*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ****** I was disappointed by this movie that promised so much. 20 minutes into it I thought this was very interesting: these characters could as easily be Hitler and Christ as they could be modern delusionals at a bus station. They were talking about interesting ideas involving guilt and death and eternal punishment, but as the film continued, it needed its premise of an afterlife and the Christian worldview more and more.
It began to investigate the specific rules of the afterlife in this particular setting, and that kind of thing simply turns me off; one can spin any kind of tale one wants based on the rules one makes up for the film. None of the questions about Christ's personal relationship with his (yes, his) father (yes, father) has anything to do with the larger questions posed at the beginning of the film. It got more and more parochial, establishing that the Hitler character had to learn how to die before he could die, and establishing that all human beings are Christ before ** spoiler *** Christ commits violence against Hitler out of a loss of patience.
That's a complete bailout on the questions the film raised.
OK, so you could make the argument that even Christ can't forgive Hitler. You could make the argument that Christ is fallible, as a human. You could make the point that Hitler is a human being, but this movie gets so tangled in the rules of the afterlife that all those arguments take a back seat; then it seals the deal by having Christ physically attack Hitler.
And then you add the fact that Christ is portrayed by a handsome white actor, even as the script has him describe his mother as looking nothing like her portrayals in western art, but rather as a working Jewish woman, and I gotta wonder about the writer's intended message.
Finally, the Hitler character refers repeatedly to his pride at creating the ultimate killing machine. I think the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may differ with that judgement.
It began to investigate the specific rules of the afterlife in this particular setting, and that kind of thing simply turns me off; one can spin any kind of tale one wants based on the rules one makes up for the film. None of the questions about Christ's personal relationship with his (yes, his) father (yes, father) has anything to do with the larger questions posed at the beginning of the film. It got more and more parochial, establishing that the Hitler character had to learn how to die before he could die, and establishing that all human beings are Christ before ** spoiler *** Christ commits violence against Hitler out of a loss of patience.
That's a complete bailout on the questions the film raised.
OK, so you could make the argument that even Christ can't forgive Hitler. You could make the argument that Christ is fallible, as a human. You could make the point that Hitler is a human being, but this movie gets so tangled in the rules of the afterlife that all those arguments take a back seat; then it seals the deal by having Christ physically attack Hitler.
And then you add the fact that Christ is portrayed by a handsome white actor, even as the script has him describe his mother as looking nothing like her portrayals in western art, but rather as a working Jewish woman, and I gotta wonder about the writer's intended message.
Finally, the Hitler character refers repeatedly to his pride at creating the ultimate killing machine. I think the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may differ with that judgement.
