Movie nut




 

 

“Suspense is like a woman,” Alfred Hitchcock said. “The more left to the imagination, the more excitement.”

The woman here is writerdirector Lucia Puenzo, and she’s created a movie where the more we know, the more we imagine. And the more we imagine, the more we feel a rising sense of terror about what a certain doctor might do to a particular family.

“The German Doctor” is structured to drop hints about the doctor’s identity along the way, but the title makes it an open secret: He (Brendemühl) is Josef Mengele, the former Nazi physician, the “Angel of Death” of Auschwitz. He experimented on children, taking a special interest in pregnant women having twins.

A large number of high-ranking German SS officers escaped to South America following World War II. This is a fictionalized account of what could have happened to one of them.

We meet him on a desert road in Patagonia in 1960. He’s unfamiliar with the area. At a rest stop, he approaches a family going the same way, asks if he might follow along. He takes a special interest in Lilith (Bado)—the 12-year-old daughter who is teased as small for her age—and in her doll.

The father Enzo (Peretti) is wary, the mother, Eva (Oreiro) agrees: The stranger is German and so is she. The family is on their way to reopen a hotel they’ve inherited, and it’s not long before the man has invited himself to be their first guest. He pays in advance and begins to ingratiate himself with the family.

With his doctor bag always close at hand—he claims to be interested in genetics—he’s soon injecting Lilith with growth hormones and advising Eva on her pregnancy. The hormones may not have any side effects, he says; he’s delighted that Eva is having twins.

The doctor has also befriended Enzo, helping him create the perfect doll with blond hair and vacant eyes—and to underwrite the cost of replicating a whole “race” of them. But Enzo still wonders, “Who is he?”

The clues accumulate: a Nazi flag appears in an old photo; the doctor talks of “mixed blood being impure, robbing memory;” a newspaper article describes Israeli agents looking for Mengele. Lilith narrates over the elaborate sketches and extensive body measurements in his notebook.

Nora (Elena Roger), the local archivist and school photographer, believes she knows who he is. But he’s already asking questions about her.

Everything and everyone—the woods, the house next door, the professional men who surround the doctor—seem to hold secrets.

And he’s always . . . there . . . just a step out of the spotlight, impeccably dressed, confident, polite, observing, measuring, making notes. His presence creates a rising sense of unease. Something’s not quite right; we’re sure he’s planning some way to hurt this family.

The story takes its time. Realizations come slowly; the symbolism is insistent. The local choir has a distinctly Aryan look; the South American setting looks Alpine; the doll factory is lit and organized like a laboratory in a concentration camp.

There are flaws in this film. Scenes are too long; whole sequences are unnecessary. There’s too much smoking and dancing, although hearing “The Purple People Eater” in German is fun. There are anachronisms: Mengele drives a 1965 Chevy in a story set in 1960.

As the ending nears, the director seems as distracted as the doctor. Historical information is hurriedly stuffed in, a long monologue feels abruptly out of character, an on-screen explanation contradicts what has already happened. The whole movie feels more like an interlude from a life rather than a fully told story.

And yet, Puenzo is successful in creating a growing sense of creepiness from understated performances in situations that are so unsettling because they’re so ordinary. The Nazis were able to hide in plain sight for so long because they blended in.

They could not, however, deny their nature; they could never completely avoid being evil.

That’s what makes this doctor so frightening.


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