2002

January 12, 2003
Camera Cinema Club
Canada / Germany / Hungary / UK
English / Hebrew
106 minutes

Art + Politics = Power -- MAX.

Puts a human face on Adolf Hitler. It's the fictional story of a relationship between a Jewish art dealer (John Cusack) and the future leader of Germany (Noah Taylor). We watch as Hitler develops some of his theories on race mixing and 'pure bloodlines'. If he could only have put his aggression and the horror he saw in World War I on the canvass, maybe he wouldn't have felt the urge to take over the world.

Let's talk about John Cusack. I have never met anyone who didn't like him. He is almost Tom Hanks-like in his ability to seem like a nice guy, even though we don't really know anything about him. I've just looked up his credits and realize I've seen 33 films with him in them. He is my age. He is a smart, music-savvy person. I like to see him in films and I actually respect him more for what he's done offscreen. He wrote an essay a few years back about the hypocrisy in a media that reports every problem with a Public Enemy concert while never mentioning that it was the white kids who were Soul Asylum fans who had done the damage. He is a keen social critic. But here's the thing: I don't think he's the world's greatest actor. He always seems to be John Cusack and not his character. I still wonder what everyone saw in his GRIFTERS performance. In my opinion, he didn't become a good actor until BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. In MAX, I sat there mesmerized by his acting. He wasn't the charming, sarcastic guy we've seen in just about all of his roles, he was a German Jew. And thankfully he never attempted an accent. He is missing an arm, which can be an acting trick, but he pulled it off without being showy. I was most impressed with him in this role. Taylor captured the speech patterns and volatility in Hitler without making him too pathetic. It was a good film, but not great.