Hamburg, Jan 12
A slapstick comedy by a Jewish filmmaker about Adolf Hitler has
opened in Germany to a chorus of bad reviews and condemnation by
Jewish leaders. Barring a miracle, Swiss director Dani Levy's "Mein
Fuehrer" looks likely to be the biggest box office flop of the year
in a nation which for weeks has been embroiled in pre-release debate
over whether Germans should allow themselves a good chuckle at
Hitler's expense.
In a nation not known for self-deprecating humor, Levy's film goes
to great lengths to portray Hitler - and the Germans - as being
laughably ridiculous. Not surprisingly, many film reviewers have
derided precisely that aspect of the film.
"Levy's film is laughable but, unfortunately, it is not very funny.
This reviewer found little to laugh about in this sadly unfunny
movie," wrote a reviewer in Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.
"One of the most enduring crimes of the Third Reich is the
embarrassment it has caused for subsequent generations of Germans,"
wrote Der Spiegel news magazine.
"That is about the hardest thing Germans have to endure - that the
Third Reich is so unforgivably embarrassing."
Levy, a Jewish Swiss filmmaker who has made a career out of
directing irreverent comedies, picked one of Germany's most
outrageously irreverent stand-up comics to portray the fuehrer.
Helge Schneider, who plays an impotent and incontinent Hitler
playing with toy battleships in a bathtub, is an anarchic comic who
himself has directed and starred in a number of slapstick comedies -
films that largely appeal to adolescent male audiences.
"Helge is precisely the man to deflate Hitler down to human size,"
Levy says. "Germans have been conditioned to think of Hitler as a
larger-than-life demon whose actions and crimes are beyond human
comprehension.
"As long as they think of him as being non-human, they will never
come to terms with the fact that he was a very human, very mortal
buffoon of a man. I needed a buffoon to play the role and Helge is
the perfect buffoon."
Schneider says the controversy over the film only shows that Germans
fail to see the ludicrous side of Hitler.
Echoing Der Spiegel's suggestion that Hitler's most unforgivable
crime was in being a continual embarrassment to all future Germans,
Schneider says: "Hitler was a pathological nincompoop who got where
he was only because a lot of people somehow ignored the fact."
The film has outraged Jewish leaders in Germany, saying it makes
Hitler seem harmless.
"My family is Holocaust survivors and it just turns my stomach to
think that moviegoers in Germany will be laughing at Hitler and the
Holocaust," says Dieter Graumann, vice president of the Central
Council of Jews in Germany.
"I just can't laugh about these things."
One of the Jewish community's most strident, high-profile leaders is
Lea Rosh, a veteran newswoman who was a guiding force behind the
Holocaust Monument located on the block between Brandenburg Gate and
Hitler's one-time chancellery building in the heart of Berlin.
"There is no way that any film director can make Hitler funny," says
Rosh. "Levy's film denigrates the horror and suffering that millions
endured. It's not something you can laugh about, not now, not in 200
years, not ever."
Levy's last film was a black comedy about the estranged sons of a
German Jewish father whose dying wish was that they make amends and
share his estate in harmony.
The film was critically acclaimed but played at only a few art-house
cinemas. His Hitler comedy is not expected to do even that well,
despite or perhaps because of all the advance publicity.
Even so, Levy is well respected in Israel, where his last film was
shown to cheers and also to boos and catcalls.
"I'm looking forward to the screening in Jerusalem," Levy says. "My
last film was accused of being a piece of Goebbels Nazi propaganda.
What on earth will hardliners in Israel think of this film?"
The filmmaker is also curious to see how right-wingers in Germany
react to "Mein Fuehrer".
"I'm just waiting for the complaints to come in from neo-Nazis, and
from old-Nazis for that matter, who gripe that my film is
disrespectful of their fuehrer and shows him in a bad light," Levy
says.
"I mean, it's so typical of Germans to take it all so terribly
seriously and not realize that their total lack of humor makes them
a laughingstock around the world."
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