Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: David Hayman, Udo Kier, Olivia Silhavy, Kineret Peled, Jaime Correa, Tomasz Sobczak, Danharry Colorado.
How would you react if you came face to face with your worst nightmare, with the face of pure evil; especially when you had been led to believe that the person on question was found dead, killed by their own hand many years before.
Such is the revulsion that we feel when we see the striking image of one of the 20th Century’s most malevolent beings that we can almost imagine how we would react, especially if we were in a position where a direct relative that we knew, was lost to the cruelty, to the barbaric, to the insane theories of a man not worthy of the title, human.
Under the watchful eyes of Leon Prudovsky and Dimitry Malinsky, My Neighbour Adolf has all the intention and delivery of showing just how just a moment in history can happen, but also through the sympathetic eyes of a truth well hidden.
The sense of outrage is understandable, the analogy of Hitler’s approximation of ‘Breathing Space’ is palpable from the initial confrontation between Death Camp survivor and chess master Mr. Polsky and that of Mr. Herzog, a stranger who, with the aid of his aide, Frau Kaltenbrunner, becomes the mysterious and short-tempered neighbour who through a matter of law, takes possession of part of the elderly man’s property and significantly a beautiful black rose bush.
The symbolism of the black rose is not lost upon the watcher, and as suspicions grow, as evidence is gathered, the spectre and reminders of the death casually dished out by a form of intolerant government and dictatorship reflect the imagery of the annexation of the bush, the way the neighbour’s pet dog leaves its mess where it will kill and toxify the earth surrounding it, and finally the hope of the gesture of allowing it be watered by the Jewish man’s own hands plays majestically into the story at hand.
It is with little surprise that the twist absolves Mr. Herzog, played with subtly and evident madness by the majestic Udo Kier, but also asks another pertinent question of our times, that of the complicity of the state when confronting its past.
With David Hayman giving one of his finest ever performances as the chess master, and a stern appraisal of how women were as much influenced by the ideas of madman in Olivia Silhavy’s sublime look through the eyes of the aide, My Neighbour Adolf is a film of quality, depth, and poise, one that does not shirk its responsibility, one that can grasp the dark humour to be found in a wayward place.
Ian D. Hall