Watch Moloch For Free

You won't be disappointed!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Aleksandr Sokurov creates a movie that felt Gothic and mysterious with such infamous characters to include Hitler, Eva Braun, Goebbels, Magda, and Martin Bormann. Sokurov packs major historical themes in a short 108 minutes. To me, how Hitler and friends treated/regarded Eva Braun in the "big picture" is revealed in this film. Braun was like a pet to be greeted and then ignored. Moloch is amazingly well done, and left me pondering way after the credits rolled. AH--a most salient note: the DVD includes a Sokurov interview. This man definitely focuses on creating art versus the big bucks. Both he and this film are too cool to miss. Also, the film is shot in part at Hitler's mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps, which adds to its mystique. Weirdness reigns up in the mountains, as I imagine it did in 1942.

Sokurov I think was despondent at humanity's attempts at progress in the twentieth century. Molokh takes place in a surreal dream of the Berghof, and features Hitler, Eva Braun, and his coterie or should I say grotesquerie of sycophants. Progress is what Sokurov has been concerned by, so no need to pay too much attention to whether the film is accurate or not, it's probably beside the point.Sokurov had made rather a similar film a decade before, Skorbnoye beschuvstviye (Mournful Unconcern), his adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. It again is about a group of pathetic individuals who inhabit a mist-bound palace whilst the world crumbles around them. The black swamp and masked man of the prior film here is replaced by black soup and black puppies. I think that perhaps both films show the huge might of German ingenuity being harnessed by cretins. The inhabitants of the house in Mournful Unconcern represented the English upper class, who rowed their boats merrily down the stream instead of participating in the reform of an outdated Europe, gearing for war. Inaction is again the point in Molokh, how did a great nation allow itself to be ruled by a bore, a man who failed to recognise the rights of others, failed to understand the feelings of others, a fantasist, a sadist, and a self-lover? The movie portrays them as nothing less than big kids, Bormann hasn't even learnt how to sit on a chair. Braun and Hitler chase one another around a table and hold doors closed on one another, all of which is very reminiscent of my life circa aged twelve. I ended up feeling rather sorry for them in their airy castle, blown by draughts and tortured by psychological complexes. I was also wondering why on earth people feel such a need to be controlled. Sokurov seemed to have got even darker here than with Mournful Unconcern, providing hardly any contrast against what is progressive.

I thought the theme of this movie was quite interesting. Still in the end, the result could have been better. What I enjoyed the most in the end was the scenery created around Hitler's "last resort". It really gave the impression of a new Olympus, with human gods around the german Zeus, "die führer"(at least as they saw themselves...). Still, what I found bad in the end was not the soviet approach, as I read in previous comments nor the vision of Hitler as a stupid good fellow(that has to do with the director's origins in the first case and with his vision of history and of the past in the second; if none of these elements were present in the movie than it would be the same as if it had been directed by Bertolucci or Coppolla!...; this gives identity to the creator and to his piece...). What was the true failure in this film, the way I see it, was that besides the director's new characterization of hitler and his hidding place, there were no "juicy" dialogues, no real reflexion about any theme, ideologically speaking or even supported in happenings that might have been occurring in that time. In the end I didn't feel the pulse of the characters, it's like if they were dead, with no capacity to rule the world as the gods they pretended to be... Still I had the sublime impression that they were like resting as if they were not responsable for what was going on in the world, in a lunatic attitude that I believe was close to the reality... 7/10

The theme is interesting. But the "Russianness" of the production, from the actors' physiques to the very "Soviet" idealization of Berchtesgaden is enough to make you laugh. Granted, Aleksandr Sokhurov did have the main characters mouth the German dialogue allowing for proper German dubbing, but even the Berlin theater group's voices are inappropriate for the non-Berliners depicted (Adolf and Eva). Anyway, this is just a small bone to pick. The production, and slow, slow pace screamed out SOVIET louder than any of Sokhurov's previous films. This is obviously due to the its very un-Russian, un-Soviet theme. It's a ridiculously pretentious piece of filmmaking that will taint the director's body of work forever. If I hadn't been forced to sit through it (with colleagues and far from the aisle) at a film festival, I would have never sat through it. As a public service to film festival goers, please use your precious hours more wisely. Skip this boring time warp.