THE PASSION OF THE FUHRER
Critics are up in arms over Mel Gibson's latest film, "The Passion of the Fuhrer", because of what they perceive as anti-Semitic bias in the film. But Gibson has maintained that his picture (a biopic of the former Austrian painter and dictator Adolph Hitler) is faithful to "Mein Kampf" and other source material, and that critics are reading more into it than there is.
For example, Gibson cites his depiction of Hitler's mother being neglected by a Jewish doctor as "historical record" and denys that Hitler had any prejudice towards the Jews because of this. What's more, the period of Hitler's life where he was a starving art student in Vienna has been misinterpreted as the time when he first became aware of ant-Semitic literature.
"At that time, people didn't know what to believe," Gibson said in an interview with Diane Sawyer last week. "They (the Austrians) were looking for anyone to blame for the social ills at the turn of the century. Bosnians, Serbs, Croats; it's no surprise that they eventually turned to the Jews as well. But don't we all want someone to blame for our own failings?"
Gibson states that scenes involving Hitler's rise to power were "tastefully done", including the slaughter of several hundred "enemies" during the "Night of Long Knives" and the "supposedly staged Reichstag fire", which Gibson claims (as did the Nazis) was started by a Dutch arsonist and not the Nazis themselves in a ploy to gain more power.
"You've really got to go back to that time, to understand why they needed to have absolute power. Germany had just lost the First World War, they needed someone to make them feel good again. Hitler did that, and that's what I try to show."
Perhaps the film's most controversial section shows the beginnings of the Second World War (Gibson blames the British for "forcing Hitler's hand") and the death camps in eastern Europe. "I believe Hitler didn't know the Holocaust was going on," Gibson reiterated in the Sawyer interview. "He was busy with a two-front war and trying to negotiate with the Brits and Americans so they could face the real threat of Russia. I think the fact that Europe was divided after the war into democracies and Russian satellite states shows you how right he was. He couldn't possibly keep up with a little thing like detaining the Jews."
Robert Lyman of the Anti-Defamation League sees things differently. "Mr. Gibson is playing fast and loose with the facts, he's putting Hitler on a pedestal and saying that it was okay to go after the Jews. They're 'Christ-killers' and he was simply seeking retribution for their crimes. What's more, he even denys that the death toll was as high as six million."
Gibson admitted that, indeed, he felt the totals of those killed had been "pretty inflated" and went on to say that, while Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Dachau existed as concentration camps, any deaths there were "purely accidental".
The film concludes with a bloody Hitler being killed by his most trusted aides in the Berlin bunker (contradicting historical sources that Hitler committed suicide). The last twenty minutes of Hitler's life, as depicted in the film, involve an elaborate crucifixion that most historians have blasted as wildy inaccurate. Gibson defends his view of the Fuhrer's last days as "artistic license" and claims that, upon a special screening for anonymous Nazi war criminals in hiding, most said "it is as it was."
The film, set to debut in time for the Christmas season, stars John Travolta as Hitler, Paris Hilton as Eva Braun, Bob Hoskins as Churchill, and (in his last screen role) Richard Harris as God (who appears to Hitler in a dream and calls for "lebenstraum" in the East).
Frankie Muniez (Neville Chamberlain)
Clint Eastwood (Clint Eastwood)
Roger Moore (Alois Hitler)
Uma Thurman (Hitler's mom)
Steve Buscemi (Harry Truman)
Vin Diesel (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Sean William Scott (Annoying Guy who Hitler Kills with Bare hands)
Marlon Brando (the Jews)
