Monday April 20th Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003)
After mentioning it in a chat on Sunday, I stayed up until 4am rewatching this Canadian miniseries charting the rise of Adolf Hitler. Robert Carlyle plays the Nazi dictator, which was the source of much laughter in the chat. Admittedly, learning that the kid from Love Actually plays Hitler as a child in the first minute threw me off by giving the impression that this would be dreck. It’s kind of hard not to laugh at Hitler in his early years because he’s such a fucking twerp.
The idea of Begbie from Trainspotting playing history’s most evil man seemed like an unintentionally amusing novelty at first but the one-note performance gradually weaves its dark magic.
The production values are low, but the script and performances elevate it. Watching Hitler: The Rise of Evil in one go makes you feel like you’re trapped in a room with this hateful bigot and forced to listen to him. It gets to be incredibly wearing, but maybe that’s the point. By the end I felt a mixture of exhaustion and quiet terror.
It’s all too easy to laugh at Carlyle’s performance at the beginning when Hitler is just a cartoonish rabble-rouser. Then, to realise that “oh wait this guy is absolutely going to win” is kind of slap in the face to the viewer’s liberal complacency. What’s remarkable is that it doesn’t depend on Carlyle’s performance since it doesn’t change throughout the series. Instead, it’s the narrative and the world which change around him. The warm brown colour palette that defines Weimar-era beer halls give way to the chilling greys of government buildings in Berlin.
Sitting awake in the early hours after finishing Hitler: The Rise of Evil, I wracked my brains trying to pinpoint the moment when Germany had passed the point of no return. The conclusion I took away from the series is that such an endeavour is fruitless and a bullet should have been put into Hitler’s head back in one of those Munich beer halls.
Tuesday April 21st Shiri (1999)
This was hugely popular in South Korea on its release. Shiri was actually more successful than Titanic, and so is therefore seen as a huge boon for the Korean film industry in establishing itself as a prominent national cinema. Less than a decade before Shiri was released, Hollywood was seen as a massive threat by the local film community with branch offices from major studios such as 20th Century Fox and Disney opening from the late 80s into the early 90s.
In order to compete with foreign competition Shiri channels Hollywood and Hong Kong action films, but the story is ultimately Korean, concerning North Korean sleeper agents in Seoul. There’s a nationalist sentiment underpinning the whole film. The South Korean flag is clearly visible on the uniforms of heroic SWAT teams.
Choi Min-Sik plays the North Korean commander, and is meant to be the big bad. The film makes him somewhat sympathetic by making it clear that he is driven by bitterness at the reality of his countrymen’s suffering while those in the South live in decadence. However, it should be noted that this nakedly commercial film (partly funded by Samsung) is the product of capitalism and so this character detail is not so much an avenue of ideological interrogation but rather a way to add texture to the narrative.
Han Seok-kyu stars as special agent Ryu with Song Kong-ho as his partner Lee. They’re predictably brilliant and absolute bros with a churning humanity which makes you truly care about them amid all the cool action scenes. There’s a scene where Ryu goes for a night on the town with his fiancé Hyun with Lee as a third wheel.
Similar to another Han vehicle called Tell Me Something (released in the same year), Shiri plays with normative portrayals of gender in a way that make it more interesting than your typical macho power fantasy. Throughout there’s a narrative arc about a badass North Korean assassin called Hee. The way it plays out with her and ties into the other threads is so so satisfying.
Shot-for-shot the action scenes did become a bit incomprehensible to me as the camera cuts and swirls between close-ups, particularly during a chase scene between Choi and Han. This doesn’t matter too much to me though because the strong characterisation kept me hooked.
If you haven’t seen it before and you like plot-driven action films then you should definitely check out Shiri.
It also has this moment.
I too saw hitler m/s recently.thought Carlyle was great,particularly the scene where he had the chance to soften his views to get money but he would not do it.even though he was wearing ridiculously short pants.also did not know he designed the new flag of his party.don’t want to even name check it