Amen (2002)

 All Catholics should watch this DVD
This film, in the framework of World War II, helps Catholics understand the silence of many local church leaders on injustices happening right now. Consider the Iraq War. John Paul II and Benedict XVI made multiple powerful statements that the Iraq War is unjust. Nonetheless, many Catholics are unaware of this in the US as US church leaders fear losing memberships and even student enrollments as some members earn their income from participating in the violence. February 22, 2008

 COSTA-GAVRAS, OPUS 15
***1/2 2002. Co-written and directed by Costa-Gavras. Seven nominations for the French César awards but only one win in the Best Writing category. The real story of SS Kurt Gerstein who tried to alert the world about concentration camps. The problem with this kind of film is that the people who should watch it will never buy or rent such a movie.
January 27, 2008

 An important story
This interesting film tells the story of Kurt Gerstein, a real-life SS officer who risked everything to try to get the Vatican to alert the world to the Shoah and to do something, anything, to stop it. He was a chemist and sanitation engineer who originally was responsible for creating gas to fumigate barracks, blankets, and clothes being used by the Wehrmacht. Before long he was pressed into service sanitising the drinking water for the soldiers serving in the East, and working for the Institute of Hygiene. While working on a way to combat typhus in the East, he discovers just what his gas is being used for. Thoroughly shaken and horrified after personally witnessing people being murdered in a gas chamber, he turns all of his moral energy towards trying to get through to the Vatican, since he knows what a powerful leader the Pope is, even though he himself is a Protestant. The euthanasia of the mentally disabled (his own niece among them) was stopped when Church leaders protested against it, and Gerstein believes, very optimistically, that the murders of European Jewry too will be halted once such a major leader of the Christian world speaks out against it. At his first attempted meeting with Vatican officials, he meets Ricardo Fontana (a composite of several real-life priests), a young Jesuit priest whose family has powerful connections to the Vatican. Both men spend the rest of the war trying to use their positions of power and prestige to stop the genocide, even as everyone around them maintains an unbelievable silence. It's an important story and powerful message about the dangers of complacency and the power of a few individuals to make a difference.

There are the usual suspects who have accused this film of being anti-Catholic, but it's not meant to be a political film. This is about historical events, and the stunning silence so many Christian leaders maintained in the face of mounting evidence of atrocities, refusing to use their power to speak out and do something the way they had in the past. And while Italy itself (home to Europe's oldest Jewish community) "only" lost about 19% of its prewar Jewish population, and many Italian Jews were hidden with the help of Church officials, the victims the film largely deals with come from Eastern Europe, people who were being deported and murdered long before that fate began to be dealt to Italian Jewry in September 1943. Real history might unsettle us when it doesn't always depict things such as religious institutions in a positive light, but that doesn't make it propaganda or a lie.

While part of the film's effectiveness comes from the fact that it never really shows any of the atrocities that Gerstein and Ricardo are protesting against, that also is a bit of a downside. While less is more, that "less" doesn't have to be just vaguely hinted at or only show in a few very brief scenes. A lot of the film depicts politicking, and thus it can be hard at times to really feel emotionally drawn into the story when it's almost all dialogue. At times it seems more like a tv movie than a feature-length film. However, since it was based on a play (Rolf Hochhuth's 'Der Stellvertreter,' 'The Representative'), the staginess of a lot of it seems more understandable. I do wish though that there had been some more emotional depth brought to these characters, and that there had been more of a chronology. Apart from a few things, such as the mention of the defeat at Stalingrad and the winter landscape, there isn't much clear sense of what year it is or how much time passed since the last scene. And since this is based on a play about historical events, it seemed to lack more of a distinct narrative arc, with a set beginning, middle, and end, and as a result the end did seem a bit anticlimactic to me. In spite of those issues, though, I did still quite enjoy it.

Extras include trailers, a "making-of" documentary, comparison of a scene from the film with a scene from the play, bios and filmographies of the director and two protagonists, information on the real Kurt Gerstein, and an interview with director Costa-Gavras. October 25, 2007

 The price of dissidence
This is the story of SS Officer Kurt Gerstein, the "good Nazi" who was good at his job and believed in his work until he realized what it was. This is my first experience with the concept of the "good Nazi," especially one that operates in the ranks of the SS - but the story claims to be true. While the Gerstein character is real, the Catholic Priest who tries to help him is a fictional character, a composite of others. Still, I've done a lot of reading on the holocaust, and I have yet to find a Catholic Priest who actually worked the ovens. Please. The Nazis made the Jews do that, and they made them do it for a reason. Because the Nazis were very, very "good" at what they did, and the mental torture made the physical torture exquisite.

Gerstein's area of expertise was "disinfection," but he had no idea, apparently, what the "final solution" was all about. Most Germans did not, or if they did, were in complete denial about it. Denial is not that hard to believe. We are living in it now.

It isn't until Gerstin actually gets to look through the peephole each gas chamber contained that he could see the naked bodies climbing all over each other, the weakest at the bottom, in order to get to what air was left at the top. Apparently, the other Nazis weren't bothered. He was.

"I must be the eyes of God in that hell!" cries the Priest. A great line. I'm sure God had lots of eyes in that hell.

With each attempt to work within the system, as many of us continue to do in our own corrupt systems, the protests are familiar:

"We are at war!" (When at war, all bets are off)

"Germans are incapable of such attrocities!" (How often have I heard that bureaucracies couldn't organize a conspiracy to wipe their own noses!)

Protestations were dismissed as "rumors" and "conspiracy theories." (sigh) The more things change...

"The Jews left for America long ago."

"There is no proof." (Just because there is no proof doesn't mean it isn't happening.)

The scene of the Germans celebrating Christmas with their fancy dinner and fancy liquor singing "Silent Night" when you just know ashes of the dead are falling, mixed with snow is probably the creepiest scene.

The Pope never even pronounced the word "Jew" or "Concentration Camp." Just like so many Presidents who never pronounced the word "AIDS".

"We refuse to negotiate with the Nazis." ("We don't negotiate with terrorists)

"Jews are being sent to labor camps!" (Certainly not being tortured and killed!)

One line - "It is out of the question for an SS who is betraying his country to appear at the Vatican!" What kind of a Catch 22 is that???

I refuse to take the hard line that Gerstein was a coward who did nothing. It is easy for armchair quarterbacks who weren't there to presume that it would have been easy to stop the machine that was Fascism. Many people tried. Apparently, Gerstein was one of them. Many Germans tried to work within the system, and console themselves with the lives they were able to save - even Mengele, who actually patted himself on the back for the "experiments" that saved Jews from the gas chamber, and the people he directed out of the death line. Germans who had access to food, clothing, shelter, blankets were able to share them if they were inclined to. Germans who had access to nothing had nothing to share.

Another powerful scene was the scene where the Zyklon-B had become diluted thanks to Gerstein's attempt to make it unusable. The Camp officials decided to use it anyway. Kapos who were working the ovens complained that they were throwing living bodies into the ovens who had not yet died. For their complaints, they were immediately shot.

People in Hitler's Germany knew that was the price to be paid for dissidence. You obeyed authority or you died. Don't forget that the Prussians were a people who invented the public school system that created a people incapable of questioning authority. The very system all public schools are based upon today.

Gerstein was in a no-win situation. The movie raises the question, but gives us no answers. It is important that we all consider the question, and where each of us would draw the line. We may confront that decision sooner than we think.Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation April 19, 2007

 Thank heaven, for little people.
"Amen" certainly ranks with the triad of WWII epics in recent years,"Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan," and "Life Is Beautiful." It is not that the film has less bang than its distinguished companions, it still has lasting reverberation. Its sweep is wider than the others, yet the brushstroke of a master storyteller stays meticulously detailed. Its heroes come out of the background quietly, yet with considerable fervor; one from the opulent, spiritual citadel, the other right from the jackals of hideousness. With building suspense the ultimate horror is that the film cannot answer: why did the Vatican aid the Nazi criminals and not the Jews? The telling of this drama has no false note,balancing respect for the Holy See and a paucity of humanity(skepticism)in the SS ranks. For once, there were good Germans, but bad earthly representatives of Christ. Where "Life Is Beautiful" lifts into transcendent philosophy, "Amen" hurls the wine of hypocrisy into the Papal leadership with sobering justification. February 8, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...