Moloch (1999)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Best movie ever!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

"Molokh" is a Nazi-themed movie from over 15 years ago that runs for 108 minutes. It is the beginning of a quadrilogy by director Aleksandr Sokurov. Fittingly to the topic, the film has German as its language although it is obvious that all or almost all of the cast were dubbed. Also the fourth film in the quadrilogy ("Faust") is in German. There, however, a big part of the cast are also German actors in contrast to here. I think the guy who dubbed Hitler here could be Monk's German voice, but I am not 100% sure. One of the reasons I watched this film is because of the screenplay award it won in Cannes. Another would be that I read that Mozgovoy's Hitler may be the biggest competition to Ganz in terms of who played the Fuehrer best. Mozgovoy was almost a rookie when this was made in terms of film acting, but an experienced theater actor. No surprise this looks like an intimate play. The Eva Braun actress is a bit more experienced, but not really that much either. The supporting players may have the most experience here. Note that Goebbels (maybe even more bizarre than Hitler here) is played by a woman here. This also adds to the theater atmosphere as do most of the settings.The movie looks much older than it actually is, but this applies to some of Sokurov's works. The film moves very slowly and there are repeatedly section with little to none dialog. In the first 10 minutes, we only watch Eva Braun dance. Later on, we see her practice on the rings like a professional athlete and near the end she is dancing wildly again on a table. Very physical performance from her. Almost ballet-like at times. Hitler joins her on the table at the end and I personally felt occasionally that without the costumes and the famous names and judging from their actions and dialogs, this could have been a random unknown family too instead of the Fuehrer and his wife. Anyway, it left me fairly unimpressed. Maybe it simply was too slow for my taste. This movie never really captured my interest, so i cannot recommend it. Next time "Downfall" again.

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.

Part of a tetralogy that includes the recent, amazing "The Sun" about Hirohito (2005, shown at the New York Film Festival but as yet without a US distributor), as well as "Taurus" (Telets, 2002), about a mortally ill Lenin. (The fourth I think is not yet made.) All concern men of great power at decisive and tragic moments. "Moloch" concerns Hitler in 1942 in an eagle's nest castle in the Bavarian Alps, isolated, as in other portraits, among his cadres and Eva Braun, indulging in grumpy vegetarian dinners and tossing about weird racist remarks about other nationalities. This is acted by strong members of the theater of St. Petersburg, Elena Rufanova as Eva Barun, Leonid Mosgovoi as Hitler, Leonid Solol as Goebbels, Yelena Spirindonova as Frau Goebbels, Vladimir Bogdanov as Martin Bormann, whose lines are dubbed by German actors, and this is done well. The whole is bathed in a murky green-gray or verdigris fog -- saturated, someone has written, with a kind of patina characteristic of old Agfa films -- the fogginess typical also of Sokurov's style elsewhere, with (as in The Sun) a sumptuous feel in the mise-en-scène and amazing, evocative period realness to objects (photo books, ashtrays, serving dishes) which seem at once solid and delicate. Yes, this is remarkable film-making. But the film as a whole is yawn-inducing. Hitler spends most of his screen time moaning about his health. Ten minutes are devoted to Eva's wandering around naked without a word spoken. She is graceful and athletic; but why? Well, to evoke the boredom and idleness of the isolated concubine -- but is such length necessary? "Moloch" is very different from, and rather disappointing in comparison to, "The Sun's" stunning, touching portrayal of Hirohito, which dwells also on trivial moments, but always in the cause of a sensitive exploration of character and situation. There is a hushed intimacy about "The Sun" that "Moloch", though it has a few grand moments and may even evoke Lang's "Metropolis," never attempts. Hitler doesn't even really talk enough, and this brings us to the inevitable fact that at this date, 2006, "Moloch" is thoroughly overshadowed by the far more conventional, sometimes heavy-handed, but nonetheless richly detailed and accurate and breathlessly exciting recreation of the last days in the Bunker achieved recently by Oliver Hirschbiegel in his "Downfall" ("Der Untergang," 2004), released in the US last year and containing Bruno Ganz's powerful performance as the Nazi dictator.

It's a masterpiece. Provocative and strange. As you watch you wonder what the hell is going on. It's one of those films that shakes up your idea of cinema. It overturns your idea of history dealing with a subject that has been stamped and framed through so many documentaries and films so that you have already have your mind ready made for you. Nothing can be further from this movie. This is a movie that makes you rethink. And it's funny too. As the title suggests it's about evil and evil empires but instead of dealing with their grandiose and terrible projects it approaches Hitler and his cronies by illustrating their banality, ordinariness, and yes, ridiculous antics. There's no way you could describe this film as in some way supportive of Hitler. Hitler playing around with his teasing lover, his masculinity and prowess at stake. Hitler pontificating about this and that with every word he says taken down in writing as though it were gospel. Hitler with his bloated and deformed cronies messing about in the Eagles Nest, up there in the mist looking over his empire of clouds. Sokurov has made great movies and this is another.