(Argentina/Spain, 93 min.)
Written and directed by Lucía Puenzo
Starring: Àlex Brendemühl, Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti,
Elena Roger, Florencia Bado.
The German Doctor
lives and dies by its status of being inspiring by true events. This might seem
like an unfair diagnosis for the film, which repped Argentina in the most
recent Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film, but much of the power,
horror, resonance, and disappointment one feels while watching The German Doctor almost inevitably
pertain to the true events that intersect with the narrative. The German Doctor is a frequently
satisfying and occasionally chilling tale of Nazi hunting, but the title cards
that end the film and fill in the gaps are almost fatal punctuation marks for
how much further writer/direct Lucía Puenzo (XXY) could have taken this intriguing story.
Spoilers prevent one from revealing the precise turns of fate that leave a dissatisfying aftertaste once the credits of The German Doctor roll. An act of telling, rather than showing, undercuts the power of the film, especially since much of the drama that precedes it is disappointingly underdeveloped. The result is a thriller that never really thrills, but a drama that unfolds with enough intrigue to make one want to know more.
The tale itself is fairly interesting, for The German Doctor takes viewers back to
1960 Patagonia where a family begins a new life in the picturesque setting. (The
beautiful cinematography by Nicholás Puenzo ensures that The German Doctor portrays the setting as a tourism board’s dream
even if the story of Nazis hiding out in paradise is said board’s worst
nightmare.) The family meets a creepy doctor en route, they befriend him, and they
eventually welcome him into their home. Said doctor, it turns out, is Josef
Mengele (Àlex Brendemühl), a notorious “Angel of Death” for the Nazis now
hiding out in South America in the years since the war. Many films dramatize
the Holocaust, but few explore the aftermath of the Nazi war criminals—save for
the film geekery of Inglourious Basterds or
the haunting lyricism of Lore—so there’s
a lot one hopes to learn from The German
Doctor.
Puenzo invites the audience to judge Mengele as a cruel and
calculating monster as he preys upon the family. Their twelve-year-old daughter,
Lilith (Florencia Bado), develops an especially close relationship with Herr
Doktor as he takes an interest in her underdeveloped prepubescent body. Puenzo
frames Mengele as something of a pedophile, for she introduces the villain with
a lingering shot as he gazes on Lilith’s legs as they stick out the family car
while she readies it for their trip to Patagonia. His interest in Lilith is
mostly clinical, though, for both she and her pregnant mother, Eva (Natalia
Oreiro) become lab rats in his experiments. (The family members, especially Eva,
are a bit too naïve and trusting of this creepy stranger.) The German Doctor hints at German roots in Eva’s past, but the material
never delves into her potential Nazi fanaticism. Whether Lilith’s mother clings
to Nazi ideology and, in turn, puts the future of her family at risk, remains
one of The German Doctor’s many
half-baked mysteries.
The clear angle of Puenzo’s direction, however, is that Mengele
is a monster. Brendemühl’s performance portrays him as chillingly detached from
the human condition; similarly, the astonishingly strong performance by young
Bado (making her debut) provides an idyll innocence that slowly becomes tainted—yet
fights corruption—as the German doctor works his deadly medicine. The
post-scripts of The German Doctor
tell how Mengele’s deplorable experimentation on the weak lasted for decades
after the Holocaust, and the title card at the end of the film confirms that
Puenzo competently dramatizes this facet of her historical retelling.
The other post-script, however, offers a jarring remark
about Israeli-Argentine photographer Nora Eldoc that hints at a whole other
story that might have been more thrillingly cinematic. Elena Rogers play Nora
in what is easily the film’s most captivating performance, which is especially
commendable since Eldoc is easily the most underwritten/underdeveloped piece of
the puzzle. The German Doctor reveals
the town’s resident photographer to be an Israeli spy, as her snapshots of the
happy families and her archival work on Nazi war crimes actually double as a
cover/access point for her to gather information on Nazis at large.
There’s plenty of intrigue on Nora’s side of the
investigation, especially since Rogers examines every photograph with a hungry inquisitiveness
that evokes the sense that her hunt for Mengele is a much juicier story than
his cruel preying on Lilith. Nora’s investigation extends the Patagonian affair
to the larger story, for her correspondence with higher forces situates the
mission within a greater operation, but her mission barely intersects with the
other storyline except for a few schoolroom interactions with Lilith. The German Doctor rarely capitalizes on
the opportunity to develop tension, mystery, and suspense in addition to
conveying the historical significance of the tale. (One almost feels cheated out of a better by
the final remarks on Eldoc’s fate and by the final/only nerve-wracking confrontation between Mengele and Eldoc.) The missed opportunity is especially
frustrating, since The German Doctor
moves swiftly through its quick hour-and-a-half running time, so Puenzo could
have easily filled out the film with greater meat and substance. It’s a shame
that she didn’t since Eldoc and the superb Rogers are easily the more
interesting—and cinematic—part of the tale.
Puenzo never really uses The
German Doctor as anything other than as a vehicle for straightforward
storytelling, but the tale she unravels proves engaging for each of its quick
93 minutes. The German Doctor touches
upon things, but it rarely tackles them. The film itself provokes a great deal
of questions and the production value is notably strong, especially the clanky
score that features contributions from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, so this
historical drama is bound to satisfy some art houses audiences. Viewers looking for a satisfying thriller
or meaty interrogation of history, however, might leave the theatre hungry.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The German Doctor screens in Ottawa at The ByTowne until June 12.
