Review – Good

This picture might have lived up to its title if it had just stuck to its premise. Viggo Mortensen mails in his performance as John Halder, a bookish academic caught up in the turmoil of the 1930s in Germany. Hitler takes a liking to the professor’s novel about a man who helps his terminally-ill wife kill herself. Goaded by the attention and a desire not to run afoul of the new regime, our “hero” ends up enlisting in the SS, and of course things go downhill from there. In the brief scenes that focus on the moral and ethical questions raised by euthanasia, this is an absolutely fascinating picture. Sadly, that’s maybe ten minutes out of an hour and a half. The rest is squandered on the protagonist’s arguments with a Jewish friend and the dreary details of his soapy private life. Plus the deceptively non-linear time stream. Plus the odd, go-nowhere scenes in which Halder hallucinates everyone around him singing. VSee if desperate