BEFORE: Colin Firth carries over from "Easy Virtue". OK, so I stand by my choice to watch "Easy Virtue" yesterday instead of "The Exception", but in the road not taken, there would have then been two films next to each other with Nazis in them, and Ben Daniels would have carried over from "The Exception" to tonight's film. It would have all worked out either way, is what I'm trying to point out. But I just didn't want to skip "Easy Virtue" a third time, it was hard enough to program it anywhere at all, let alone in a February romance chain. I barely think it was even worth it, but that doesn't matter, it's gone, it's off the list, it's in the past, and I get to watch "Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania" this weekend. So there's something to look forward to.
I was going to watch only 25 movies in July, but now I think I've got to squeeze in an extra one, and another 26 films in August, because I see a film that's somewhat 9/11 related (not as much as "Worth", but whatever) and I think I can get it to land on 9/11 if I watch just one more movie a month than I originally planned. Always looking for a way to line things up better with the calendar, that's me.
THE PLOT: At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution" to the Jewish question can be best implemented.
AFTER: I haven't really covered any World War II material this year, except for "The Book Thief" - it's been something of a staple around here, like a couple years back when I watched "The Reader" and "Downfall" and "The Boys from Brazil" all in a row. Hitler turns up in so many documentaries, though - just one this year but he made cameos in three other films. Maybe I watched all the movies with Nazis in them already? Nah, I've still got "The Exception", which looks like the same exact film as "The Aftermath", if I'm being honest.
But now I'm scratching my head to try and understand why anyone would make a movie about the Wannsee Conference of 1942, which is where the top Nazis met in order to flesh out the plan for the Holocaust. Yes, yes, I know this is an important subject, and we should never forget about this and also we should constantly and consistently remind ourselves that this happened, just in case there are people out there who don't. Important, yes, but I don't necessarily think we should be soaking in it. What possible good can come from screenwriters imagining what was said during this meeting? What the Nazis ate, drank, smoked during the proceedings? Listening to the different Nazi officials harp again and again on how many Jews there are in German territories, and how that number is WAY too high, and how all of Europe needs to be "cleansed" of the Jews is really disgusting, on so many levels.
Worse, hearing their reasons, their calculations about using Jews for labor like building roads, and whether that purpose would be enough to justify keeping them alive, that's also sickening. Yes, yes, still very important that we don't forget these arguments were made, but hearing the Nazis' reasoning for killing the Jews, that killing them is easier and cheaper than keeping them alive and sterilizing them, well, the fact that they had ANY reasoning at all comes just a bit too close to justifying their actions, if you ask me. No, of course any time people meet around a table and talk about killing a large number of people, or bombing a country, or gassing JUST the people they don't like, then for sure base evil has taken a hold of their actions. But again, hearing their reasons for the "Final Solution" is too much, I don't want to hear their calculus and their reasons, however misguided, because it's one step away from justification.
Most of these actors are British, however, and not German at all - so that's all a bit weird, to see Germans but to HEAR Brits. I had the same problem watching the film "The Death of Stalin" because there wasn't one Russian person in the whole film, all the Russian characters had British accents. WTF? Doesn't anybody have any interest in making films sound authentic any more? "Conspiracy" should have had everyone speaking German, or at least have German accents, for it to come anywhere CLOSE to reality. Now I can't take this film seriously at all, once I noticed that.
Sure, this came out in 2001, but still, WTF? There was no attempt to even teach anyone in the cast how to speak German, or at least English with a German accent? It's possible, there are dialogue coaches out there who could have at least given that a try. And Stanley TUCCI as Eichmann? Again, WTF? He's of Italian descent and I really want to know now what convinced him to put on a Nazi uniform and play one of the most hated men in history. Did he think he would uncover something slightly redeeming, deep inside Eichmann's character? Impossible.
Though, at the start of the film, when Eichmann (Tucci) was supervising the set-up of the conference, including the catering and the drinks and the cigars, I got really big "Big Night" energy from him. It was so much like he was setting up the restaurant for the big Italian dinner in that film, only here it was with British food. For a minute I hoped this film would play out like that film, only with Adolf Hitler in the Louis Prima role, all the Nazi generals would sit around and wait for Hitler to show up, only to give up after a few hours and dig into all the kasseler rippchen and the sauerbraten and the käsespaetzle. Alas, it wasn't to be....
As disturbing as this is, there are a couple of highlights - one is the focus on the chefs and waiters and the maids who had to clean up after the meeting. It's a reminder that not every German during World War II was evil, some people were just the hired help, and every society needs people to cook and clean for events, that's solid work that never goes away, not even in Nazi Germany. The other highlight is the "roll call" at the end of the movie, which tells us what happened later to every participant at the conference. (Forgive me of thinking of the similarity to the "Where Are They Now" credits at the end of "Animal House".). Here we learn that all of the major Nazis who attended the conference suffered horrible fates, those that didn't die in bombing raids ended up in the Nuremberg trials, or even the few that were acquitted died in car accidents a few years later. Perhaps "car accident" was code word for being killed by Nazi hunters, I don't know.
Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by Czech partisans six months after Wannsee, for his brutal rule over Bohemia and Moravia, and Eichmann fled to Argentina after the war, but he was eventually caught, tried and hung in Israel in 1962. So there is poetic justice after all, just sometimes it takes 17 years to arrive.
Also starring Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Worth"), Ian McNeice (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Kevin McNally (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), David Threlfall (last seen in "Like Minds"), Ewan Stewart (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Brian Pettifer (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Nicholas Woodeson (last seen in "The Hustle"), Jonathan Coy, Brendan Coyle (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Ben Daniels (last heard in "Locke"), Barnaby Kay (last seen in "Red Tails"), Owen Teale (last seen in "Tolkien"), Peter Sullivan (last seen in "The Jackal"), Tom Hiddleston (last seen in "The Gathering Storm"), Ross O'Hennessy, Simon Markey (last seen in "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers"), Dirk Martens (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Andreas Guenther, Florian Panzner (last seen in "Valkyrie"), Hinnerk Schönemann, and the voice of Rod Culberton (last seen in "Elizabeth").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Nazi military drivers having a snowball fight
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