It’s been more than 70 years since Adolf Hitler, the infamous Nazi leader, shot himself dead in a Berlin bunker. In the decades that have passed, Germany seems to have changed beyond recognition. While Hitler’s Germany stood for prejudice and violence, the Germany of today is perhaps better known as a place of rational efficiency and recycling.
What would the Nazi leader make of present-day Germany? And, perhaps more importantly, what would Germans make of him? That’s a question that “Look Who’s Back,” a recently released film based on Timur Vermes’s bestselling 2012 novel of the same name, seeks to answer.
The results are surprising — and perhaps a little disturbing.
The film follows a simple, almost nonsensical plot. For reasons that are never explained, Hitler magically reappears in a housing project in east Berlin, near the site of the bunker where he killed himself. After a chance encounter with a TV producer, he engineers a plot to become a media star.
Much of the start of the film centers on Hitler’s surprise about how the world has changed since 1945. The former Nazi leader, played by actor Oliver Masucci, expresses shock that Poland still exists (“and in German territory no less!”). His disgust for Germany’s modern democracy is clear: Angela Merkel is described as a “clumsy woman with the charisma of a wet noodle.” Only the Green Party, with its aim of conserving German nature, arouses any sympathy from Hitler.
“I’m glad Goebbels never saw this,” he shouts after discovering modern German broadcasting is full of cooking shows and reality television.
This part of the film is funny, but it is fiction. As director David Wnendt explained, the aim was not to be as historically accurate as possible but to take Hitler’s known personality traits and turn them into comedy. “It doesn’t take Hitler too seriously,” Wnendt said.
What’s more surprising is the way that ordinary Germans react to Hitler. The great conceit of the film is that in the scenes where Hitler meets ordinary people for his media project, these people actually are ordinary people. In the style of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” and other films, “Look Who’s Back” blurs the line between reality and fiction — with real people interacting with a fictional portrayal of Hitler.
The cast and crew drove across the country, having Hitler interact with ordinary people. Most of these people react to the site of one of the 20th century’s most vile leaders with excitement and amusement. They pose for selfies with the feared Nazi leader and perform the famous Hitler salute for him. Even non-European immigrants seemed to be happy to see the Nazi leader, Wnendt said, because “they probably learned about history a little differently.”
Comments at WP:
* Well, apparently he didn’t do anything. It was all the Palestinians….
* Why is this so shocking? He’d probably make a decent showing in the U.S., too, or any number of countries. As would lots of other dictators and monsters from history.
Face it, the collective guilt of the Germans is something of the past. Germans growing up these days if anything resent that they’re still supposed to feel guilty about what past generations did.
* It is incredible how Germany and many European countries have laws that punish people who openly discuss history like Zionist authoritarians in some freaky George Orwell novel
As an American, who doesn’t like Nazis or their Israeli proteges, I find it very offensive.
