Posted: 11/02/2002

Invincible

(2002)

by Joe Steiff

A new Herzog film, worth looking at for Tim Roth’s incredible performance, if nothing else.

After many years in documentary, Werner Herzog returns to narrative filmmaking with a modest film based on a true story. Real-life bodybuilder and strongman Jouko Ahola plays Zishe Breitbart, the incredibly strong son of a Polish Blacksmith, who is encouraged by a roving talent agent to go to pre-World War II Berlin. Though Breitbart’s father does not want him to go, he ultimately decides that perhaps this is a calling — that God has given him this great strength, more than any blacksmith could ever need, to do something important. At first, he interprets this mission as to entertain people, making money to send home to his family, to make their lives better.

Once he arrives in Berlin, he is set sent to Hanussen (Tim Roth), a man of purported psychic powers who runs a nightclub frequented by Nazis. The fact that Breitbart is a Jew is disguised by covering his head with a blond wig, in effect presenting him to the audiences as the Aryan ideal. Eventually, Breitbart begins to question his place in the world, and he realizes that perhaps he has a chance to change the world in some small way by being true to himself.

His coming out on stage as Jewish outrages the Nazis but provides the nightclub with a new audience — Jews — though the two groups create an uneasy mixture of patrons that eventually explodes into violence.

Without quite realizing it, Breitbart brings about the ruin of Hanussen who had hoped to be the head of a Nazi Ministry of the Occult. And as he sees the true power and intention of the Nazi party, Breitbart returns to his home village sure now that the important thing God wants him to do is to warn his friends and family of the danger coming their way.

Breitbart’s story is a tragic one, though it would be more tragic if he lost his innocence, which does not seem to happen. Perhaps because he is a bit slow. But he is a good man who tries to do the right thing, and for a brief moment, provides a hero to the Jews of Berlin and a warning to his Polish town. Unfortunately, neither is enough to change the course of events.

Like many of Herzog’s films, this moves slowly by Hollywood standards. And it’s not perfect. But it is worth seeing, partly for the history lesson, partly for further evidence of the world’s ironies (a favorite of Herzog) and partly for the barely brushed in themes of knowing one’s place in the world and whether doing the right thing is ever futile.

Tim Roth is amazing — probably the best I’ve ever seen him. He is electric on the screen, stealing the show as Hanussen. But rather than an insult to the film, this is a statement of the film’s consistency. One has to assume that a man like Hanussen would steal the air from any room he entered — he is a driven and charismatic person believed to have a pipeline to the unseen world, commanding the respect of his audiences and manipulating them by sheer will. The power of his performance (Hanussen’s, not Roth’s) is ultimately brought to light in his undoing, and Roth makes it believable that Hanussen could accomplish the very things he sets out to do.

Jouko Ahola has a tall challenge, not just to hold his own against Tim Roth, but to create a character whose humanity is evident and his dawning awareness believable. Ahola shows Schwarzenegger how it’s done. Though only seeing Ahola in another film will indicate whether or not he has any real acting talent, Ahola does have an ease and naturalness on screen that Schwarzenegger has always lacked. It’s no coincidence that Schwarzenegger’s most effective roles have been as a machine. But Ahola brings to life a gentle man who seems too big for the life he’s been handed, and too small to change the world.

Joe Steiff loves Hollywood. He really does. He really really does. Don’t hold this review against him if you’re ever in a position to give him work. Please. I love you all.

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