TomMackAplin
18Feb13
I guess not quite the same as the cinema.
yup, saw this at a screening two days ago...still awed. 4 hours - one hour break - 3 hours...digital projection. the first 5 minutes looped 3 times...5 people at the screening, roughly 1/3 of the film in original german without subtitles (i know no german at all), and the rest subtitled in english....the best movie experience i've had in a long long long long long time...in fact i feel like the break killed the mood.
With a work of such immense richness, I can only give a petty comment. The film not only made me wonder if I could have been one of Hitler's puppets, but also whether I could have been one of Syberberg's puppets.
To say that this is a massive fantasia on Nazism is an understatement. To me it's both a product of the destruction of the sanctity of the mythic past in the twentieth century and a comment on this process. The greatest film that most people have never seen -and, sadly, never will.
As Syberberg once said: "Hitler is the greatest film director of all times". His main work: World War II.
Amazing film. The visuals, the soundtrack, the concepts of "Hitler" in each of us are breathtaking--if you have the patience of sitting through a 10-part documentary cum staged play. It remains one of my all time favourite films. Susan Sontag wrote a book on this cinematic work. It will affect any sensitive individual who can reflect on the power of cinema that combines sight, sound and memories.
I'm on my run of watching obscenely long movies. Previously, I said that "West of the Tracks" displayed how political systems cannot fulfill human needs, and I viewed this film as a further critique of politics, left and right, in that they are based solely on ideology, which is very often, when construed by amateurs, anti-scientific, extremely biased, and myopic. . . .