Mother Night (1996)
Director: Keith Gordon
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This stylish adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel is an idiosyncratic mix of historical realism, rapt fantasy and offbeat humour. Nolte is Howard W Campbell Jr, an apolitical American playwright in Nazi Germany whose work as a conduit for US intelligence, concealing encoded communiqués in his Jew-baiting broadcasts on German radio, yields widely inspirational Nazi propaganda. Living incognito in New York after the war, his eventual exposure gathers a storm of interested parties - Israeli war-crimes investigators, white supremacists, his supposedly dead wife. An ambivalent meditation on deception, personal responsibility and commitment in an enigmatic world; some may find the studied, circumspect style unaffecting, but there's no denying the fascination of the material.Author: NB
Cast & crew
Director: Keith Gordon
Producer: Keith Gordon, Robert B Weide
Cast: Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Kirsten Dunst, David Strathairn, Norman Rodway, Kurt Vonnegut full cast
Duration: 114 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now