Labyrinth of Lies Review
RYAN: Labyrinth of Lies is a German film with English subtitles. It’s really stunning. It’s horrifying, it’s intriguing, it’s brilliant. It’s about holocaust deniers in the late fifties in Germany and deals with one underdog lawyer’s case which tries to pull the layer off…bring out into the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, what they were trying to deny for so many years. But it’s very well done. What did you think?
MJ: I agree. It’s interesting how the whole German nation denied what happened. They just didn’t want the rest of the world to know. But this particular lawyer who tried the case was young enough where he didn’t have any knowledge at all of the atrocities committed by the Germans or of the involvement of everybody in the nation; how complicit they were.
RYAN: Right. And it’s really interesting to see… There are so many dramatic confrontations between the Germans who don’t want the truth to come out versus the few justice-seekers that were there. Those moments were just really frustrating but also exhilarating.
MJ: I agree. Being a student of what went on and as a history major, I was aware of all of these situations but it was basically only something I read. It was cool in this movie to see it dramatized this way.
RYAN: And it’s so well done. It really plays like a thriller. There’s a lot intensity and suspense in it. I felt on the edge of my seat for much of it. There’s a mystery part. But it also reminded me of a lot of other lawyer movies, like The Firm or A Few Good Men. You know, it has those kinds of elements to it. Do you agree?
MJ: I do agree. As a viewer, you sit back and feel frustrated by what these people have to go through to try to get to the truth, or find what they’re looking for.
RYAN: This really concentrates on Auschwitz in Poland. You know, millions of people were murdered during the Holocaust. In Auschwitz… Hundreds of thousands were gassed, tortured. But this film deals not only with the heinous, factory-type murders that took place, but also with the sick Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele, who did human experimentation on children without anaesthesia, without… (cringes) This is the stuff nightmares are made of. I mean, he makes someone like Jeffrey Dahmer look like an amateur. You know? And it’s so disgusting, it’s so difficult and so real. It’s just, literally, horrifying. I can think of nothing else that is worse or more terrifying than that. Those few moments of the movie, were as difficult to watch as the entirety of Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1993).
MJ: As heinous as those deeds were, what was even worse were the millions of people who tried to cover this up; r had no compassion, no sense of doing anything wrong. They thought: ‘This is something that should be done.’
RYAN: Ew. And this is all a true story. The tip of the iceberg is that there’s this one former Nazi murderer who murdered women, children, other people who went on to become a grade school teacher in Germany. That discovery is where this film launches its narrative. From there it explodes as you realize how many people were involved. Something like sixty thousand? And then they have to find the eight thousand, alone, that worked at Auschwitz. So comprehensive. It’s overwhelming.
MJ: What was demonstrated in the search to find out who the Nazis were, is that no one would cooperate. These people had to do everything on their own. It took months, if not years, to come up with what they needed to prosecute these people.
RYAN: Leading actor Alexander Fehling… First of all, he’s really cute. He’s very good. I’d love to see more of him. He’s been on TV’s Homeland and was in other European movies and some American films. He’s kind of like a blond Armie Hammer or Henry Cavill. His character was an underdog. And it was great to see how he wouldn’t give up. He’s tortured, at the same time, by all of this. The score also helped intensify it. And it was really good. I mean, I definitely recommend it. It was dedicated to these people who didn’t give up and continued to fight and ultimately won the case, finding justice not only for some of the victims, but you know, getting some of these guys who committed these heinous acts against humanity.
MJ: I’d recommend it in particular because there were only two major trials that took place. The first were the Nuremberg trials, conducted by the United States and the Allied Nations that were harmed during the war. But the German conscience that finally took place… to uncover that this indeed was something that happened. And unless it was revealed for its horror, probably to this day no one in Germany would believe this happened.
RYAN: So this was the second one. Check it out!
