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CIFF 2013: "Stranger by the Lake" Review

CIFF 2013: “The German Doctor” Review

by Taylor Sinople on October 20, 2013

In “The German Doctor,” notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele seeks refuge at a Patagonian hotel after fleeing Europe in the mid 1940’s.

Mengele (Àlex Brendemühl) uses his money and medical knowledge to charm the hotel’s owners, the pregnant Eva (Natalia Oreiro) and husband Enzo (Diego Peretti), after becoming interested in their under-developed 12-year-old daughter Lilith (Florencia Bado). Lilith’s small size and Eva’s expected twins spark Mengele’s attention and he attempts to treat the children with an experimental growth hormone while hiding his true identity from everyone in the town.

Known for his torturous experimentation at Auschwitz concentration camp, Mengele would carry on his testing of pregnant women and their children throughout South America as he avoided the Israeli manhunt for the rest of his life.

New director Lucía Puenzo (“XXY”) directs lead actor Àlex Brendemühl to triumph as the reckless  yet strangely kind Mengele. This isn’t a simple vilification, but a true effort to understand his reprehensible nature. The filmmakers aren’t afraid to suggest that despite the torturous outcomes of his experimentation, Mengele believed in the far reaches of his twisted mind that his actions were for a greater good.

Puenzo’s writing says a great deal with very little through the use of subtleties that reference the events of the holocaust. Mengele drops unintentional clues in casual conversation that we are able to pick up knowing his true identity. When he discovers Enzo’s hobby of building dolls, Mengele offers to mass-produce them – removing the imperfection in an assembly line process. These allusions end up at odds with the subtlety of the actor’s performance. There’s a disconnect between his desire to stay hidden and his overly obvious actions that seems constructed more for entertainment than historical accuracy. This in-your-face approach extends to the film’s well-crafted, but unnecessary score that uses acoustic guitars and violins to extend the already successful drama.

“The German Doctor” is clearly an exceptionally intriguing project – it showed at the Chicago International Film Festival to a packed, sold out crowd. While certainly well-made, the ultimate trouble will come from the audience’s difficulty to connect to the film. Our point of view exists outside of the main character. We’re cut off from Mengele’s emotions and thoughts and often placed on the outside looking in. This is both the film’s greatest mystery and flaw.

7/10

(All Features), (All Reviews), Biography/History, Chicago International Film Festival 2013, Drama, Event Coverage, Features, Foreign, Reviews, Thriller
ciffJosef MengeleSouth American CinemaWorld War II
ciff, Josef Mengele, South American Cinema, World War II
About the Author
Taylor Sinople
Taylor Sinople
Taylor is a Chicago-based writer and aspiring film historian. He is the editor here at TFP, and has contributed to a number of international publications such as Cinema Scandinavia, PopMatters, and Room 101 Magazine. He can also be found listening to podcasts, researching topics he has little use for, or running after a city bus.
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A family of cattle herders living outside a West African city strives to maintain their quality of life amidst the presence of jihadists imposing their laws on the people of Timbuktu. Director Abderrahmane Sissako (“Bamako”) examines an especially relevant world issue here with admirable humanity. Extremists are exposed as manipulators and intimidators, but Sissako stops […]
 

CIFF 2014: The Midnight After Review

by Taylor Sinople on October 13, 2014
A busload of strangers seemingly become the last humans on Earth after an unexplained apocalyptic event erases all signs of human life in this midnight movie blowout from Hong Kong cult director Fruit Chan. As the group of survivors explore the city and propose theories on what happened, they begin to realize that without laws […]
 
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CIFF 2014: The Circle Review

by Taylor Sinople on October 13, 2014
Paragraph 175 may have criminalized homosexuality in post-war Germany, but that didn’t stop many gay men from jumping the border to Zurich, Switzerland. There, with the right contacts, one could join Der Kreis (The Circle): an underground magazine that published essays and illustrations for gay men and hosted secret parties. Of the 2,000 subscribers to […]
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