The Captain - L'usurpateur

Probably the most brutal piece of self-criticism by German filmmakers regarding their national legacy – World War Two. It is shot so well that it took a lot of work to find anything negative about it. Robert Schwentke is evidently a professional in every sense of the word. On the artistic side, he decided to make it in black-and-white using such great cinematography that I haven’t seen in a long time. The atmosphere is so thick that it could be sliced with a knife and at moments I felt that the dialogues were snatched from a Tarantino flick. The scene at the farmer’s where young Will Herold builds a special platoon deserved not five, but six stars. In terms of story, the movie is quite intimate, but it was actually enough. Willi’s unbelievable journey from an ordinary private to a captain happened in such a flash that I just kept staring incredulously at what finding a uniform can do to a soldier at the end of the war. The fact that everything is based on a true story simply confirms the fact that war brings out hidden human qualities and shows what can be found inside a human being. Even though none of us would be willing to admit that, let alone understand that. The Captain is an unbelievable movie. Good quality cinematography, a great theme and a whole lot of brilliant ideas including the final scene or the single shot in color proved that this is one of the best war movies I have had the chance to see in the past few years. (29/01/2019)

I somehow fail to understand how Schwentke managed to kick himself into such radical darkness after all those wearily unremarkable pieces of Hollywood trash. Contrary to expectations, The Captain is not an ironic satire of a broken society or a classic "undercover agent" thriller, but a relentless and at times surreal study of role acceptance and the destructive consequences of folk hierarchies. The implication that the rattling bureaucratic machinery of Nazism was still a better option than the people's courts, which could operate more efficiently but with all the more horrific results under that ideology, goes very much against the current trend of emphasizing natural human intelligence and the values of individualism in the face of unjust evil systems. At the same time, it relies on excellent compositions and high-contrast black-and-white cinematography (the darker the room, the more of the film you can see) to push the film towards the uncomfortable feeling familiar from incomprehensible horror films or nightmares. "You've all been promoted. Take your new uniforms from the dead and fall in line." (20/06/2022)

As they say, clothes make the man (or should it be the uniform makes an asshole?). Although the theme of the film was more than serious and the atmosphere was literally chilling, I also found some funny moments that I hadn’t expected at all (which made them all the more hilarious). The transformation of a persecuted man, who you might even root for, into an absolute scumbag was perfect. Max Hubacher did a great job. I knew nothing about Willi Herold, so I assumed it was fiction. And the bastard was a real person. It really makes you wonder. (29/10/2018)