and i looked forward to the movie. I corresponded with the movies producer before its release and also spoke to a relative of the breitbart family who served an advisory role for the film. However I was sorely diaspointed with the poor acting job done by Jouko Ahola.
share
Indeed. It's a shame that we have to sit through half an hour of excrutiatingly bad acting by Mr Ahola (and in fact the entire Jewish family) before the film redeems itself with the appearance of Tim Roth. Some fine touches by Werner, but the rather uninspiring script and cringeworthy acting by Jouko spoils it somewhat.
I actually liked his acting. I think it was realistic. He was a normal guy, actually a little timid, who was just an blacksmith. He didn't come off as all that bright, and he probably shouldn't have been. Had he been smarter, he probably wouldn't have gotten into that situation. I thought he was good.
shareHe was very good. Tim Roth was just as good, even though it's obvious one of them is a professional actor, and one is not, it totally works for the characters.
shareI agree, his lack of "acting experience" really lends an "authenticity" to that character, who is a very simple and plain man of decent virtue and innocence.
if he was "slick" about his acting [like roth, who's character wonderfully came across as a really slimey and arrogant exploitationist and opportunist.], I think it would have totally interfered with his characters childlike innocence and meek posture.
Tim Roth MAKES this movie. His acting is superb, the strongman's acting actually improves as the movie goes along, but at bets is mediocre. Roth makes this movie worth watching...
sharewell, to further explain my point...
see his lack of acting ability sort of worked for his character actually, he looked always a bit "out of place" and "awkward" and that's totally what alot of his character was about and experiencing...
tim roth did totally carry that movie, no doubt, but I think the contrast between his acting ability and the vibrancy he brough to his character and the lack of acting ability and the awkwardness of the protaginist actually in some strange way enhanced the movie as a whole for me and seemed to lend a bit of authenticity to the movie.
I think if he was better at acting, it may have detracted from his character as part of his charm was his awkwardness, meekness, and "regular joe schmo thrust into an intense and complex situation".
if he were alot more slick with his acting, it may have prehaps been a stronger movie but it kinda would at least partially lose some of the actual tone that I got from the movie as a whole experience...
I just think that his mediocre acting really fit his character's role in the film...
Tim Roth's acting was at best 'hammy' and I can think of much worse to say than that.
His performance was not only lightweight, it lacked any kind of conviction and surprisingly was IMHO one of those rare sleepwalking thro' the production that all actors do from time-to-time.(Michael Caine does it quite often,for example)
I half expected Roth to say 'c'mon hunny bunny let's grab some bratwurst ' to the lovely piano playing Anna Gourari.
Possible Hertzogs' worst production and sadly without his partner in crime, Klaus Kinsky, this is one director who most definately had lost his sense of direction!
And yes the acting by the strongman was appalling but given that he was an amateur, what more could be expected.
If you want to see a superb piece of cinema along the same lines as this see 'Hannusen', starring Klaus-Maria Brandauer, a mesmerizing and gripping film.
3/10.
Actually, I thought Jouko Ahola's acting was superb. He brought a mystical/mythical quality of goodness and innocence to the roll. His transitions from simple blacksmith to Siegfried, the Aryan Strongman to the New Samson and finally to a Holocaust prophet were extraordinary and he was totally convincing in each segment.
Tim Roth was equally marvelous.
The director knew what he wanted from his actors and he got it from them.
[deleted]
I thought Jouko's performance was very touching and similar, but stronger, than Mark Wahlberg's (who I can't stand in just about everything else he's been in) performance in Boogie Nights where he plays an eagerly ambitious but severely naive young man who's not quite ready for the fame and fortune that finds him. At least in "Invincible", the reality of Pre-WWII Nazi Germany catches up with his the main character, where in "Boogie Nights" Dirk Diggler gets a second chance and actually defies the real ending of the character it's based off.
(¯`i´¯)´·¸.)‹^›
I doubt very much that Breitbart even heard of Hanussen, let alone met him, considering he died in 1925.
And certainly he didn't fear or had much to do with "the Nazis", because the party was only a few years old and their leader in prison at the time of Breitbart's death.
Lest someone accuses me of being mindlessly literalistic - I am fully aware of Herzog's intent here, and have no qualms with that. (Although I do find it a very disappointing film.)
It's just that it's not a "true story" in the usual sense of the word.
If you were fascinated by this true story ... you would know that it was not true!
share