MovieChat Forums > Moloch (2000) Discussion > This is Hitler before he turned into the...

This is Hitler before he turned into the Red Queen


Most films about Hitler are easy to make. You have a guy shouting in a language we don't understand whose solution to every problem is "Off with his head!" In this movie, we see the man living in Cloud-cuckoo-land - Wolkenkuckucksheim - before his defeat at Stalingrad. He is a man surrounded by sycophants which doesn't bother him. He watches a movie - the German weekly newsreel and delivers a critique of the cameraman and the director (but he says "I liked the part with the tanks.")

It's the portrait of a little man who cast a long shadow. He's an Austrian peasant (almost... he's not educated...) who through a fluke has the reins of power based on his charisma (which is hard for us to understand but he did have charisma among the angry, failures of people that he attracted.)

The movie is absurdist as it must be. This man should not exist. And yet he created himself. Who is more existential than that? He sees himself taking part in a grand Wagnerian opera yet the world has always seen him as the subject of of clown opera.

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