Moloch (1999)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Am I Missing Something?

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is not a film one "likes" in the ordinary sense that one might like, say "The Sound of Music." It is, however a film that could be admired for it's intention and for much of it's execution. I admired much of what the director was attempting, an unconventional look at Hitler's private life as an isolated, paranoid, lonely, often clueless individual who cannot connect with any kind of reality, but is still loved for himself by Eva.Moloch is a curious, slow-moving construct, and is, in someways, about the disconnect between those who have power and those who depend upon them: the opening, featuring a nude Eva Braun dancing faun-like on some stone battlements in the fog, is odd and fascinating; what follows no less so, a sort of Fantasia On The Mad Dictator; the film is a curiosity.Just it is difficult to nail down the character of W. C. Fields in a film, or Clark Gable, or Charlie Chaplin, it is always difficult to recreate the 20th Century's most notable villain, Adolph Hitler. Many from Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins to Richard Basehart have tried, but Bruno Ganz in Downfall offers the unimpeachable impersonation--but Downfall a different kind of film. Like the kinky film "Even Dwarfs Started Small," Moloch is an oddity, fascinating to some history or film fans, exasperating for most mainstream audiences.

Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about when people say this is a boring and pretentious film. Yes, this is an art-house flick. It's beautiful purpose is to make you think in many different ways and about many different aspects of Nazism; for instance, look how the throng assembles like one of Rembrandt's paintings of the ruling council when 'Adi' slumps into the chair. A very telling reference out - but this film doesn't restrict its references to 'highbrow' themes. In its stylised portrayal of Goebbels and Bormann it manages to suggest the stereotypes of American cinema, which is meant to generate insights into how to view this centre of evil. As the synopsis says, Hitler et al have come to Berchtesgaden for R & R, right? Not much fun, is it? At the centre of this empire, there is simply a void of yes-men who cannot relax in each other's company, who cannot even break out the wine until der Fuhrer has gone to bed, and who for whom every day is an exercise in the most intense nervousness *with no way out except through der Fuhrer's whimsical violent rage.* This movie is one of the driest I've come across. If Mel Brooks was the slapstick Nazis, this is Nazis as 'Big Brother' contestants. So underplayed, it's not exactly surprising many people complain there's nothing going on here - but then, the evil of the Nazis is a strange and unwanted gift for artists and filmmakers who want to get as damn near to Eliot's 'Objective Correlative' as possible, so they can play with a collective, coherent response. In this case, it begins with, "The Nazis were awful, awful people. When did their punishment happen, eh? How was death truly a punishment for their particular evil?" This movie shows, by making fun of them from several perspectives, exactly what their punishment was. When the film moves into the relationship between AH and EB later on, it is further complicated by the fact that Eva is the only one who has even seen what they are doing. Note the subtlety of the exchange which ends in Adi saying, "That's the right answer," or the weird symbolism of their body language when he finally catches up with her in the bedroom. Sokhurov is not trying to portray realistically what happened; he is using the space of Berchtesgaden as a space for a symbolic expression of what Nazism did to the Nazis themselves. Their hell began when they imposed it on others, and they only discovered it later, by which time, one of them was a doddering old neurotic wreck, another one way out of his depth, and still another one abandoned by his old comrades and desperately trying to curry favour. And the whole thing adds up to something ludicrous. I have read on another critique here, that Hitler was considered to be very boring. Well, he can't have been that boring, if you could provoke him to send you to the Russian front simply by criticising his ambitions - but then, the boredom angle is catered for in the first ten minutes with Eva's listlessness. This film is classic.

I thought the theme of this movie was quite interesting. Still in the end, the result could have been better. What I enjoyed the most in the end was the scenery created around Hitler's "last resort". It really gave the impression of a new Olympus, with human gods around the german Zeus, "die führer"(at least as they saw themselves...). Still, what I found bad in the end was not the soviet approach, as I read in previous comments nor the vision of Hitler as a stupid good fellow(that has to do with the director's origins in the first case and with his vision of history and of the past in the second; if none of these elements were present in the movie than it would be the same as if it had been directed by Bertolucci or Coppolla!...; this gives identity to the creator and to his piece...). What was the true failure in this film, the way I see it, was that besides the director's new characterization of hitler and his hidding place, there were no "juicy" dialogues, no real reflexion about any theme, ideologically speaking or even supported in happenings that might have been occurring in that time. In the end I didn't feel the pulse of the characters, it's like if they were dead, with no capacity to rule the world as the gods they pretended to be... Still I had the sublime impression that they were like resting as if they were not responsable for what was going on in the world, in a lunatic attitude that I believe was close to the reality... 7/10

being very impressed by the poetic imagery in sokurov's 'mother and son' i was very interested about moloch and especially when such a controversial theme as the inner live of hitler and his incrowd is involved. Alas this was a pure disappointment; depicting hitler as a raving lunatic and a village idiot in an overtly absurdist way is almost as insulting to the course of history as portraying hitler as a 'good guy'. Foggy decors, 'ballet-movie' sequences and pseudo-artistic black white scores only help to establish an artsy fartsy feel about this whole project. Concluding very interesting idea to begin with but an utterly failed and boring production.