I have given this film two stars, despite the fact that the acting is superb and the film itself is beautifully done. There are minor glitches, such as a mass of red carnations on a grave in the middle of the war, and people drinking tea, but these do not take away from the strength of the individual performances and the accuracy of the portrayal in other respects.
My problem with the film is the fictional story itself. The film is based upon the true memoirs of a priest interned in Dachau, who was given leave. He was confronted with a choice of conscience and returned to Dachau. That, in itself, is a pretty amazing story. Perhaps the realities of Dachau, being, as I have read in 'Christ in Dachau' basically, the priests being worked until they died, were thought by the director/scriptwriter of this film to not amount to a dramatic film. In any event, the true account was deemed Insufficient, and was changed to a fictional adaptation. It is this adaptation with which I have a problem;
First, the conflict and drama of the dialogue arises from the juxtaposition of a young nazi officer with whom some theological ideas are posed, namely, the role of Judas in salvation. The nazi officer is portrayed as having reconciled his stance within a Christian context by casting Judas as having a positive role in salvific history. His purported piety is such that he is shown inside the church, genuflecting and making the sign of the cross. The implication is that he has been privately and piously praying , an implication that imports a measure of assumed contemplation. The fact that an adherent of an evil philosophy such as Nazism could accomodate a purported veneration within a Catholic religious tradition, I found, almost blasphemous. This is a case where, in accordance with Catholic doctrine, the nazi would not be able to receive communion without confession, and to do so would have been a blasphemy, yet he is shown as being traditionally religious, with no conflict between the two, diametrically opposed, and mutually exclusive, belief systems. While there may have existed devoutly Catholic nazis, the more likely scenario would have been an anti-Catholic, both by the numerical balance in Germany and by the obvious conflict between the two. The film, of course, attempts to resolve this conflict by the identification of the nazi with Judas - a nice idea, but another that is inherently unbelievable. If the nazi was honest enough with himself so as to recognise himself as betraying his Christian beliefs, then he is hardly going to cast himself as Judas. This is more like a dramatic trick or device than one that speaks of truth. In fact, the juxtaposition of good and evil in the dialogue I found artificial and rather old fashioned.
If this had been the only flaw, i would not have been so harsh. However, my major complaint with the script is the insertion of what could only be a modern issue - that of the alleged 'silence' of Pope Pius XII. I say that it could only be a modern issue, because, prior to the production of the play, 'The Deputy', in 1962, by Rudolph Hocht, an ex Nazi and member of the KGB, there was no allegation of 'silence' on the part of Pius XII. 'The Deputy' had been commissioned by the KGB who saw the Catholic Church as their major threat and wished to denigrate the role of Pius XII as a means of undermining its authority. As it was, unfortunately for them, initially performed within the recent memory of people who had been alive in the war and experienced it first-hand, the play met riotous opposition and died a well-deserved death, until resurrected by self-appointed Catholic, John Cornwell, in 'Hitler's Pope'. There are numerous books that will demonstrate the defamatory nature of this allegation against Pius XII and which show the irony that the one person who did the most for the Jews is the person pilloried; books such as Rabbi Dalin's defence of Pius, Pinchas Lapide's defence and the documents released by the Vatican, discussed by Thomas. The fact is, Pius was seen by the world as the one person who did speak out - hence the fact that the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra gave a personal performance for Pius XII in the Vatican immediately following the war to say thank you for his actions to save the Jews.
In fact, the priests were interned in Dachau precisely because Pius was speaking out. There is no way that a discussion would have occurred between priests during the war, regarding his alleged 'silence'. It was not a case of 'he kept silent for this or that reason' - He was not silent.The true situation was stated in the memoirs of Abbe Bernard - the very memoirs that are the purported subject of this film, as follows:
'The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked. Whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors amongst the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: 'Again your big naive Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off. Why don't they get the idea once and for all and shut up? They play the heroes and we have to pay the bill.'"
This entry reveals the true reality, first, that there was no doubt on the part of the protagonist about the position of the Pope and the Church vis-a-vis the nazis. Second, that there was, at the time, no doubt by the world because the Pope did not keep quiet. This entry is in the book itself which is the subject of the film, and it is this, in my view, unnecessary, distortion of the true state of affairs for the purpose of dramatic conflict, that I find irritating because of a sloppiness in exploring real, perhaps more dramatic, truths. I find it more than merely irritating though, as I am aware of the distortion of the truth and how this distortion becomes part of the dialogue, and the collective memory of an event in history. It is for this reason that I believe the director had a duty to go the extra step and make a dramatic film of the actual events as they really happened.
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