Amen. (2002)

Thoughtful and brooding film with excellent interpretations and horrible events . The picture talks an officer Gestapo named Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) in charge of Zyklon B , a deadly chemical gas used for killing Jews in the death's showers from concentration camps as Treblinka , Sorbibor , Auschwitz , Majanek , Manthausen ,.... , Gerstein contacts a Jesuit priest (Mathieu Kassovitz) who's related to a Vatican Cardenal (Michael Duchaussoy) and his father results to be Pope's assistant . He denounces and explains Pope Pio XII (Marcel Iures) the situation of the Jews's genocide .

The pic is correctly based on historic deeds and famous personages as Pio XII and Nazi chiefs who don't appear in the film but they're continuously named as Goering , Goebbles , Himmler , Eichmann ,thus as notorious events as Stalingrado (1943) where Nazis have the first important defeat and the bombing strikes over the Germany cities (Berlin , Dresde) . The movie is based on a play by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth which started a lot of heated discussions and arguments after its first release in 1963. The film blends drama , tension , historical events and in spite of the runtime is two hours and some isn't boring , nor dreary but happens enough interesting deeds . The Vatican did not give a permission to shoot the film in their buildings. After searching a scenery of adequate size for the scenes taking place in the Vatican, Costa-Gavras finally chose Europe's largest building, the House of the People in Bucharest . Some of the outdoor scenes were shot in Mogosoaia Palace, some fourteen kilometers northwest of Bucharest. The movie attained quite polemic but there's an accusation to Catholic Church for passivity on the crimes and mass slaughter . I really think that didn't have but lack of forecast . The motion picture was well directed by Constantine Costa Gravas who at all his films always gets controversy and dispute . Rating : Above average . Well worth seeing .

Fmovies: Very interesting...I do not know how true the facts are, that were presented, but I think the movie is really worth a look. Especially, if we consider that it isn't a typical American movie...of course, that's because it isn't American! A movie that has, more or less, a very significant meaning and moral...we all know about the Holocaust...the terror, unleashed by the German nazi's. The madness of men. And here we have a movie, filmed in Romania, with this theme. A German SS officer, Kurt Gerstein(Ulrich Tukur), finds out about the crimes against millions of Jews. He decides to kind of sabotage the killings, and ultimately ends up, wanting to tell Pope Pie XII(Marcel Iures) about these crimes. He gets help from Riccardo Fontana(Mathieu Kassovitz), a Jesuit priest, in this matter. Riccardo's father is an important person at the Vatican(count) and so, he tries to help them. The story will be sad enough, and it will show the ignorance of the Catholic Church. If this is true, or it is not I can't say. But the movie is special, and touching. The trains have a very important role. Every time I saw them, I felt a shiver through my body, just because of the idea that they might be filled with people. The special effects could've been better. For example, when Riccardo goes to eat with his father and other personalities, you can see what seems to be the Vatican. But it is more than obvious that it isn't true. Of course, this is not very bothering... The music is absolutely perfect! I really enjoyed it, and I don't see who didn't! The actors were good, but there were some flaws, here and there. Costa Gavras, the director, did a very good job here, in creating an interesting movie. Despite the lack of much action, the film is pleasant, but shocking...well, how could it be if we consider the events? I think all should see this movie, especially because it's a good change from the American stereotype.

Even a Nazi SS agent has a better-formed conscience than a Pope. And the single practicing Catholic "becomes" a Jew by attaching the Star of David to his cassock. Good grief.

I guess it helps to know that Costa-Gravas looks at the world through a Marxist lens, and that Catholicism is the great enemy of Marxism. That scene with the insouciant fat-and-happy Cardinals and politicians gorging themselves on seafood on a Vatican City balcony overlooking St. Peters probably ranks as anti-Catholic propaganda right up there with the most exaggerated anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda.

Of all the concentration camps in Germany and Poland, how did that priest wind up at Kurt's? How did Kurt find out the priest was there? Why was Kurt released at the end by the SS after being arrested for forging Himmler's name?

FYI:

Blaming the wartime pope for failing to stop the Holocaust from the Vatican is a neat bit of revisionist history. Newsweek, March 30, 1998: By Kenneth L. Woodward

"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." --Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941

"A full exploration of Pope Pius's conduct is needed.... It now falls to John Paul and his successors to take the next step toward full acceptance of the Vatican's failure to stand squarely against the evil that swept across Europe." Editorial, The New York Times, March 18, 1998

How the times--and the Times--do change. During the second world war, Pope Pius XII was lauded for his singular efforts to halt the carnage. And for years after, he was praised for the church's efforts in saving an estimated 700,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps--mainly by issuing false baptismal certificates to Jews, disguising some in cassocks and hiding others in cloistered monasteries and convents. But last week, after the Vatican issued its long-awaited mea culpa for failing to do more, critics of the church greeted the Vatican's statement with the sound of one hand clapping. As the Times's editorial suggests, they are demanding nothing less than a moral outing by the Vatican of Pius XII.

Something shameful is going on. That Pius XII was silent in the face of the Holocaust; that he did little to help the Jews; that he was in fact pro-German if not pro-Nazi; that underneath it all he was anti-Semitic--all are monstrous calumnies that now seem to pass for accepted wisdom. Most of these accusations can be traced to a single originating source: "The Deputy," Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play that created an image of Pius as moral coward. That Golda Meir, later a prime minister of Israel, and leaders of Jewish communities in Hungary, Turkey, Italy, Romania and the United States thanked the pope for saving hundreds of thousands of Jews is now considered irrelevant. That he never specifically condemned the Shoah is all that seems to matter.

In fact, Pius XII was neither silent nor inactive. As the Vatican's secretary of State in 1937, he drafted an encyclical for Pope Pius XI condemning Nazism as un-Christian. The document was then smuggled into Germany, secretly printed there in German and read from Roman Catholic pulpits. The Nazis responded by confiscating the presses and imprisoning many Catholics. In his 1942 Christmas message, which The New York Times among others extolled, the pope became the first figu

Amen. fmovies. This is a must watch film. It's a complex and controversial story, well written, well acted, and the direction is superb.

The one dimensional nature of the main characters works very well - we see but a snapshot of the complexity of human nature and this begs you to ask the question of what would you do if you found yourself placed in such circumstances.

This is perhaps a trademark of Costa-Gavras's work (Mad City, Missing and Z in particular)

It is not just a cold view of the history of the time nor is it seeking to provide an answer to the big question - just shed light on the circumstances and on human nature.

In World War II, the sanitation engineer and family man Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) is assigned by SS to be the Head of the Institute for Hygiene to purify the water for the German Army in the front. Later, he is invited to participate in termination of plagues in the concentration camps and he develops the lethal gas Zyklon-B. When he witnesses that the SS is killing Jews instead, he decides to denounce the genocide to the Pope to expose to the world and save the Jewish families. The idealist Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz) from an influent Italian family gives his best efforts being the liaison of Gerstein and the leaders of the Vatican.

I do not have the knowledge of history to know whether this story is accurate or manipulative, but as a movie it is powerful and striking. Costa-Gavras directs this film about Holocaust based on the history of the German Kurt Gerstein, who unsuccessfully tried to tell the world about the mass murderers in the concentration camps. The performance of Ulrich Tukur is magnificent, giving total credibility to his character. With regard to the role of the Catholic Church, I believe the exposition is simplistic and does not show the big picture of the political environment that the Vatican was living in that historical moment, focusing only in the attempt of the SS officer in having an audience with the Pope. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Amém." ("Amen.")

'Amen' is a recent release examining the relationship between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. We follow Kurt Gerheim (an admirable performance by Ulrich Tukur), a perfectly Aryan, protestant SS-Officer who tries to speak out against Nazi attrocities, and Ricardo Fontana, a young catholic cleric (played to the utmost by the marvellous Matthieu Kassovitz) who joins him in his fight. Ricardo's dissolusionment in the Church (which acts more as an institution for self-preservation than for good in this film) leads him to irrational and useless acts which do not conflict with his morality, rather than to more useful acts which do. The interest lies with the deterioration of Ricardo's faith in the Church's moral station and that of Gerheim's faith in his fatherland. Both find solace in the hope that they will put an end to the holocaust.

This is noticeably a continental European film, with brilliant direction and dazzlingly good acting, more Gosford Park than Schindler's List in terms of pace. Indeed, this slow pace only highlights the frustration felt by the two main characters as they are continually beaten down by the well-meaning leaders of their Churches.

Frustration, interestingly, is the only lasting emotion inspired in the viewer. Dr Germaine Greer attributed this, wrongly, I believe, to the fact that the film "doesn't seem to go anywhere", highlighting the leitmotiv frame of a so-called 'goods' train on its way to an unseen destination as a representation of this lack of direction. I would venture to suggest, though, that a conclusion is precisely what the director, the justly renowned Costa Garvas, was trying to avoid - he does not straightjacket his characters plainly as either heroes or villains and the film closes with the issues of morality it has raised left open-ended. It is meant to be thought provoking, not moving; the viewer is meant to conclude for himself what was morally correct and what was not.

At the end of the film, I found myself wondering which of the characters was most right - for none, it would seem, have a sole handle on the moral high-ground and there are arguments that promote each character's actions over another's. Whatever way you see this film and whatever conclusion you draw, it is a production which will not let you sleep easy until you have been challenged on many issues of morality.