(2008) Harried with a frenzied household of a demented mother (Gemma Jones) also suffering with TB, a neurotic wife, Helen (Anastasia Hille), often playing the piano, while he cooks and attempts to take care of their two children, Professor John Halder (Viggo Mortensen) lectures on literature at the university while attempting to complete the manuscript for a novel. It's 1933 in Berlin; as he's speaking to his class about Proust - "music and faith, memory and guilt" - a mob outside casts books onto a pile for burning, including volumes of the authors from his curriculum.

One of his students, Anne Hartman (Jodie Whittaker), a beautiful blonde, stops by his office to express her appreciation and affection for his instruction. When she asks about his fiction, he explains that it concerns a man who puts his wife out of her misery from a terrible illness. "To kill for love!" she exclaims approvingly.

John tells his best friend - they'd been buddies since the end of the Great War in 1918 - Maurice Israel Glückstein (Jason Isaacs), a Jewish psychoanalyst, of his affair and of imagining hearing Mahler's music at certain moments. A perfectly understandable refuge from the lunacy taking place around them, diagnoses the doctor. "Hitler's a joke," insists John.

Another film of the Holocaust, this time depicting a decent man's gradual descent into circles of Nazi hell as a honorary member of the SS, comes from director Vicente Amorim, with screenplay by John Wrathall based on the late C.P. Taylor's acclaimed 1981 stage play.

"You'll do the right thing," says Helen to her husband: "You always do." Four years later following publication of his novel, John is summoned to the Chancellery to meet with Philipp Bouhler (Mark Strong), a high-ranking government official and enthusiastic proponent of the Führer's euthanasia program (initiated by citizens' letters requesting compassionate deliverance of incurable relations), who assures the professor that humanity is central to the approach of mercy killing.

Though he'd found the political ideas and the parades offensive to his liberal sensibilities, without ever joining the National Socialist Party (though his father-in-law had long before urged him to sign on) he accepted a promotion to head of the university and eventually works for Adolf Eichmann (Steven Elder). Astounded, Maurice exclaims: "Don't tell me you agree with them."

Separating from Helen and his children, John marries Anne ("the picture of Aryan motherhood"). After John's mother's attempted suicide, having lost her memory and her dignity, Maurice, begging his friend for a favor to obtaining exit papers, unable to summon much sympathy says: "At least she isn't Jewish."

Pregnant - unlike the childless couple Freddie Drobisch (Steven Mackintosh), fellow Nazi official, and his wife Elizabeth - Anne anxiously expresses her misgivings of John's wanting to help his friend: "Would you risk everything we have for him?"

Taken to the Gestapo's efficient recordkeeping facility for the resettlement of Jews with its sophisticated filing system in 1942, impressed John seeks information about a particular individual who had been sent to the concentration camp in Upper Silesia. Disappointingly this time the horror doesn't hit home.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .