Max

Maybe it’s just that there’s more footage of the Reich than either Mao or Stalin’s totalitarian ‘socialist’ utopias. Or maybe it’s that will-to-power rush of blood to the head, or even the big kinky black jackboots. Whatever it is, you don’t need Sylvia Plath to tell you that Nazis sell, and there’s more to it than ‘Never Forget’. Turn on any one of 527 documentary channels – and it’s them or sharks.

Then again, it’s not surprising that we’re bombarded with so many images of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Hitler was a visionary when it came to the importance of aesthetics in politics – an inspiration for the likes of Blair and Clinton. After all, as displays of power go, few things can top choreographed goose-stepping. Max’s imagining of Adolf’s youth takes this intersection between art and politics as its starting point. Set in 1918 Berlin, John Cusack is Max Rothman, a one-armed Jewish art-dealer and Charles Saatchi precursor. He owns and promotes an ‘out-there’ gallery for up-and-coming artists. One such progeny is edgy loner Adolf Hitler. But as the young Hitler’s ideas become increasingly left-field (or should that be right?), Max becomes perturbed.

Ian Kershaw pointed out in his splendidly voluminous Hitler biography that, “To call Hitler evil may well be both true and morally satisfying. But it explains nothing.”. While Max suggests that Hitler would have been better off channeling his libidinal energies onto the canvas and away from the political arena, it explains nothing either. Meyjes’ film neither represents the historical period faithfully, nor engages with the contemporary turbulence and anti-semitism.

But to dwell on the fact that, as an historical document, Max falls on its arse more than Norman Wisdom is to miss the point. This is a rather wonderful piece of artistic licence – a detailed study of frustration bolstered by superb performances.

Cusack successfully veers away from his world conquering laddish likeability in the complex title role, while Taylor is fantastic, all embittered twitchiness, a maelstrom in a jam-jar.

Max may not answer any questions then, but it’s brimming with ideas nonetheless.