Moloch

Alexei Fyodorov's gloomy, soft-focus photography, with its echoes of Riefenstahl and German Romantic paintings, is stunning. True, too, Sokurov and scriptwriter Yuri Arabov's intention - to understand a little more about Hitler the man through the self-sacrificing love of Eva Braun - is admirable. Despite one good scene between Hitler and a visiting priest, however, that's about all that can be said in favour of this far from illuminating chamber piece about a weekend at the Führer's Alpine retreat in 1942. Boorman smells of mustard gas, Goebbels screens his propaganda movies, and Adolf blathers on about food, death, responsibility, etc. Basically, the notion seems to be that the Nazis were buffoons who probably should have listened to Eva; inadequate, but not quite as dubious as the hint that Hitler may not even have heard of Auschwitz.