HarryBum
Oct 2002
Scumbag
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Good release
The video is washed out, but I think that was inherent to the original media. The sound is excellent, although it's mostly just dialogue.
Why complain about the obscurity? I know that not many people are interested in movies like this, but I'm always thrilled that some of the groups work on this kind of material. I like Lord of the Rings, but not ONLY Lord of the Rings.
I scored it 7/9/7
If you haven't heard of it, here's what it's about:
The film is basically a talky two character play about the status of art theory in 1918, framed as a discussion between a wealthy Jewish art dealer who espouses modernism, and an impoverished, low ranking, anti-Semitic soldier who rejects modernism and aspires to be a traditional artist, sort of a German Norman Rockwell.
The soldier is also studying the art of propaganda. The art dealer tells the soldier that he has to choose between art and sidewalk rhetoric; that he has no chance to be a great artist unless his art includes all the rage and energy that he now puts only into his soapbox oratory.
It is the kind of two character play that plays in the East Village for the turtlenecked intelligensia, playing a few nights for audiences of a dozen people, then is lost forever.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Of course, we know that the simple minded soldier in the story would later become notorious as the absolute leader of Nazi Germany, and the most evil soapbox orator in history, so we pay more attention to his words than we would if he had a different last name.
The last five minutes add a little bit of literary structure by introducing a clever plot twist, but you have to be willing to listen to about 100 minutes of art history before anything vaguely cinematic happens.
It is an intelligent movie, very well acted by the two leads (John Cusack as the art dealer and Noah Taylor as Hitler) but it was created for a very small audience.
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