MAX

Hitler - The Early Years
****1/2 Countless films have dealt with Adolph Hitler the monster, the madman, the unprecedented mass murderer. But very few have attempted to go beyond this image, to conceive of Hitler in less than larger-than-life terms and to try to figure out what it was exactly that made this most infamous of modern dictators "tick."

This is certainly understandable, for how is one to "explain" an Adolph Hitler? How is one to reconcile the man who was responsible for the deaths of millions with a flesh-and-blood person who lived and breathed like the rest of us? The answers to these questions have eluded sociologists, psychologists and artists for decades now and it is the rare person who even attempts to provide us with some possible explanations. It is for this reason that writer/director Menno Meyjes deserves extraordinary praise for bringing "Max" to the screen. Is it possible for a single film - especially one that runs a mere 108 minutes - to successfully address this bewilderingly...
The frustrated artist Hitler looks for his "authentic voice"
A standard question concerning ethics asks if you could go back in a time machine and have the chance to kill Adolf Hitler as a baby, would you do it? Another "what if?" concerning Hitler has to do with his attempts to be an artist. Hitler's artwork is rather cold and uninspiring, but it seems reasonable to speculate that if he had been a better artist he would not have turned to politics and the 20th century would have been completely different.

Writer-director Menno Meyjes explores this idea in the 2002 film "Max," in which Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) is still living in military barracks in Munich as Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles and is trying to make a name as an artist. He shows his work to Max Rothman (John Cusack), a Jewish art dealer who lost an arm in the World War and who is consumed by the idea of the subversiveness of modern art. Hitler disparages such ideas, considering them "blood poisoning." Rothman and Hitler argue about...
Limitless unrealized potential, but still decent.
Max (Menno Meyjes, 2002)

Menno Meyjes (Empire of the Sun, Ricochet) steps behind the camera for the first time to direct his own controversial script. Like most controversial scripts, this one got built up a lot more than it should have by people who probably haven't even seen the blasted thing.

The story centers on Max Rothman (John Cusack), a wealthy Jewish art dealer not long after the end of World War I, before the massive German depression kicks in. He is a staunch modernist, but modern art isn't selling too well in a Germany that just got its head handed to it on a platter, and Rothman is looking for a new angle. He meets a young, promising artist by the name of Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor, from Almost Famous). Rothman and Hitler develop a testy friendship of opposites, with Rothman's libertinism and Hitler's asceticism grating against one another mercilessly, but the two men have a grudging respect for one another, and Rothmann has a genuine desire to help Hitler's career...
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