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Bookmark this pageAmen. (2002)
Director: Costa-Gavras
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
An adaptation of Rolf Hochhuth's The Representative (1963), a free-verse play about the man who created Zyklon-B gas, but then failed to persuade the Vatican to denounce the Nazis' genocidal use of it. Its critique of papal inaction isn't righteously denunciatory so much as disconsolately aware that power prefers to deal behind closed doors. As a Holocaust movie, this follows recent convention in focusing on individuals tilting against the Nazi machine. Its protagonist Kurt Gerstein (Tukur) is a fraught, compromised character who continues his work for the regime in order to bear testimony to the Vatican and other unresponsive authorities. But the story introduces a more heroic parallel in the fictional figure of Kassovitz's papal delegate, who counters his elders' caution with, finally, mere desperate gestures. Costa-Gavras' direction is sometimes stolid and rarely more than pictorial, though he finds telling drama in a few scenes.Author: NB
User reviews of this film
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- Jazzist said...
- Posted on Aug 20 2011 19:16 Well worth seeing. Costa-Gavras makes a gripping story out of Gerstein's account of his vain attempts to get the Vatican to speak out about the Nazi extermination programme. Pope Pius had praised Franco, helped Mussolini and welcomed Hitler, so he was reluctant to criticise the Nazi attack on the Jews. Gerstein expected his insider information to produce moral outrage, but the Vatican preferred not to know. "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell provides the historical details.
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Cast & crew
Director: Costa-Gavras
Producer: Claude Berri
Cast: Ulrich Tukur, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ulrich Mühe, Michel Duchaussoy, Ion Caramitru, Marcel Iures, Friedrich von Thun, Antje Schmidt, Angus MacInnes, Hans Zischler full cast
Duration: 131 mins
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