Rating: 
Summary: Another perspective
Review: This movie was very entertaining. We are so fascinated by this one MAN Hitler. Everything we ever hear or read is negative. Which is probably correct. All we ever hear is that he was a great speaker. Which seems to let all the listeners off the hook. Hitler had a country behind him. He didnt do this all by himself. I think the premise of him being a successful artist and therefore getting out of politics is pretty interresting. JUST IMAGINE IF GEORGE W. BUSH HAD BEEN A SUCCESSFUL OILMAN WE WOULDNT BE INVADING IRAQ. JUST SOMETING TO THINK ABOUT. POLITICS RUINS CHARACTER! IM not sure GWBUSH ever had any character to corrupt.
Rating:
Summary: Humanity creates its own monsters...
Review: This review is very difficult to write. This is a very powerful film that taps into what humanity really is, and what it can be. I wish it were a happy story, but it's a story of a frustrated artist and the horrors that a shared evil can wreak upon the whole of humanity.
When I was a small child in the mid 70's, my next door neighbors had these strange tatoos on their arms that I wasn't supposed to ask about. My grandfather had pictures of when he had to go to Europe when he was a young man. Germany with it's mind lost...
Germany, a land of poets, brought into the grip of a little frustrated artist. I hope that it never happens again, but one never knows... with the right mix of poverty, anger and frustration, there might come the birth of another monster. The truly scary thing about this movie is the realisation that it really could happen here or anywhere, for that matter...
Can you say that it won't happen again? Really?
Rating:
Summary: "Inaccuracy" is not the issue here
Review: What you need to know about 'Max' is that it is an 'alternative history.' Hitler's time as a struggling artist immediately after the 'Great War' is well documented. So is his bitter regard for the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, in which the Germans took responsbility for that war and signed up to make major financial repatriations to its combatants. 'Max' puts us back into that timeframe and imagines how different the world might have been if Hitler's artistic abilities had been recognized. The movie doubles the dilemma by personifying Hitler's art hopes in Max Rothman (John Cusack), a Jewish art dealer. Meanwhile, various Army superiors take note of Hitler's latent talents as a polemicist, with a devleoping talent for stoking the resentements caused by Versailles ("a stab in the back" sputters - literally - the 30-year-old Hitler). We see the irony of Hitler developing his anti-Semitic bile, all the while being honestly befriended my Rothman. "Inaccuracy" is not the issue here. This is "Sliding Doors" on a grand scale. In the movie, Hitler is inches from giving up on politics in pursuit of his art. Rothman is ready to commission a show for him. It never comes to be. That moment -the denouement - is classic cinema. A couple of other points: I understand realism, keeping with the times, etc...but Cusack smokes 25 - 30 cigarettes during the movie. It's painful to watch. Noah Taylor is the standout here as Hitler. You may remember him as the young David Helfgott in "Shine" (especially his famous 'sweating scene' at the crucial piano recital). You'd never know Taylor was an Australian. I'm not sure how they pulled off Cusack's one-armed performance (a little CGI maybe?) but it's very well done. Other than Taylor, the accents here are all over the map. Cusack plays it straight, thank goodness, but we've got German-inflected English with all sorts of tinges popping out all over. You've got Canadians, South Africans, Brits, Danes, Hungarians, and Scots in the leading roles. At one point or another, you hear each of these homelands.
Rating: 
Summary: It really fails to motivate you in being interested
Review: While the film is interesting from a conceptual point of view, it has a difficult time of pulling you into the movie. The film deals with the ficitous view of what if Adolf Hitler would have been an artist instead. Where it fails its point is that the anti semitic views were already there in the culture.
What you do see is an akward Hitler that while not anti semitic must choose which life he will lead. He seems to reluctantly to choose the military life, simply due to a tragic twist of events. I feel this premise is somewhat weak, but it does make for an interesting movie.
Performances are good from John Cusack, but the Adolf Hitler performance seems brilliantly akward and at times painful to watch. Adolf Hitler does not learn the oratory craft easily, it comes in time.
My opinion of this movie, is that unless this is a topic you are intersted in, or if you enjoy movies with the what if's, you may want to skip this movie. The scenery is excellent, and the acting seems quite good, the movie fails to be completely consistent to make it a good movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Things that might have been...
Review: Who hasn't wondered what the course of the world would have been if Adolf Hitler had succeeded as an artist and stayed out of the political arena? The popular theory of some years back of the "Butterfly Effect"--that the beating of a butterfly's wings could set into effect a chain of events leading to a hurricane or such--came into my mind as I watched this evocative period piece set in post-war Germany, 1918, as a 30-year-old Corporal Hitler checks out of the army and tries to get a showing of his art work. At this point in his life political speeches are just something he does at the behest of his former Army superiors who have recognized his brilliance and intensity and wish him to tout their new National Socialist party. Like the Hollywood parking valet or waiter who REALLY considers himself to be an actor, young Hitler sees himself as an artist. If only he could have succeeded! Events as small as that butterfly's beating wings, however, conspired to frustrate him and turn to the one thing he was doing well at that point in his life--rabble rousing in beer halls and lecture halls. The actor portraying Corporal Hitler astonished me, whether he was showing a very low-key, depressed, starving artist with stubborn pride that bucked himself up despite apparent obscurity and failure or the terrifyingly effective political speaker learning his "moves" and vocalizations during his performances or the vegetarian, animal-loving naturalist who worried about caged birds in parks. To the woe of the world, Hitler couldn't allow himself to be sufficiently vulnerable to show himself in his artwork; he instead externalized via the political arena ("Politics is the new art!"). If some quibble that the actor doesn't resemble Hitler enough to be credible, focus on his eyes and check out some photos of Hitler circa 1918 or the early 1920's (I recommend the book "Hitler Close-Up"); that chunky, full-faced look came later in his life. Right out of the trenches, Hitler was quite lean. This movie also features an amusing, wry performance by John Cusak as the German-Jewish art dealer Max Rothberg (who lost an arm in WWI; as the film points out, many, many German Jews volunteered to fight for their country); this character also allows some glamor and humor to lighten what could have been an unrelentingly dark film. Cudos to Mr. Cusak for also backing this fascinating film (note the film credits) when he couldn't have failed to know it would not pull in the bucks like a feel-good movie would have done. See this film. Western Civization teachers, when this film is in VHS and DVD assign it for your classes; the course of history hangs by a thread at times, and everyone's reactions to choices in their lives can count.
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