Er is wieder da (He's Back Again) and the movie based on that book. I counted at least three and, possibly, four endings to the film, a pretty clear signal that the film makers have tapped into something larger than their project and have unleashed a genie that is not so readily crammed back into his bottle. Vermes' novel imagines Hitler suddenly appearing in Berlin, seemingly resurrected from the wreckage of the Fuehrer bunker. The novel imagines Hitler is various comical situations and reads, at times, like outlines for skits in a sketch-comedy revue -- Hitler examines a cell-phone, Hitler on a date, Hitler interacting with various minorities, Hitler surfing the internet. The novel is written in the third-person and part of its charm lies in Hitler's diction -- he applies grandiose Nietzschean language about strife and combat to every day life and remains supremely confident of his powers, certain that he is a man of destiny, and, indeed, enormously resourceful in exploiting all circumstances to his benefit. Unwittingly, Vermes makes Hitler seem a bit endearing, a kind of half-mad Don Quixote, and, ultimately, the book has nowhere to go -- like the movie, it can't quite bring itself to an end and, if I recall properly (I read the novel last year) the book simply peters out. The film is more inventive and its creators labor mightily to bring some closure to the fantasy. Ending 1 shows the hero, Sawatzki, Hitler's discoverer and promoter, finally learning that the man that he has been displaying to the world is really der Fuehrer somehow revived after his death in April of 1945 -- the knowledge drives Sawatzki mad. In the second ending, Sawatzki kills Hitler by pushing him off the edge of skyscraper; Hitler falls to his death but, then, immediately reappears proclaiming that he will always be a part of Sawatzki, and, presumably, all Germans. In Ending 3, really a meta-ending, we discover that Sawatzki is directing another actor playing Sawatzki (in a hyper-realistic plastic mask) and that the whole thing is just a movie, a kind of grandiose fantasy enacted on a massive scale like the all-encompassing theater work in Synecdoche, New York -- this is a variant on The Wizard of Oz notion that it was all just a wacky dream. In the fourth ending, really a part of the closing credits, Sawatzki chauffeurs Hitler around modern-day Berlin in an open car and the bemused men and women on the street alternately hurl insults at him or salute him enthusiastically with arms upraised as if the proclaim "Heil Hitler!" -- this sequence is intercut with images of European politicians making xenophobic comments about immigrants, pictures of anti-immigrant protests as well street fighting all scored to Dowland's funeral music for Queen Ann, synthesized as in Clockwork Orange for maximum portentous and sinister effect. The fourth ending epitomizes an aspect of the film that is derived from Sasha Baron Cohen's pictures, most obviously Borat -- the man impersonating Hitler wanders around Germany encountering various bemused people who are clearly not actors and not aware that they are being filmed: some of these people seem to revile Hitler; others greet him with warmth and remark that they've missed him and that German democracy is a failure. (German privacy laws apparently forbid the filmmakers from showing anyone on screen who has not given a proper release of his or her image -- as a result, many of these scenes are disfigured by little black strips covering the eyes of the people shown and signifying that they wish to remain anonymous.)
The movie is reasonably funny. Like most comedies, it is indifferently lit and photographed: the film is shot like a larger-scale version of an American TV show like The Office, mostly handheld camera on overly bright sets with snappy editing. The film follows the efforts of a recently fired TV producer, the hapless Sawatzki, to exploit Hitler and win his way back into TV production. He discovers Hitler lumbering around in the background of some shots that he has made in Berlin. (He's making a documentary that no one wants to see about homeless children and poverty in Germany's big cities.) Sawatzki hauls Hitler around Germany during the first third of the film and that part of the movie features the most Borat-style interaction with puzzled non-actors. Back in Berlin, Hitler appears on comedy-show, a sort of Teutonic version of the Howard Stern show; the program is called (in translation) "Whoa, Dude!" Hitler disconcerts everyone by a staging a wild tirade. The public thinks that Hitler is merely a comedian and takes his rants to be ironic comedy. But as with Archie Bunker in the American TV series, All in the Family, a sizeable portion of the population seem to agree with Hitler and, in fact, he becomes a popular TV personality. Unfortunately, Hitler is filmed shooting a dog and falls from grace. But, because he is Hitler, he writes another book, refuses to be discouraged, and mounts a comeback. (The novel ends with Hitler re-establishing his party through the internet and TV appearances, an apparently irresistible force.) As in the novel, there are lots of sequences that are designed to exploit the sheer incongruity of the absurdly charismatic, but sinister dictator interacting with the more silly aspects of modern life -- we see Hitler in love, Hitler commenting on a TV cooking show, Hitler berating neo-Nazis for not being tough enough and so on. Parts of the film are evasive, a characteristic shared with the novel. In the book, Hitler discovers that Sawatzki's goth girlfriend is part Jewish and, in fact, confronts her elderly grandmother who complains about the deaths of family members in the war. Hitler commiserates about the brutality of allied bombing campaigns only to be told that the family members were murdered in the camps -- in the book, Vermes sets up a confrontation between the old lady, a victim of Hitler's anti-Semitism, and Hitler, but, then, he shifts the subject and deflects the issue, suggesting obliquely that even the Jewish grandmother could be won over to Hitler's side by his sheer charisma. The movie follows this plot line quite closely -- the movie is not particularly faithful to the novel in general -- but doesn't seem to know how to handle the old woman's wild-eyed and hysterical revelation that this man is, in fact, the real Hitler and not merely a comedian with a gift for remaining in character. The old woman shrieks wildly at Hitler and, the movie changes the subject. The movie is interesting, fairly amusing with a few laugh-out-loud scenes. And the picture is particularly revelatory in light of the United States election and rise of Donald Trump, the main reason, I think, that this picture can be found on Netflix.
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