Invincible Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)September 23rd, 2002
INVINCIBLE
# stars based on 4 stars: 3.5
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten
Fine Line Features
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Written by: E. Max Frye, Werner Herzog
Cast: Tim Roth, Jouko Ahola, Anna Gourari, Max Raab
Screened at: Angelika, 9/22/02
How ya gonna keep 'em/Down on the shtetl/After they've seen Berlin?" Those may not have the same ring as the original lyrics are more applicable to Werner Herzog's latest allegory which he co-wrote with E. Max Frye just last year. The sixty-year-old German-born maestro now based in California is best known for challenging, metaphoric works, films that transcend the period to highlight what Herzog considers the Big Questions. This time Herzog, best known for "Aguirre" (about how mankind becomes increasingly wild, destructive and pathological), but also poignant in his less known "Land of Silence and Dankness" (about the primitive, incommunicable nature of people), sticks to what he knows best. Portraying the dark side of humankind as best exemplified in the 20th Century by Germany's turn from the democratic Weimar Republic to the increasing irrational and psychotic brand of politics known as National Socialism, Herzog uses his characters not only to indicate that politics is little more than entertainment, with spin doctors telling the masses what they want to hear, but as fascinating and appealing in their own right whether demonic or naive.
Using a largely amateur collection of people particularly the actual World's Strongest Man of 1998 Jouko Ahola in the role of Jewish Samson Zishe Brietbart, Herzog unfolds a gripping tale of exploitation, cruelty, irrationality and down-home sentimentality that should be on every serious film-goer's list of must see's. Predictably enough Tim Roth in the role of occultist Erik-Jan Hanussen, who owns and runs a house of magic, showbiz, clairvoyance and hypnotism in sophisticated Berlin is the most accomplished performer. Here he outdoes even himself, a tuxedo- clad mystic able not only to mesmerize his entire audience with his smoke and mirrors but so charismatic that he can rush into a brawl between Nazi storm troopers and Jews in his cabaret and end a fracas by simply pointing to one individual after another and announcing, "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"
Opening in May, 1932 like a story by Shalom Aleichem crossed with Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Invincible" takes us first to a dirt-poor shtetl (Jewish community) in Eastern Poland where Zishe helps his dad in a blacksmith shop, busy-as-a-bee in an area that rarely sees an automobile and hasn't a single telephone or running water. When an agent rolls into town from Berlin to recruit Zishe for a vaudeville show in Germany's most sophisticated city. Zishe, who is worshiped by his kid brother Benjamin (Jacob Wein), has to think for a while but finally pulls away from everything known to him to fall under the supervision of the theater owner, Erik-Jan Hanussen (Tim Roth). "Aryanized" by the mesmerist who slaps a blond wig on his head and renames him Siegfried, Zishe tries to assimilate into a society in which anti- Semitism is de rigueur, watching a blatantly anti-Jewish skit open the performance and hearing the storm troopers in the audience openly show their antipathy toward Jews. Unable to pretend any longer, he announces to an incredulous crowd that his name is Zishe and that he is the Jewish Samson.
Herzog has toned down his movies of late, chucking the large- scale jungle operatics portrayed in "Fitzcarraldo," but his signature is obvious to any in a modern film audience who have seen his previous works. Instead of opera, he uses music, specifically the Second Movement of the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto, played near the end by a woman who serves as Hanussen's abused sex-slave, Marta (Anna Gourari). Hollywood editors like the great Walter Murch, accustomed to cutting fourteen times per minute in an action movie, would probably climb the walls watching Herzog allow the piece of music to be played for some three minutes without scarcely a cut, but for an audience attuned to concentrating on every detail, the music itself is not only wonderful to hear but a statement that the art and beauty of the early Nineteenth Century master are about to crumble into a world of increasing irrationality and anti- intellectualism.
Sure, critics can complain that Ahola's acting and use of English are wooden, but hey, the guy's a strong man, not John Gielgud, and does a creditable job as a foil and ultimately the great challenger of Tim Roth as the charlatan who tried to fool the Nazis once too often. Based on a true story, "Invincible" concludes with a final irony as Zishe, who had survived taunts by Christians in the shtetl and later the hostility of his boss and the brownshirts, dies in such a banal way, hoist by his own petard.
Rated PG-13. 128 minutes. Copyright 2002 by Harvey Karten at [email protected]
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