Running Time: 267 minutes
Directed By: Marcel Ophuls
Written By: Marcel Ophuls
Main Cast: Klaus Barbie, Claude Lanzmann, Marcel Ophuls, Eugene Kolb, Johannes Schneider-Merck
Click here to view the trailer
OPHULS ASKS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS
Today, I drag myself out of bed, feeling the after effects of a migraine headache, to bring to you the review of "Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie". For those of you who don't know who Barbie is, he was known as the "Butcher of Lyon", serving Adolf Hitler and ultimately torturing and killing many Jews.
Marcel Ophuls (son of Max Ophuls), a Jew and someone who was obviously very effected by the Holocaust, turns his camera toward Klaus Barbie, a master torturer and convicted killer of children. The film probes his entire life, from childhood to his trial and imprisonment in 1987. After World War II, Barbie was recruited by U.S. Army Counter Intelligence and worked as an agent. Ophuls grills the retired U.S. agents who would place Barbie under their employ and doesn't hold back in condemning their actions. Following his work for the United States, Barbie defected to Bolivia, where he lived under the name Klaus Altmann and was later identified and extradited back to France, where he would stand trial.
Certain parts of "Hotel Terminus" were interesting. For example, the stories of torture from Holocaust survivors, ones that actually faced punishment from Barbie himself. The sheer horror that the Jews faced never ceases to astound me, how they were arrested, tortured and killed simply for being Jewish. Ophuls is actually Jewish himself, so this is obviously a really personal story for him and he doesn't hold back, especially when talking to the retired U.S. Counter Intelligence agents about their hand in hiring and working with Klaus Barbie, a known Nazi, although some of them claim not to have known about his past. That would be the other really interesting section, hearing stories from the likes of Eugene Kolb about Barbie's work for this country. The rest, however, wasn't so great and hearing stories about the French Resistance, Barbie's defection to Bolivia and his extradition and trial, really bored me to tears. I either wasn't interested or didn't have enough prior history to be able to really get the gist of what was being discussed.
Anyway, that's pretty much my final opinion. Certain parts I did enjoy and most other parts I didn't. However, while watching "Hotel Terminus" I realized two things that I'd like to share.
*Sometimes I forget that all evil men were once children and I wonder when all of their innocence was lost. In the film, people who knew Barbie as a child speak about him and how they never thought he'd grow up to torture other human beings. Klaus Barbie and even Adolf Hitler were children at one point and never though they'd grow up to do the horrific things that they did. It really makes me interested in where they went south, the evolution of their mind and where and why these evil premonitions were bred.
*The second thought while watching "Hotel Terminus" is much less deep. First of all, I love hearing people talk, especially if I'm interested in what they're talking about. It just so happens that in the case of "Hotel Terminus" I usually wasn't THAT interested. But I got to thinking, what if someone made a "documentary" in the style of "Hotel Terminus", using a fictional backdrop. You could just make up a story and use actors to give their accounts of "what really happened", although it would be a total work of fiction and simply be testimonials and interviews from different actors speaking on the fictional subject. I think it would work best as a horror film, because lets face it, "Hotel Terminus" is kind of a horror film. It would kind of work the same way "found footage films" work, but there would be no action, only dialogue and interviews. Just a thought, maybe a good one, maybe a bad one, but a thought nonetheless.
RATING: 5/10 Lets just slice it right down the middle and call it a day. Marcel has another film in THE BOOK, "The Sorrow and the Pity" and apparently it's better...I do hope so.
MOVIES WATCHED: 574
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 427
November 9, 2012 12:25pm
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