Mein Kampf (2009)

Let's be realistic.

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

What is this movie about? The protagonist is a young man called Adolf Hitler. You'd almost think it is about the historic person with the same name. It is not! Nevertheless they mix the biography of the real Hitler with this bizarre character. But the essential facts are completely fictional. For example: Hitler gets rejected by the art college. He is living at that time in the movie in an homeless shelter. When the real Hitler got rejected he was living together with a friend in a rented room. The homeless shelter came years later. All the time he utters exact quotes from Adolf Hitlers book "Mein Kampf" but it was written years later than the period of time the movie extends over. He is disgusted meat dishes that he even sometimes has to vomit just from the look at meat but the real Adolf Hitler liked meat at that time. He just became later vegetarian because he thought that meat would cause his severe stomach problems. Hitler even ate soup with marrow dumplings up to the last.In the movie he joins a group of men who terrorize jews and hobos. That never happened. Hitler first got radicalized at WW1.He talks all the time with a strong Austrian Viennese accent. Hitler however was born in Braunau am Inn directly on the Bavarian border and then moved with his family to several places in Bavaria where he was raised. Therefore in reality he was talking in a very thick Bavarian accent. He even often said how much he hated the Viennese accent.In the movie he is constantly surrounded by a Jewish hobo called Schlomo Herzl who invented Hitlers typical look and even wrote the book "Mein Kampf" that is later stolen by Hitler. This guy never existed. I've got the feeling he is kind of the second protagonist just because he was played by Götz George, a mediocre actor that was for whatever reason very popular in Germany till he died.In one scene Hitler talks about the "Völkischer Beobachter" a Nazi- newspaper that first was named like this in 1920 and just existed because Hitler came to power in the early nazi-party. I could go on and on. I know this kind of movies. They just want to tell a moderate story and try to get attention by installing Hitler somewhere in the story. Then a lot of loose references are thrown in to save appearances. This is just a cheap trick. The poor quality of the movie speaks for itself. A total waste of time. I gave three stars just because the actors are not as bad.

Do not be mislead by this 105-minute film's title "Mein Kampf". This film is not based on Adolf Hitler's autobiography, but on a theater play by Budapest-born, BAFTA-winning writer George Tabori, who died briefly before this film was released. This is also why you should not watch this expecting a historically accurate depiction of Hitler's early years, but instead go for a political thriller. If David Wnendt can lead Hitler as a stand-up comedian into the 21st century, then "lack of authenticity" is not a valid point in evaluating this film here. This was written and directed by Swiss filmmaker Urs Odermatt. The film had its world premiere in Canada back in 2009, but it still took a while until most other people got to see it, especially Germans, namely 1.5 years later. It is basically a 2-man show. Tom Schilling and Götz George show why they are considered among the finest German actors of their respective age groups. Of course their roles are baity as hell too and it's almost impossible for them to go over the top here.What I found most interesting was the character of Gretchen, not only because of the Faust reference, but also because she somewhat displays the German people during the years of the real Hitler's rise to power. And as I managed not to expect any great realism in here, I was also impressed by the script. There are many interesting details in the characters' interactions from start to finish, especially of course in how Hitler perceives Jewery (in terms of Herzl) and how influences, such as other, older, more experienced Germans shape his perception of Jews in general, almost exclusively to the negative. The references to Hitler's aspiring career as a painter/artist were nicely included as well and they did well in not constructing the entire film around it. There were certainly a couple scenes that could have been cut, so the film would not have crossed the 95-minute mark and still stayed essential, but it's also fine at over 100 minutes. I enjoyed the watch. Thumbs up.

After being very keen about watching a dramatization of young Adolf Hitler, and what lead him to join politics in stead of art, the writing of his "Mein Kampf" and the rise of his evil soul, I must admit I was quite disappointed with this film in more than one way.First of all it doesn't tell the story in a vary accurate way, it's also in a way more focused on other persons than Hitler himself. This makes the story confusing and difficult to follow. You simply doesn't get what it's all about. It's in a way illogical to me. What's the worst sin here, though, is that the film tells what should be an exciting story, too boring.The film is well played, though the acting is quite theatrical, suited for the theater scene more than the big screen. No wonder, since this is based upon a play by George Tabori. in many ways, this hasen't been tranfered to a feature like it should have been. I can imagine it was strong in a theater.But Hitler is well depicted, by Tom Schilling, as the strange bird he obviously was, with the insane racial ideas he obviously was indoctrinated with, and at least we get to know why he got involved with politics, and how his trademark mustache origin end. We see the poor conditions in Austria (or in fact much of Europe) a good hundred years ago. We a So see the racial hate towards the Jews, something which Hitler was inbred with. This is the best part of the movie. It seems to be very historically accurate in depiction of the living conditions.We get to know young Hitler as an almost insane, ungrateful, untalented young brat, with disgusting attitude, insulting language, and still with a terrible strong intensity, which we all have seen in film clips. Hitler wasn't a great speaker, but his intensity still was able to make him "Der Fuhrer" for a German/Austrian population.This could have been so strong and interesting, but has one up as quite disappointing. At least I had much bigger expectations after seeing great Austrian films by Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl.

I find most movies generally at least okay to watch. I forced myself to finish this movie. I found it very boring and monotonous. Other than to depict the young Hitler as a nasty character, I didn't see the point of this movie. I'm quite fine with subtitles but perhaps that didn't help in the case of a boring movie. It was much longer than it needed to be for starters. I'm guessing this is all fiction but I don't know for sure. On a positive note I did like the acting and the set. They were very believable. My favourite scene was the one where Hitler starts singing during the opera. You could see how embarrassed his date was. I hadn't realized that it was adapted from a play. Oh, well at least it only cost me $5.