samkan MAX should be seen as a film about the many roads we face at turning points in our lives and the arbitrary, chaotic circumstances that influence what path we ultimately take. A corollary theme is the random selection -the unfairness- of birth, station in life, class, etc. In this respect the maker of MAX would be hard pressed to come up with a better setting that post WWI Germany! I disagree with those faulting historical inaccuracies. They appear to miss the point entirely. The only legitimate "fact" we must be concerned with is that Hitler indeed had a burning desire to be an artist (though I think his setting was Vienna, not Munich) and had he been successful and/or accepted as such there's a strong likelihood he'd never encountered politics (or at least on the scale he did). MAX' pure invention of Hitler's racist influences and his start to power merely indoctrinate and I didn't find them at all offensive. The invention of Cuzack's Max is a clever -and direct- counterpoint to Hitler's social circumstances. The "bonding" of Hitler and Max shreds, trashes, etc., the pseudo-logic of National Socialism in particular and racism and prejudice in general. Applause is warranted.Noah Taylor is nothing less than spectacular. John Cuzack is again a gem. The rest of the cast is reserved yet hardly a character or piece of dialog is throwaway. Just a tremendous achievement.

Petri Pelkonen In the year 1918 a man named Adolf Hitler wants to become an artist.Maybe a Jewish art dealer named Max Rothman would help him in achieving his dream.But soon Hitler finds out that politics is the new art.And what would work better for the crowds than the anti-Semitism? Max (2002) is the first movie Menno Meyjes both wrote and directed.John Cusack does brilliant job as Max Rothman, a character who didn't actually exist.Noah Taylor is terrific as Adolf Hitler, a role not everyone can do.Leelee Sobieski is marvelous as Liselore Von Peltz, Max' lover.Molly Parker does very fine job as Max' wife, Nina Rothman.Ulrich Thomsen is very good as Captain Mayr.Great job by David Horovitch and Janet Suzman, who play Max' parents.Max shows two frustrated men.Max Rothman is frustrated because he lost his right arm in the World War I, Hitler is frustrated his dream of becoming an artist just isn't going to happen.This movie shows another side of Hitler.We don't see the rampaging monster who wanted to put every Jew in the concentration camp and have them killed.This Hitler what we see here is a man who wanted to be an artist.I heard recently that some of his paintings were found in a farm in Austria.Those paintings are going on sale.Of course I would never have a Hitler on my wall, no matter how good of an artist he was.One might ask does this movie humanize Hitler too much.When you take off the monster's cloak, what does he become? A human? You can ask that from yourself.

Lars-Toralf Storstrand How can somebody honestly put out garbage like this, presenting it like truth.Surely Hitler made some paintings in his time, but these were of poor pictorial value, more artificial than art.Hitler was not a struggling artist - he was a painter/wallpaper-hanger. Any other notion is made as propaganda to whitewash one of the most evil men - ever.The movie tries to portray Hitler as a classic style artist, not interested in any form of non-figurative or speculative art. Why then, did he love the paintings of Franz von Stück so much?Franz von Stuck was an expressionist painter - and was beloved by Hitler. Check out the painting "Der wilde jagt" (The Wild Hunt/Chase) and see if you can figure out why...

johnnyboyz As far as the genre of 'Biopics' go, there have been critical hits in the form of Ed Wood and Walk the Line and then there have been even bigger hits in the form of Raging Bull. Whilst I liked all those films to a certain degree, I am always sceptical on whether or not someone's life story will actually make for good film material. Film's are supposed to suspend reality by transporting us into a fictional world with fictional people and various acts – it can be Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or it can be Pulp Fiction; it doesn't matter – truth is none of it's real and the odd obvious continuity error that pops up now and again only convinces us further.So, for someone to actually have their life put into a world of film must mean that they've gone through some pretty harsh lessons and come out on the other side for the best. It doesn't matter if you're Edward Wood, Jake La Motta, Johnny Cash or even Adolf Hitler – if your story isn't interesting or doesn't make for good film material then it isn't going to make a good or great film. You must remember that the film Max is called Max after Max Rothman (Cusak); not 'Adolf' after Adolf Hitler which is an easy thing to do seeing as the film revolves around Hitler, played by Noah Taylor whose previous film to this was Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – perhaps on it's own a biopic of a computer game character? What is fascinating in this film is the character study of Hitler; ruler of Germany from 1933 and reason so many people needlessly died during the second world war and the holocaust. What isn't as fascinating is the story of Max Rothman and the character of him: a 1910s German equivalent of perhaps a yuppie as he does his best to live the ultra-good life. Funny then, how the film is indeed called Max as the emphasis is supposedly supposed to be on him.In terms of authenticity of the era; watching Noah Taylor act Adolf Hitler rather well and the overall theme of the film, you can have few complaints. A minor quibble may be the accents early on regarding Hitler's soldier comrades as they flick between English and Scottish as Hitler remains German and the general feeling Max feels like a TV Movie but showing Hitler in a light such as this one is a very rare and thankful thing to achieve, especially given the fact director Menno Meyjes is Dutch and the fact Holland lost a lot of life as well as scenery due to Hitler and his ideas of a perfect Europe. If the film had been made by a German showing Hitler as a somewhat misunderstood being, you can probably predict the uproar that'd happen – it's worth saying here that I haven't seen 2004's Downfall yet.Max is a film that suggests Hitler didn't necessarily start out 'evil' but of course none of us do. Dictator's such as Hitler; Saddam Hussein; Joseph Stalin and Julius Cesar all have events and incidences in their lives that sway them into that realm of insanity through power and they took it out on their own people. Most of us will know Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War; something that is mentioned at the very beginning of the film when a statistic comes up: most of the Germans dead in WWI were Jewish; thus, they failed to "win the war for us". But this thinking is blurred and Max is a film that shows how Hitler came to this conclusion in a rather messy and inconsistent way. I'm not sure when Hitler discovered this statistic of Jews in WWI but when it comes to anti-Semitic remarks around his person and puppet shows mimicking the Jews and giving of a message that they are polluting Germany, Hitler is unimpressed and labels them all anti-Semitic fools. But here's the flaw: if Hitler like everyone else knew of the statistic given to us at the beginning of the film then why didn't he join in the mocking of the Jews? Consequently, perhaps these events like the puppet show and everything else never happened and this is a poor representation of Hitler in his youth if this is the case.A film that deals with a descent into madness can often be extremely effective: Taxi Driver, American Psycho and perhaps a further biopic: Raging Bull but Max deals with Hitler's descent in a heavy handed way. The film suggests that things like puppet shows; soldier banter and anti-Semitic lectures from captains got to Hitler and swayed him. I feel this is inaccurate since the real reason Hitler rose and became the enthusiastic dictator he was was due to the Treaty of Versailles: Germany's limitation of national defence which angered Hitler. The film also shows Hitler to be more worried about his lack of artistic skills and his need to dictate rather than focus on what really made Hitler angry: the Treaty; Germany's actual state in terms of defence and finance and Jews "loosing them the war". I don't want this to sound like I'm knocking the film too much or supporting Hitler in any way at all. The film is shot well and given great mise-en-scene; Hitler's dictator scenes are fascinating as are the pieces of art he comes up with nearer the end to do with the Nazi regime but by this point, I was not convinced Hitler as a character had been developed in the final third that well; nor were his reasons for becoming 'evil'. It's because of this that the film perhaps feels like it is leaving a little too much up to our own knowledge of Hitler and WWII to fill in the gaps.