MY NEIGHBOR ADOLF
(directed by Leon Prudovsky, 2022)
**** (out of 5)
.
> As unlikely as it sounds, this film about the trauma of the Holocaust delivers a message of empathy, forgiveness and an acknowledgement that, as 80’s band R.E.M. so eloquently noted: everybody hurts.
. Polsky is an understandably scarred victim of the Nazi hate machine, living as a bitter, paranoid recluse in rural Brazil, after surviving the war when the rest of his family did not. He lives in solitude out in the countryside with no one around for miles- exactly the way he wants it. But when a mysterious new neighbor suddenly moves into the vacant house next door, Polsky just cannot shake the notion that this secretive man with the bushy beard, eyes usually shielded behind sunglasses, might just be Adolf Hitler himself! A ridiculous notion, local authorities are convinced. Obviously! Hitler killed himself in that bunker at the end of the war…
. Or did he?
. “That’s the Russian version!”, Polsky insists. Rebuffed, this suspicious curmudgeon takes it upon himself to research history’s greatest monster, and begin spying on his enigmatic neighbor, to see if the infamous dictator’s known traits match his suspect’s. Is his mysterious new neighbor left-handed? Does he keep German Shepherds? Does he paint? Does he play chess? Is he a vegetarian with an explosive temper? In this tonally-inconsistent drama’s broadest comic moment, Polsky checks to see if the man has one testicle, the way the Nazis checked their prisoner’s genitals to see who was circumcised. But it’s not that lonely ball that torments him, it’s those eyes, once the sunglasses come off! He knows he has seen those eyes before, the one time when he came face to face with the terrible maniac himself. Hitler’s eyes! Against his better judgement, in the course of his investigations Polsky gradually grows friendly with the man who may be Hitler, becoming his chess partner and even posing for a portrait.
. Sure, it’s inconsistent- swinging wildly from testicular comedy to the tragedy of indelible trauma, and I did see the big reveal coming a bit early- but MY NEIGHBOR ADOLF is just such an entertaining outing, that I heartily endorse it. Considering the fraught violence of the moment in the Middle East (most moments in the Middle East!), it is a hopeful sign that this is an Israeli film about developing a once unthinkable empathy, learning to begin letting go of that internalized trauma of history, and perhaps, beginning to see our imagined enemy as fellow victims, in their way.
– And best of all: the great Udo Kier is a total kick as The Man Who Might Be Hitler.
*
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