The Ogre (1996)(aka "Der Unhold," "Le Roi des Aulnes")

I was born in 1939, so although I had no personal experience of life under the Nazi regime, I grew up with a very ambivalent impression about what it had been like. Despite all the suffering, when people talked about that era, it was always with a sense of regret -- you could hear in their voices how exciting, how fabulous it had all been back then, so full of bright colors and uniforms -- the idea of being involved in something so much greater than yourself." He adds, dryly: "The fact that it turned out to have been something really evil seemed almost incidental."
- Volker Schlondorff

Director Volker Schlondorff, oh he off "The Tin Drum," has concocted another magical and mysterious film revolving around the Nazi's in WWII and questioning so much about life, and the nature of existence and intent and idealism and innocence and naivety and man's blindness to his own inherent evil and the ease with which the innocent are corrupted. And more, really.

"The Ogre" takes quite a while to build up steam. It passes through some important moments in a man's life like going through chapters in a novel. It is in this early part  of the film that we wonder if the whole will amount to anything. The early scenes, in black and white as the film has black and white segments interwoven throughout, is an odd little tale of boys in boarding school, and one boy's existence in particular. It sets up the main character, who appears a few moments later as a rather simple adult played by John Malkovich in color, as having something of a troubling existence. Wavering between happiness and utter despair, the boy, Abel, seems adrift in his own  incomprehension of his humanity, of humanity in general. It is a condition which plagues him until the end of the film. But when the film begins to evolve, it begins to take on a much more serious tone and an unsettling underscore. 

But as Malkovich takes on this role as an adult, the film sort of wavers around a bit. Malkovich is, perhaps, to cerebral to play such a simple soul. We have trouble believing him as the seemingly slightly retarded Abel. Of course, he isn't retarded exactly, he isn't much of anything. But it is, at times, hard to believe his naivety, his unknowing. Perhaps this is because in forging an essay which takes place during the Nazi regime in Germany, it is hard for us to even begin to comprehend the ease with which the Nazi's corrupted the innocent. We cannot comprehend it yet. It was their mastery of playing on people's ignorance and humanity that made their plight seemingly so easy to achieve. It is dupes like Malkovich's Abel on which they forged their empire, one built on lies and corruption and decadence and hate. Schlondorff reminds us that the Nazi regime was not evil, in many people's eyes, when it was alive and vibrant and exciting and in control.

Yes, Schlondorff's marvellous interpretation of the text, from a novel by Michael Tournier, soon saves the day, beginning with a sort of essay on Nazi indulgence, with the grotesquely fattened Volker Spengler playing Fieldmarshall Goering. Suddenly the opulence and outright ugliness of the Third Reich is brought to us in a segment that also pays homage to Renoir's "Rules of the Game." It is repulsive to watch but one which Abel begins to find fascinating.

And then the true meat of the film comes, where  Malkovich's Abel comes to life, in a way that is troubling and intrinsically interesting. Malkovich's Abel feels himself a protector of young boys but his obsession with them borders on pedophiliac. And Schlondorff accentuates this, this troubling almost disturbed preoccupation with young, Aryan, blonde boys, with spindly legs yet glimmering bodies, by paying close attention to their burgeoning forms in another homage, this time to Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia." The almost homoerotic displays of young male bodies juxtaposed against their innocent faces, shimmering in tones of wheat, brings forth this distressing ideal that Abel's love of boys borders on pedophilia, borders on evil, borders on insanity and unknowing ignorance. It borders on that desire to protect which fights fiercely with the desire to corrupt. 

But Abel is not simply an evil soul. He is complex, as complex, surely, as the forces that drove Hitler and, conversely, the forces that drove Horatio Algier. He is adrift in a sea of humanity, untethered to any ideology or thought. He does not seem to know. He accepts his responsibility as the procurer of youth which flickers with pride and arrogant ignorance and only hints subtexturally at evil, at bloodlust and sexual desire.

Schlondorff's film covers the complexities that drives men's souls, this wavering between good and evil. This is exactly at the root of what pushed Nazism into mainstream life. The subtle dark allure of it all. Abel is innocent yet knowing, deviant yet caring, erotically charged yet milquetoast, a kidnapper yet one who saves children as well. He sees himself as a dark knight and cannot comprehend when others see him as an "Ogre." Eventually, he cannot rectify his feelings. In his film, Schlondorff examines the troubled nature of a man without a country, a man without a home, an orphan, and finds nothing for him; No ideology, no home and no mother. He is soulless and after all he has done, both good and evil, his soul cannot be saved by one act of bravery, by one act of kindness, by one act of courage. In many ways, this is most assuredly an analogy of the existence of the entire state of Germany, is it not?

Note: Also with Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Released in 1996, the film did not really make it's way into the US until 1999.

Report Card

Script: A+

Acting: B+

Cinematography\Lighting: A+

Special Effects\Make Up: A+

Music: A+

Final Grade: A+