Claymation, Chile and Nazi Germany offshoots combine in Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León's first full-length feature, THE WOLF HOUSE

Strange does not begin to describe the "bizarrosities" you'll find in THE WOLF HOUSE, the debut full-lengther (after a number of short films) from the creative duo of Chilean-born artists and filmmakers, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña. Jumping off from storytelling and fairytales into Nazism and Chile's own not-so-long-past fling with a dictator who gloried in torture and murder, the pair use symbols of just about every sort -- colors to animals to you-name-it -- to tell their fractured tale of a young woman, her two "children," and the descent into fascism.

Señores León and Cociña (shown above, with the latter on the left) seem to prefer the dark and the allusive to the lighter and more obvious. While this may sound promising (and for awhile it certainly is), for TrustMovies, this eventually weighs their movie down to the point that I grew tired of the utter dankness and repetition of being constantly hammered by symbols and what eventually seemed like awfully obvious, if not cheap-jack psychology.

For those of us who know and understand (granted, in my case, from afar) Chile's history and duality, the movie has its dark rewards, and I should think it will resonate most strongly in its homeland, and other nearby South American countries, each of which has had its own history of dictatorship and huge human-rights abuses. (As we here in the USA may ourselves soon have even more of.) Also, I suspect that shrinks and/or students/teachers of psychology will find much to marvel over here.

How you react to the animation may be another matter. I went into the viewing, as I do with all movies, without reading much about the film. I prefer to figure things out for myself -- this is simply more rewarding, overall, than being told by critics and/or publicists what you are about to see -- and this also allows surprise to do its work. Once I'd watched The Wolf House, I went back to read more about it, and I admit that the manner in which the artists did the filming is unusual and in its way impressive. (You can read more about that, should you choose to, here.)

While the claymation/stop-motion animation is often formidable visually, I don't think these artists have found anything close to a real storytelling ability with which to match their art. Symbols (with a little history tossed in) may be fine for awhile, but when that's what's mostly there, it all begins to pale. The brothers Grimm used symbols, too, intentionally or not, but they also knew how to tell a whale of a tale.

I originally watched The Wolf House almost two months ago, and unfortunately the notes I took seem to have gone with the wind. I don't have the time (or the desire) to view it again, but I remember all too well my initial reaction of being impressed with the art, while understanding the symbols, politics and philosophy, without finally caring a whole lot about the movie itself.

The film is unusual enough in a number of ways, however, that you may well have a different reaction. Running just 73 minutes, in German and Spanish with English subtitles, The Wolf House was to have opened theatrically in various cities but is now getting a virtual-theater debut nationwide, beginning this Friday, May 15, via KimStim. Click here then scroll down for more information and/or to see the very long list of participating virtual theaters across the country.  

Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS--"meaningless mess" or Quentin Tarantino masterpiece?

Quentin Tarantino's provocative World War lI revenge fantasy now on Netflix is off-putting -- also comic and worth pondering. At film's end, Brad Pitt's red neck German scalp hunter, Aldo Raine, carves a swastika deep into the forehead of Nazi Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, who won an Academy Award for the role). Aldo says: 'This may be my masterpiece'. The remark is Tarantino's editorial comment on his film.

Even if some think Basterds (2009) is a mess, you can still identify with Tarantino's glee at his revision of history. Here in 1944 is the destruction of the entire Nazi high command, Hitler included, as they sit, dressed to the nines, viewing a film premier in a darkened cinema that is suddenly engulfed in a fiery conflagration fueled by nitrite-laden unspooled celluloid. The work calls to mind the difference between insisting your fantasies are real [your m.o., Mister President] and an artist crafting make-believe into a message. Here, as Tarantino has said, is his story of how cinema can save the world.

It is also wicked satire, filled with references to American war movies, Westerns, and Italian-made 'spaghetti' Westerns (see note at end) that emerged in the 60's and 70's to exploit/satirize American 'shoot-em-up's'.

The prolific Italian composer Ennio Morricone, now about 90, scored many spaghetti Westerns and his sweeping compositions dominate Basterds. (Morricone fully scored Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' in 2015).

The 'spaghetti' is dominated by excess -- a satirized vision of our mythical West. Villains are crazed, violence explodes hysterically, and the music swoons. Tarantino pauses his action to add 'spaghetti' touches -- the score changes, the characters freeze into iconic poses, and the action speeds or slows in homage to his objects of satire.

One insider bit is Pitt's Aldo Reine likely named for Aldo Ray, an actor famous for his roles in Westerns and war films. But while the other players exaggerate their characters with some nuance, Pitt plays Aldo as a one-note comic-book villain. His dumb, Southern red-neck schtick is almost dismissible except that it stands out so unfavorably from the rest of the ensemble. In particular, Waltz as Jew-hunting Col. Landa (below) steals the lead from right under Pitt's nose. Waltz is so droll, so full of smarm and deceptive insinuation, you can't resist loving this one you are supposed to hate. (Tarantino has inverted our natural sentiments toward these two.)

Tarantino exploits the film-insider and spaghetti-Western thing to the hilt -- Basterds is his own 'spaghetti'; its inside jokes compete for attention with the WWII story to the film's detriment. It unfolds in five busy acts that do not build to its fantastical climax. Chapter One, 'Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France', is the bucolic opener that introduces the sly Landa in the act of uncovering a family of Jews hidden in a farmhouse in rural France. One escapes, Shoshanna, (the lovely Mélanie Laurent, below, four photos down, and on poster, top, in middle row, left), who goes on to become the proprietor of a small Paris cinema which she uses to stage violent revenge against the Nazis.

Chapter Two, 'Inglourious Basterds' (below) depicts the group of Jewish-American terrorists led by Aldo, whose mission is to kill Nazis and scalp them. (Aldo is part Apache; each Basterd owes him 100 scalps.)

Chapter Three, 'A German night in Paris', takes place in a basement bar at which Basterds and other cohorts are shaping their own plot to assassinate the German high command in Shoshanna's theater. Among the co-conspirators are suave British spy and snooty film critic Archie Cox (is he named for Cary Grant whose given name was Archie?) played by Michael Fassbender, and a glamorous German film star turned Allied spy, Bridget von Hammersmark, the delightful Diane Kruger (both, below). Their German night in Paris climaxes as some old memory of yours of a crazed shoot-out at the OK corral.

'Kino', the word for cine or cinema in a number of languages, is half the title of Chapter Four: 'Operation Kino'. 'Kino' refers to the erudite in film, the visionary themes and messages that elude mass film goers but show up in art houses dubbed 'cinema's'. In this chapter the two murder plots advance as the pure opposite of erudite cine, rather as gruesome comedies of error -- anything that could go wrong goes wrong. The 'kino' in-joke is too "in", but the underplayed slapstick is a delight. 

Chapter Five, 'Revenge of the Giant Face', opens on the premier of 'Nation's Pride' which documents the 'true' story of German Private Frederick Zoller's miraculous war exploits (Zoller below, playing himself on screen). The versatile Daniel Brühl is Zoller, who follows the beautiful Shosanna around like a hopeful puppy. Their acquaintance doesn't end well.

Meanwhile Hitler is machined-gunned over and over (see last picture) by Aldo's Basterds (attired in various disguises), as Shoshanna's giant face, spliced into Zoller's film, announces Jewish revenge on the Nazi audience as the theater explodes into the street.

In rewatching Basterds,  I found its bits witty and laugh-out-loud funny. Yet it was too long, too talky, too violent. The chapters are so busy and discreet from each other that the momentum of the narrative is thwarted. This armchair critic thinks the plot might be as smooth as ice cream if staged as a musical or operetta -- better vehicles to absorb the non-through story line, the humor, the violence -- like Little Shop of Horrors or Sweeney Todd. In film, Joe Wright found an inventive frame for his Anna Karenina: he turned his cameras on a fully constructed theater to tell the story, interspersing set theater pieces with a few scenes filmed in natural locales. In short, some kind of distancing mechanism is needed to stage Tarantino's bloody satire more explicitly as fantasy. Still, I liked it -- Basterds' characters are wonderful and the collective revenge on the Nazis for their despicable horrors is immensely satisfying.

Note: For more on Spaghetti Westerns, click here 

Giulio Ricciarelli's LABYRINTH OF LIES: all about attitudes (and accepting responsibility)

Rounding up ex-Nazi war-criminals post-World War II and coming to terms with German guilt is not exactly a new subject in the film archive: We've probably had appear a dozen or more documentaries and narrative movies on these themes during our new millennium alone -- from The Good German and Hitler's Children to My Enemy's Enemy and The German Doctor. Few if any, however, have come directly from Germany to cover the subject of how and why those ex-Nazi war criminals who were allowed to flourish in Germany and elsewhere (the USA recruited a number of them, too) in the years immediately after WWII. Well, we've got that movie now.

LABYRINTH OF LIES, the first full-length film to be directed by Giulio Ricciarelli (shown at left, who also co-wrote), will win no awards for its filmmaking prowess. It's workmanlike and professional, consistently interesting if somewhat formulaic, and -- like its obsessive protagonist, Johann (played with monochromatic grit by Alexander Fehling, below, ) -- keeps its intentions clear and in its gun-sight from beginning to end. That said, Ricciarelli's movie pleasantly surprises now and again by what it does not show us. In one scene, in which a Holo-caust survivor is inter-viewed about his experi-ences in a concentration camp, instead of showing/telling us about these (we've heard so much by now, could anything else shock or move us?), the filmmaker cuts to after the interview and instead shows us a quietly moving and unsettling scene with the secretary/ stenographer (a fine Hansi Jochmann, below, right) who has just recorded all that was said.

Likewise, the opening scene of the film, set in what looks like a lovely middle-school full of happy students and concerned teachers, undercuts all with a surprising moment that sets the film and its plot off and running. For the following two full hours, we're pretty much hooked.

Ricciarelli, his co-writer and cast are most interested in opening eyes and minds in Germany and elsewhere as to why it was so important not to simply settle for the post-WWII Nuremberg trials (which condemned but a very few higher-ups of the Nazis). Instead the filmmaker wants to point out how many other of the German populace were guilty of war crimes, too. What happened in the concentration camps would not have, had not the rank-and-file so readily followed those criminal and inhumane orders. (As one character, recruited into the Hitler Youth as a teen, points out, he himself looked on at the horror without trying to stop it.)

As the Attorney General in change off the case points out, it's not the "big game" you must go after but the ordinary citizens. As played by the late Gert Voss, above, this character provides a much-needed grounding for both the movie and its increasingly over-the-top main character.

More grounding is provided by the young woman our hero falls for early on (Friederike Becht, above and below), who turns out to be every bit as savvy, if not quite so obsessive, as her man. A clothing designer, she helps get her guy (and us) out of the grim workplace and into the world.

More than anything, Labyrinth of Lies is concerned with the attitudes of everyday Germans, as well as the need for them to finally accept responsibility for their country's actions during WWII. Via this endeavor, the film speaks also to us here in the USA and what we've wrought by our unlawful, hugely costly (in lives and expense) and so far worthless middle-east wars -- for which the American people and their so-called "leaders" have yet to own up.

The film, successful in Europe, especially in Germany and France, managed to appeal to mainstream audiences. Here in North America, of course, it will be seen as "arthouse" fare -- which says something about the tastes and interests of our "mainstream," as against that of Europe.

Leavened with a little humor now and again ("It's not my car's fault," is probably the film's funniest line)  and the effective use of dream and fantasy, the movie is also smart about showing us the difficulties of a protagonist who can see only black and white, without those necessary gray shades that make up most of our lives.

Full of the look of the fashions, architecture and autos of the late 1950s, and especially effective when it subverts and surprises, Labyrinth of Lies -- from Sony Pictures Classics, in German with English subtitles --  opens here in South Florida this Friday, October 23, in the West Palm Beach area at Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth and at  Boca Raton's  Living Room Theaters and Regal Shadowood. The following Friday, October 30, the film will open at Miami's Tower Theater.

A WWII "survivor" story -- from the other side: Cate Shortland's quietly grueling LORE

At this point in time, we're relatively used to films about survivors of World War II. Most often these tell the story of escape from the Nazi genocide against the Jews. One of the things (and fortunate-ly not the only one) that makes LORE -- the new movie from Cate Shortland -- so impressive is that her film is told totally from the point of view of a German Nazi family as the war winds down, with the family's father, a Nazi officer, well aware of what lies in store for the losing side. This is strong stuff, surprising and unsettling in equal doses. The great thing about Lore is that it forces us to confront attitudes and behavior that we find appalling yet, so far as the human beings that hold these are concerned, we must identify with and understand them. Not many movies allow us this opportunity.

Fortunately Ms Shortland (shown at right) -- who directed the film and co-adapted it (with Robin Mukherjee) from the novel by Rachel Seiffert -- has made her movie unusually beautiful to view (without it ever being merely "pretty") and full of the sights and sounds of raw nature (as well as some very raw human nature). She has then cast it with actors whose beauty of face and body run counter to the ugliness of their ideas and actions, which also provides an additional layer of welcome irony. In her leading lady, especially -- newcomer Saskia Rosendahl, below, whom we are certain to be seeing more of, and soon -- she has found an actress able to negotiate the rapids and shoals, literal and symbolic, of this peril-laden trip across a suddenly divided Germany.

Because all its leading characters, save one, are the film's true protagonists, the movie places us within the minds and hearts of German Nazis about as well as anything I've yet seen. The cavalier disgust with and hatred of Jews, the worship of the Fuhrer, the sense of entitlement that surely must have accompanied most families of mid-to-high-ranking Nazi officers -- all this is here and so effortlessly expressed that we are constantly taken aback, even as we begin to empathize, by the crass and nasty attitudes on display.

Once the family's father and mother are gone -- rather quickly, too -- the oldest daughter Hannelore (Lore for short) must lead the family, which includes four other children, the youngest still an infant, on a long and perilous journey. And while their trip across a gorgeous countryside (stay out of the cities, they are warned) in order to reach their beloved grandmother's house is fraught with terrors, on they must go.

Along the way they band together and bond with a young Jewish refugee from the camps, Thomas (Kai Malina, above) who consistently helps the family despite its obvious loathing of him. This is particularly true of the older children, especially Lore, who is coming into womanhood and finds herself attracted to Thomas (as he is to her) despite her revulsion for what he is.

 All of this is handled with utter believability, almost no melodrama and none of the inspirational drivel that you might expect from a subject like this. And since the story includes everything from sex and sudden death to stealing and murder, this is no small accomplishment on the filmmakers' part.

And while change of a sort has arrived by the end of the film, it is clearly only a single step in a process that will be a long time com-ing and could just as easily leave our protagonist bereft as hopeful. What we witness at the film's conclusion seems to call into question an entire life history. That's a hard one, but it's also a start.

Lore, another fine example of the offerings from Music Box Films, was Australia's submission for Best Foreign Language Film (most of it is spoken in German), but it didn't make even the shortlist. Perhaps a tale featuring Nazi protagonists did not please the Academy, though in terms of quality, the film is certainly as good or better than a couple that did make the cut. In any case, Ms Shortland's movie opens this Friday in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema; in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's new Royal, Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7; and in Irvine at Edwards' Westpark 8. To view all currently scheduled playdates across the country, click here and then click on THEATERS in the task bar, mid-screen.

THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER HOLT: Germany's first filmed look at its Nazi past

One of if not the first German film to tackle the dicey and (at the time -- 1965 -- relatively recent) subject of what-
did-you-do-in-World-War-II, daddy?, THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER HOLT, directed by Joachim Kunert and co-
written by Kunert & Claus Küchenmeister (from the novel by Dieter Noll), proves a lengthy but fascinating and relatively entertaining tromp through German history of the late 30s and early-to-mid 40s.

That the film was made in and by the German Democratic Republic (known to us Americans for 41 years as that naughty, scary Communist state, East Germany) makes Werner Holt even more of a curio. Once the Berlin wall came down in 1989 and the "East" ceased to officially exist by the end of the following year, the two Germanys became one again. Over the ensuing years, the East German culture of those closed decades has become more apparent, as all sorts of goodies have arrived -- from the boffo dramedy Good-Bye Lenin, the rich and exciting escape drama The Tunnel and the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Film The Lives of Others to an entire stash of East German film productions that have now seen the light of day in the USA.

This is due in part to the combined efforts of First Run Features (FRF), partnering with ICESTORM International, which has released Werner Holt to DVD. Since June 2001, in fact, this partnership has led to FRF becoming the exclusive North American home video distributor of the films of DEFA (Deutsche Filmaktiengesellschaft), the state-run studios of the former German Democratic Republic.

Headquartered at the legendary UFA Studios in the "film city" of Babelsberg near Berlin (famous for the work of such artists as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich), DEFA is where Oscar nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl began his career, along with many of Germany's leading contemporary actors, directors and technicians. (FRF tells us that fourteen DEFA films were recently named among the "100 Most Important German Films" of all time.) Spanning 1946 through the 1990s, these DEFA films represent Europe's largest cohesive national cinema collection.

So, what kind of film is The Adventures of Werner Holt? A Nazi Youth story filtered through the sieve of East Germany in the 1960s, it comes complete with men and women that appear both of the 1940s and the 60s, which makes for an interesting combination: armpit hair on the women, high-schoolers who looks like college grads and a very European attitude toward sex and sensuality.

The film begins at nearly the end of WWII -- as the Russians and Americans are drawing ever closer to the heart of Germany, with German soldiers deserting en masse-- and finds Werner looking back on his school days and military service and at the events that have brought him to the present moment. Throughout, the film concentrates on Werner and his closest male pals; women are given but brief encounters, the longest of which is devoted to the stepmother of one of those pals, with whom Werner begins an affair. Before joining the military he falls for a blond bombshell who does not want her young man to go off to war. He does, of course, promptly becoming involved with that stepmother. Later he'll bond with a transplanted young woman, shown below, but again, the relationship is barely developed.

Sex and sin are seen but briefly and haltingly -- this was East Germany, remember, and nowhere near as "free" as Europe and the West: note the arty-farty shadows on the wall, reflections in a photo frame, and plenty of expressionistic touches, among the typically skewed views. Yet it works rather well, for its time-frame.

The title of the film is ironic, of course. It must be. "Adventures" -- when we're dealing with Hilter Youth and the concentration camps? The latter are are touched on here, but of course, the general German populace, not to mention the soldiers themselves, can't believe that anything like this could be possible. Still, the word "adventures" primes us for something like a Nazi version of Tom Jones. But little in the film, until its finale (shown above), seems particularly ironic or humorous. At that point, however, the ironies pile up like a multi-car highway accident.

At nearly three hours, the movie is certainly long but seldom uninteresting. And the scene toward the end, when Werner and his small, bedraggled crew discover the results of an SS visit to a small local town, is riveting -- even without the usual visual gore that would accompany such a scene were the film to be made today. The cast is well chosen and delivers on its promise: Klaus-Peter Thiele, above, makes a fine, troubled Werner, and he is aided by Manfred Karge, Günter Junghans, Peter Reusse and the late Arno Wyzniewski.

The film is available for sale by FRF or Amazon (wow-- FRF's price is cheaper than that of Amazon!), and for rental at Netflix.