At a time of somewhat renewed interest in the proliferation of propaganda in Nazi Germany with the recent release of Andres Veiel’s Reifenstahl, a documentary covering one of the most controversial directors in history Leni Reifenstahl, this straight-forward historical biopic from German writer/director Joachim Lang covers the close but at times fraught relationship between Adolf Hitler and his head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels; though in spite of what this film’s alternate title- Fuhrer and Seducer- may suggest, no this is not a romance fanfic, a terrible title that tries to allude to the Third Reich Minister’s role as both a seducer of the German people into the Nazi’s extremist rhetoric and his known penchant for womanising. Although if you ask me Goebbels and the Fuhrer sounds still like a buddy comedy.
But in case the daft title fooled you into thinking you were watching something more flippant, the opening text immediately jolts you with the severity of its approach. This film, as the opening states, is a depiction of Joseph Goebbels’ work as Nazi Germany’s head propagandist and Hitler’s most trusted aide as true to life as possible: “It shows the perpetrators’ perspective. This is risky, but also necessary”. It’s always a dicey move when a film outright states its themes and intentions in text form like this. Most times it comes off as a little condescending on the viewer, assuming we can’t be trusted to engage with the film ‘correctly’, as was a commonly leveled criticism of the trigger warning/theme synopsis of Zoe Kravitz’ edgy rape revenge thriller Blink Twice. Other times it’s a genuinely necessary delivery of context for a film’s unorthodox approach to its cinematic conceit, such as the opening crawl of Tina Satter’s Reality which underlines that every word spoken in the film is delivered from transcript.
Goebbels and the Fuhrer on the other hand falls into a different trap, one that feels like it comes from a place of insecurity on behalf of the filmmakers. Because while this message from the director lays out some bold ambitions, the film that follows is far less interesting than its ‘warning’ suggests. Maybe there are viewers, especially in Germany, who don’t take kindly to a film entirely from the perspective of the Nazis with no voice given to the victims of their genocide and persecution, but to also say that something like this ‘has never been done before’ is hard to believe, and frankly comes off as arrogant for a film as deeply uninteresting as this.
Lang even wraps the film up before we see Goebbels’ bitter, shocking death, one of the most revealing parts of his life and to me quite a crucial detail in how damaged, unreasonable, morally confused, and ideologically committed the man was. If you wanted to see an exploration of this, instead we once again are given text on a screen to explain it to us.
I’m writing at length about this one minute of text in a 120+ minute film because the content of the story itself is framed against this assertion of self-importance that only amplifies how generic and, ironically, unambitious Lang’s film is. There really is no point in me walking through the plot in detail because it would be easier to simply imagine the first thing that comes into your head when it comes to a Hitler biopic that is primarily set in offices and boardrooms. I have next to nothing to say about the performances, especially the two leads (Robert Stadlober as Goebbels and Fritz Karl as Hitler) who are shouldering a huge responsibility playing such reprehensible historic figures, because they’re doing the same stiff Nazi officer schtick you’ve seen hundreds of time before with little to no variation on what has come before.
The central point that frustrates me with Lang’s approach is that he is clearly aware- borderline self-conscious- of the undertaking inherent to casting an (HEAVY quotations here) ‘objective’ overview of how Joseph Goebbels manipulated the German people into supporting the so called “Final Solution”. But by assuming this responsibility he makes a film so generic that it pushes you to wonder why bother at all. In a scene that marks Goebbels at the height of his powers we see him deliver the 1943 speech where he infamously asked Germany if they were ready for “Total war”. This moment is delivered through archive footage, like many of the speeches in the film, and seeing the real Goebbels speak to a sea of avid supporters in a huge auditorium adorned with metal eagle structures and swastikas covering every wall is an utterly nauseating sight, yet quite crucially encapsulates the seductive grandeur of fascist aesthetics with documentary footage that could very well be straight out of a Leni Reifenstahl propaganda film; the words and images speak for themselves. Lang’s fictional addition to this scene, alongside many of the other moments of archival footage peppered throughout the film, is to contextualise these moments in the story. Intercut with this speech is the fictional Goebbels rehearsing this speech in tandem with the real figure, which in its own way summarises this film’s purpose; the historic footage says everything that the film is trying to say, so Lang makes additions that add depth, depth that is completely shallow. The film depicts Goebbels rehearsing his speech, this connotes that the real Goebbels rehearsed the speech you are seeing him perform.
This underlining of information that is neither revealing nor interesting is the frustrating thorn in Goebbels and the Fuhrer’s entire conceit, a film too cautious to be insightful which in turn makes this big hooha about the severity of the film even less justified. This might be down to taste but a more risky approach to its subject matter to match the perverse warning at the beginning could have made for a far more revealing story. Perhaps a film about Goebbels in the style of a propaganda film could have been a risky but worthy exploration of how aesthetics and art were an integral mechanic in how Nazism managed to seduce an entire country, with cinema being one of the most prioritised forms of propaganda. There’s plenty of discussion to be mined from Joseph Goebbels and cinema but what we have here is a cripplingly risk averse effort. Lang even wraps the film up before we see Goebbels’ bitter, shocking death, one of the most revealing parts of his life and to me quite a crucial detail in how damaged, unreasonable, morally confused, and ideologically committed the man was. If you wanted to see an exploration of this, instead we once again are given text on a screen to explain it to us.
Especially between films that tackle the banality of Nazism, the recent success of Jonathon Glazer’s petrifying exploration of complicity The Zone of Interest comes to mind alongside Frank Pierson’s wordy 2001 drama Conspiracy, a film far more in line and to the point on the real life discussions that lead to the Holocaust than Lang’s film, and films that have attempted to humanise history’s biggest villain, none of which hold a candle to Bruno Ganz’s generational performance as Hitler during his last days in 2004’s Downfall, there’s little space to justify a film as middle of the road as Goebbels and the Fuhrer.
Goebbels and the Fuhrer is available to Pre-Order on Dazzler Media Blu-Ray
