With «the disappearance of Josef Mengele», the Russian dissident Kirill Serebrennikov trains his lens once again about the failures of democracy, and the ease with which fascism is strengthened and cross hill. However, the biographical film of World War II in black and white contains more ideas than it can handle, between a central character study, directed by an impeccable August, mixed with a story of the jogging evasion of globe, along with numerous clues towards the turn of the political wheels. The combination is too difficult to handle, at least in the dispersed execution of Serebrennikov.
The prologue of the film, set in the 21st century, establishes what would be from the Nazi war criminal, since its remains are examined by medical students in Brazil. Among the group is a couple of black twins, whose teacher mentions Mengele’s fixation with identical brothers, who foreshadows fleeting dramatic moments in the rest of the film, and also ignites this post mortem study in a dramatic irony. Mengele would have detested what happened from his bones; There is a feeling of catharsis so that the mad doctor is reduced to parts in a slab. Unfortunately, what follows rarely fits retro with sufficient dramatic power to gain this preventive closure.
Adapted from the most direct non -fiction novel of Olivier Guez, the Serebrannikov script jumps in time, although with little purpose. He presents Mengele (Diehl), the «Angel of Death» of the Third Reich, who lives in secret and looks over the shoulder in Argentina of the 1950s. The Chamber continues Mengele, sometimes literally, from behind, during his attempts to travel back to Europe, inducing a sensation of paranoia in the process, while embodying a ghostly justice as he pursues. However, these attractive floura fades rapidly, since the film is established in memory rhythms that remind the most recent effort of Serebrennikov (the agitator’s biographical film «Limonov: The Ballad»), in which the political is nothing more than a showcase to the staff, instead of partial and the load.
For the most part, «the disappearance of Josef Mengele» limps between the periods of Mengele in several South American countries, mainly, a Nazi Argentina with Juan Perón, and finally a Brazil controlled by the army, from the 50s to the 70s. The film, in this way, offers clues about the perpetuation of fascist thinking during the twentie (usually on radio transmissions). On the other hand, his constant round trip functions as a prominent reel, denoting Mengele’s marriage with his sister -in -law widow, his relationship with his dominant father and, finally, the efforts of his adult son Rolf (Max Bretschneider) to connect with his separate father. Instead of these bullet points that serve as a backdrop to explore Mengele, they stand out to the point of subsumating any sense of general theme, much less a film fluency between times.
The film is more powerful during its brief incursion in Mengele’s Nazi past, in the middle of the execution time, taking the form of rare color scenes presented as granulated celluloid images filmed by the Nazis themselves. The cheerful cruelty contained in these images is frankly intestinal, and makes a necessary basis for the subsequent moments of the elderly and fugitives that Mengele is forced to face their bad tortuous. Diehl, despite being covered with makeup of the old people, deepens the chilling contradictions and compartments of Mengele, who arrive with an almost comic form of self -consciousness (Mengele detests the idea that one day he can be fictional in the film), which makes the character seem even more pathetic.
However, these moments cannot help feeling very little, too late. Let’s take, for example, a kind of scene that has been expected practically of modern films on human atrocities, of the documentary of the 2013 Indonesian genocide «The act of killing», even the recent dramas of World War II «Oppenheimer» and «The Zone of Interest» in which a figure with the confront of the reality of its mass and vomiting matrices, as if they were in the attempt. Such an instance also comes here, although without the accumulation of requirements that could make Mengele unavoidable nausea mean significant. It is a rhythm that feels mostly autonomous, instead of emanating from a combination of the entire previous drama.
Similarly, Mengele’s twisted fixations are more than casually shaded details in the Serebrannikov sketch, appearing at isolated moments instead of existing as defining characteristics, baked in the character of the character. His persecution, presented in outbreaks through the various timelines, rarely leads to a consistent story of a man persecuted for demons of his own creation (despite the frequent allusions to Mossad that is reached to other Nazi leaders). Diehl does everything possible to embody a harmful figure for eyes and ears, in the most subtle ways and hang, with the body language crouching of a man who occurs as a result. However, the film as a whole rarely drills this veil.
«The disappearance of Josef Mengele» never builds a complete and detestable human being. Their concerns, ironically, feel too logistic for a figure whose cold calculations disguised a more vivid and monstrous human collage. The result is a film that makes a gesture towards a new complexity, but only causes a shoulder shrink.
(Tagstotranslate) Cannes Film Festival (T) Kirill Serebrannnikov
