Paradise - a film by Andrei Konchalovsky reviewed by NC Weil
What to make of Paradise? This 2016 collaboration between German and Russian studios, set during WWII and shot in lustrous black and white, gives us a thousand- year-Reich rationale for Nazi policies. We are offered three central characters: Jules, chief of police in Paris - Vichy French, doing the dirty work for the occupiers; Olga, a Russian countess arrested for helping hide Jews in Paris; and Helmut, a Brad-Pitt-handsome young aristocratic German who believes wholeheartedly in the Nazi vision.
Spoiler alert! I'll be discussing the whole film. If you want to see it uninformed, stop reading now.
Jules lives in a grand old house outside the city with his wife and son. In his office an underling reports that the Russian they have been interrogating all night has nothing to say.
"You weren't trying hard enough," Jules scolds.
"I broke his knee with a hammer - he can't walk any more."
"Go back and try harder." The underling leaves the bloody hammer on Jules' desk.
Then Olga, an attractive mid-thirtyish Russian countess, is brought to his office. She eyes that hammer, admits to terror of torture, and offers herself to Jules if he will prevent that. They set an assignation for the next day. But before they can meet, a pair of Resistance fighters execute him.
Olga is sent to a concentration camp.
Helmut sells his ancestral country home and goes to Berlin to petition Himmler for a job with the SS. It's granted. Helmut has tears in his eyes when Himmler gives him an SS ring, instructing him to wear it on the ring finger of his left hand - truly he is wed to the organization: a perfect German: efficient, straight, incorruptible. He is dispatched to a concentration camp to look for profiteering and the like. Soon after arriving, he encounters an old school friend, Dietrich, with whom he studied Russian. Helmut regrets not completing his thesis on Chekhov - the war has put personal lives on hold. Dietrich is going mad from the pressure of what he must see and do, but Helmut has clean hands. He doesn't have to get involved with the horrific business of the concentration camp - he spends his days going through ledgers while the camp commandant attempts to bribe him, to reason with him, to persuade him that any human would do what he does in that situation.
And when Helmut walks through one of the women's barracks, he recognizes Olga, whom he met years before in Italy, when young men and young women with money and free time danced and drank and lounged at a Tuscan villa. He pursued her with letters she never answered. And here she is, a prisoner. He makes her his maid, and they enjoy sweet interludes from the surrounding madness.
Konchalovsky intercuts scenes from their lives with what look like interrogations: each, in a plain white shirt, sits unadorned at a table, confessing to an unseen camera what they did, what they expected, how they reacted to events. The puzzle is why Helmut is made so appealing. The other Nazis at the concentration camp are warped by their duties - whatever humanity they possess is tormenting their dreams, turning them to automatons, sadists, or drunks trying to smother all awareness. But not Helmut. He breezes through his tasks, Himmler's orders like a beacon blinding him to the surrounding madness. When it's time for the escape he has engineered for himself and Olga, he sends Dietrich. He himself dies in the air raids of the arriving Soviet army, but nobly, as a warrior.
Of the three characters questioned in an afterlife, only Olga is invited by the voice of God to ascend. Really? That's Konchalovsky's answer to the Nazi extermination machine? that they don't go to heaven? 'Scuse me while I find a hole to puke in.
What to make of Paradise? This 2016 collaboration between German and Russian studios, set during WWII and shot in lustrous black and white, gives us a thousand- year-Reich rationale for Nazi policies. We are offered three central characters: Jules, chief of police in Paris - Vichy French, doing the dirty work for the occupiers; Olga, a Russian countess arrested for helping hide Jews in Paris; and Helmut, a Brad-Pitt-handsome young aristocratic German who believes wholeheartedly in the Nazi vision.
Spoiler alert! I'll be discussing the whole film. If you want to see it uninformed, stop reading now.
Jules lives in a grand old house outside the city with his wife and son. In his office an underling reports that the Russian they have been interrogating all night has nothing to say.
"You weren't trying hard enough," Jules scolds.
"I broke his knee with a hammer - he can't walk any more."
"Go back and try harder." The underling leaves the bloody hammer on Jules' desk.
Then Olga, an attractive mid-thirtyish Russian countess, is brought to his office. She eyes that hammer, admits to terror of torture, and offers herself to Jules if he will prevent that. They set an assignation for the next day. But before they can meet, a pair of Resistance fighters execute him.
Olga is sent to a concentration camp.
Helmut sells his ancestral country home and goes to Berlin to petition Himmler for a job with the SS. It's granted. Helmut has tears in his eyes when Himmler gives him an SS ring, instructing him to wear it on the ring finger of his left hand - truly he is wed to the organization: a perfect German: efficient, straight, incorruptible. He is dispatched to a concentration camp to look for profiteering and the like. Soon after arriving, he encounters an old school friend, Dietrich, with whom he studied Russian. Helmut regrets not completing his thesis on Chekhov - the war has put personal lives on hold. Dietrich is going mad from the pressure of what he must see and do, but Helmut has clean hands. He doesn't have to get involved with the horrific business of the concentration camp - he spends his days going through ledgers while the camp commandant attempts to bribe him, to reason with him, to persuade him that any human would do what he does in that situation.
And when Helmut walks through one of the women's barracks, he recognizes Olga, whom he met years before in Italy, when young men and young women with money and free time danced and drank and lounged at a Tuscan villa. He pursued her with letters she never answered. And here she is, a prisoner. He makes her his maid, and they enjoy sweet interludes from the surrounding madness.
Konchalovsky intercuts scenes from their lives with what look like interrogations: each, in a plain white shirt, sits unadorned at a table, confessing to an unseen camera what they did, what they expected, how they reacted to events. The puzzle is why Helmut is made so appealing. The other Nazis at the concentration camp are warped by their duties - whatever humanity they possess is tormenting their dreams, turning them to automatons, sadists, or drunks trying to smother all awareness. But not Helmut. He breezes through his tasks, Himmler's orders like a beacon blinding him to the surrounding madness. When it's time for the escape he has engineered for himself and Olga, he sends Dietrich. He himself dies in the air raids of the arriving Soviet army, but nobly, as a warrior.
Of the three characters questioned in an afterlife, only Olga is invited by the voice of God to ascend. Really? That's Konchalovsky's answer to the Nazi extermination machine? that they don't go to heaven? 'Scuse me while I find a hole to puke in.