Max

MAX had possiblity for being an unforgettable political HORROR film; perhaps cult classic. Its failure is magnified. Ambience, theme and Cusack cannot save a cliched effort in PM murk. Director Meyjes utterly misses this "incarnation" of Hitler.His man claims to aspire to construct classic BEAUTY. In resentment and unparalleled egotism, he determines to DECONSTRUCT an entire world order; murder millions; and poison human desire for the Good,True & Beautiful: SOMETHING WICKED,indeed,THIS WAY COMES. Meyjes and Noah Taylor,ultimately, do genesis of Evil disservice by displaying it as teeth-grinding PETULANCE without seductive glamour or potential for perverse triumph. MAX'Hitler is a fool. History records he was sheer TERROR.(2 & 1/2 stars)

Writer-director Menno Meyjes explores this idea in the 2002 film "Max," in which Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) is still living in military barracks in Munich as Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles and is trying to make a name as an artist. He shows his work to Max Rothman (John Cusack), a Jewish art dealer who lost an arm in the World War and who is consumed by the idea of the subversiveness of modern art. Hitler disparages such ideas, considering them "blood poisoning." Rothman and Hitler argue about art, both in terms of the futurist movement and Hitler's lack of an "authentic voice" in his own work.

Meanwhile, at the barracks of the decommissioned army, Hitler is folding laundry and being courted by Captain Mayr (Ulrich Thomsen), who is teaching a class on propaganda. Mayr is a historic figure and it is in his responses to Mayr and others in the barracks that Hitler is his most articulate and persuasive in dispensing his particular brand of venom.

The major fault I find in this film is that both the script and Taylor's performance play too quickly to the ranting Hitler. One of the great distortions of Hitler's legacy is that the black & white film footage of Hitler speaking comes from the climax of his speeches, when he has worked himself and his audience into frenzy. But Hitler always built to such a crescendo. He would show up late for speeches, making his audience wait in anticipation, and then stand there until the audience got quiet, and then would stand some more, building the drama. Then he would begin speaking softly, so that his audience strained to hear him. Hitler was a devastatingly effective public speaker and every time his oratory is reduced to rants and raves we have an incomplete and inadequate understanding of the monster.

What lies at the heart of the film is the idea that you either take the view that Hitler is a madman born in sulfur who wrecked havoc on the world or that he was a kind of hustler. Meyjes goes with the later view, presenting Hitler as a frustrated artist whose evil was rooted in that frustration and his inability to express himself. It is in his engagements with Rothman and Mayr that Hitler finds his "authentic voice," and comes to the fatal conclusion that politics will be his art and the German people his canvas.

"Max" ends the relationship between Rothman and Hitler on an ironic note, which is exactly what I expected. After all, by both his failure and his success with Hitler, Rothman is pushing Hitler towards the horrors of Nazi Germany, and his fate in the film symbolisms what is to come. Meyjes is not trying to tell a true story here; after all, Hitler had a handlebar mustache during this period after the war, but having Taylor play the future Fuhrer clean-shaven seems appropriate for this provocative story.

Of course this film is provocative; it should be. Reducing Hitler and the Nazis to being anti-Semitism misses the whole fascist dynamic of the struggle towards order that became the Cold War mentality. Meyjes takes the rather simplistic idea that if someone like Rothman had been a better patron to Hitler the artist that everything would have been different. But the script is so intelligent and the performances so compelling for the most part that we are willing to think along these lines at look at Hitler in a new light. This does not mean that we see him as being a better person, but rather than we better see him for what he was by considering how he became that way.

"Max" is set in 1918 in Munich, Germany. The post-war nation was suffering from the poverty and unemployment, and the distinction between those who have and those don't was too clear. It was the time of unrest for them, for many of the Germans considered their country was humiliated by unjust treaties. They are defeated, but still defiant.

Max Rothman is among the rich, dealing with avand-gard arts in the deserted factory. One day, he meets a struggling artist (so he thinks) Adolf Hilter at the backdoor of the building. He realizes that Hitler served in the previous war (Max lost one of his arms because of the war), and Max takes a pity on this miserably-clad small guy.

Then Hitler comes to him with his sketches, which Max thinks lacks the artist's inner voice. But we know Adolf was the son of the era, when everything was bleak and empty. And while Max encourages to find his own voice in the art, Adolf, constantly dissatisfied and angry, finds it in another quarter -- political speech.

The rest is history, as people say, and how the film ends does not matter. We know the outcome from the first. Still the film poses a question that is worth considering -- "Can he be anything else?" -- and more importantly, perhaps, "How could this small man with squeaking voice could move the whole nation in the tragic way?"

Molly Parker ("Kissed") appears as Max's wife, and Leelee Sobeski as his mistress. But their roles are not as big as the two leads, to whom "Max" belong exclusively.

Noah Tayler did an astounding job, making Hitler not a monster but someone who could have been different. He gives Hitler's slightly cartoonish images when we jeer at him, a deep meaning of its own -- frail, nervous, and eccentric -- all belong to the trait of some artists. But behind that pose of his self-importance, we see something very destructive.

Don't see the film for the story. See that as a character study against the background of the nihilistic world of the 1918 Germany. The photography (which reminds me of somber Eastern Europe films) capturing the grey city has its own power, like watching the hanging clouds before the rain. The cameraman Lajos Koltai's picture (actually set in Budapest) is itself a piece of art.

"Max" shows too many dialogues, and perhaps too introspective sometimes. But the film deserves our watching, and the theme is worth our considering. No wonder John Cusack did it without receiving money.