Radical Evil (film)

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Movie
Original title The radical evil
Country of production Germany , Austria
original language German
Publishing year 2013
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Stefan Ruzowitzky
production Josef Aichholzer
Wolfgang Richter
camera Benedict Neuenfels
cut Barbara Gies
occupation

Voice only:

Radical evil is a German - Austrian documentary that attempts to psychological processes and individual decision leeway "normal young men" in the German Einsatzgruppen to fathom that in 1941 during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust two million Jewish Civilians shot dead in Eastern Europe .

The author and director is the Austrian Oscar winner Stefan Ruzowitzky ( The Forgers ).

The film was presented in October 2013 at the 47th Hof Film Festival; It was released in theaters on January 16 in Germany and on January 17 in Austria.

title

The title of the film alludes to a quote by Hannah Arendt from her thought diary from 1950, which precedes the official website for the film: “Radical evil is that which should not have happened, that is, that which cannot be reconciled [ …] Which one must not pass by in silence. ” Under the impression of the Shoah , Arendt devoted a large part of her moral-philosophical thought to both the question of how radical evil can come about and the question of how to deal with it as a result .

In a conversation with the Wiener Zeitung , Ruzowitzky explained that his film was based on this early definition of the term by Arendt. She later used the term ' banal evil ' in relation to Eichmann and the type of ' desk offender '. “[...] but my perpetrators are not desk perpetrators, they are the ones who really stood there, pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the skull of a woman, a child, a man. The term “banal evil” is no longer sufficient. So it is important to define that it is about something that should never have happened. "

content

“Radical Evil” is introduced with the fade-in of a quote from Primo Levi : “There are monsters, but they are too few to be really dangerous. Normal people are those who are dangerous. "

In a collage of interviews with scientists, re-enacted scenes from the everyday life of the perpetrators, current recordings of the locations and historical images, which are underlaid by repeated quotes from letters, diaries and trial files, the film explores the question of why many "normal boys Men ”became perpetrators in German Einsatzgruppen . Like Christopher Browning in Ordinary Men , Ruzowitzky focuses on the perpetrators of Reserve Police Battalion 101 , who shot at least 38,000 Jewish men, women and children between 1941 and 1943 as part of the Barbarossa operation in Eastern Europe , but also mixes quotes from others Perpetrator among the quotes from the off without assigning them. In total, around a third, i.e. two of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust , were killed in this way.

Extras were used to portray the perpetrators . The film dispenses with the reenactment of the acts of killing itself and only uses original photos and film recordings “sparingly” - “trusting the old film principle that it is always strongest when something arises in the mind of the beholder”. However, Ruzowitzky shows the documents in which the mass murder was recorded in a bureaucratic and meticulous manner, and has the events reported by some eyewitnesses who are still alive . Possibly still living perpetrators were not interviewed. In Ruzowitzky's opinion, they “did not speak as openly as in the minutes or their letters and diaries”. He also did not ask any survivors, because there are hardly any survivors because hardly any of them escaped the task force.

“Radical Evil” is analyzed by six scientists and other experts, among them Benjamin Ferencz , born in 1920 , who was the prosecutor at the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947 , the historian Christopher Browning, the Catholic priest Patrick Desbois , the psychiatrist Robert Lifton and the military psychologist Dave Grossman . For the film, some psychological experiments such as the Milgram experiment , the Stanford prison experiment and the conformity experiment by Asch were recreated and interviews with the researchers were conducted. Social psychological tests document peer pressure , hierarchical order and mental distance through the dehumanization of the victims as mechanisms that promote violence, which were used by the Nazi regime on the basis of the extermination propaganda against Judaism . Even Heinrich Himmler's infamous Posen speech to "exterminate the Jewish people" is quoted from the off. The murders became routine, with recognition rewarded.

background

Ruzowitzky is particularly interested in the motivation of the perpetrators during the Nazi era : “Why did they do that? What went wrong in this society back then? How did she slide into hell like that? ”His first documentary was therefore more of a functional description than historical documentation. For the present one can learn from the discrimination of the victims.

Reviews

Simon Rothöhler attests to Ruzowitzky that he "involuntarily created a fairly complete anthology of dubious historical documentary procedures." Rothöhler states that Ruzowitzky works without citing the sources for the repeated citations. While a military psychiatrist utters “unbelievable platitudes”, Christopher Browning interviewed for the documentary , on whose standard work the film is based, is without regret that Ruzowitzky has dealt with its 22-year, “controversial history of reception”. Rothöhler asks whether the film does not again portray the perpetrators as victims of involuntary entanglement in a system and - like the television film ' Our mothers, our fathers ' - distracts from their personal responsibility.

Stefan Grissemann points out the general difficulty of the cinematic implementation of the topic, which Ruzowitzky also fails: Anyone who dares to “fathom the murderous abysses that open up under pressure in, as one likes to say,“ completely normal people ” of one of the most psychologically and aesthetically difficult tasks that cinema offers. Because there are no simple answers to the questions posed by this complex of topics, and almost all images that can be found are contaminated in one way or another - because they are either obscene or banal, exploitative or meaningless. 'The Radical Evil' is also very clear evidence of this problem: […] Ruzowitzky's tendency towards the 'traumatic' but simplistic image (the Nazi propaganda film ' The Eternal Jew ' is projected as a flash of lightning on the faces of the young soldiers, and before the first Massacre looks at heavily breathing, distorted faces) keeps the knowledge value of its results low. And the ever-present wallpaper of dark, pulsating electronic music, composed by Patrick Pulsinger, accompanies and sprinkles the pictures in a cool way, but it does them just as little good as the illustrative shooting noises that the director synchronizes to the historical massacres: the logic of the feature film dominates this 'Nonfiction Drama'. "

Michel Winde, on the other hand, sees the cinematic implementation as successful: “'Radical Evil' is characterized by a disturbing duality . It is particularly found in the gap between seeing and hearing. The eye sees commonplace faces, played by amateur actors. Thanks to the stylistic device of the handheld camera, you are among them. At the same time, original quotes from letters, diaries and court transcripts sound off-screen , in which the perpetrators explain their actions - and their families are loving fathers and husbands. […] It is a great achievement of the film that it does not leave the viewer at a loss. Because 'The Radical Evil' is not a history film in the true sense of the word. He points to the future - especially in his warning that every genocide is preceded by racism . "

Volker Behrens states: "A feel-good film is of course not 'The Radical Evil', but it has potential for discussion."

Susan Christely says that the film "makes us aware of our responsibility - that of each individual and that of society, never again to allow circumstances in which mass murder becomes a matter of course."

For Bernd Graff, Stefan Ruzowitzy's nonfiction drama The Radical Evil is "one of the best that a historical TV documentary can do."

Alexandra Zawia sums up: “And those Germans who systematically shot two million Jews as members of the Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe during the Second World War were not monsters. They were normal men. Stefan Ruzowitzky's (52) new film [...] impressively explains why they committed this genocide anyway. […] As tempting as the monster assumption may be, it would be catastrophic to fall for it. Because it negates the responsibility of those involved. "

Heike Littger also praises the fact that “[s] elten [...] previously a film transported the events of the past so tangibly into the present and clearly demonstrated: It is not possible to weigh in security. Knowing about the Holocaust does not make us more humane per se. [...] Inevitably you think about yourself. How blind are you to everyday racism? Do you empower your children to take a stand, be true to one another, help the weaker, and endure exclusion? What do refusers have that followers don't? Can you train these skills ? The film doesn't give an answer to this [...]. "

The FBW jury considers the film to be “particularly valuable”: “Ruzowitzky manages to use these various stylistic means to keep enough distance from the monstrous deeds in order to deal with them on a more intellectual level [sic!]. He doesn't want to judge, he wants to understand, and from this point of view his film enables many existential insights. Such as the one that radical evil is not inhuman, but ours, but also that the individual always makes a moral decision. Some refused to shoot - and they too were completely normal men. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clearance certificate for Das Radikal Böse . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2013 (PDF; test number: 140 202 K).
  2. ↑ Program of the Hof International Film Festival 2013: Das radikal Böse / Radical evil In: www.hofer-filmtage.com (accessed on January 12, 2014).
  3. ↑ Official website: The radical evil
  4. ↑ a b Interview with Stefan Ruzowitzky by Alexandra Zawia: Stefan Ruzowitzky - We, the result of fellow travelers. In: wienerzeitung.at of January 10, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b Quoted from Bernd Graff: Beasts like you and me. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. dated April 29, 2015.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Huber-Lang: Stefan Ruzowitzky on the documentary “Das radikal Böse” ( Memento from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: suedtirolnews.it from January 2, 2014.
  7. ↑ a b c Volker Behrens: "Das Radikal Böse" - Search for the depths of life In: Abendblatt.de of January 10, 2014.
  8. ↑ a b Heike Littger: "The radical evil": How does a person become a mass murderer? In: zeit.de from January 15, 2014.
  9. ↑ a b Susan Christely: Pleasure in Killing - Stefan Ruzowitzky's film "The Radical Evil" . In: 3sat.de from January 7, 2014.
  10. ↑ Simon Rothöhler: Documentary about Nazi perpetrators: Everything that can be done wrong. In: taz.de from January 20, 2014.
  11. ↑ Stefan Grissemann: Stefan Ruzowitzky's “The Radical Evil”: The Logic of the Game In: profil.at of January 7, 2014.
  12. ↑ Michel Winde: How young men became murderers. In: wz-newsline.de from January 9, 2014.
  13. ↑ Reasons given by the FBW jury for the award of the title “particularly valuable”: Das radikal Böse In: fbw-filmbeval.com, accessed on January 12, 2014.