Labyrinth of Lies

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: September 30, 2015

6.7	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Ratings

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ClariseSamuelsJun 29, 2016

As an undergraduate German major who would eventually get a PhD in German literature, I went to Germany to study in the summer of 1974, barely thirty years after the Holocaust. Being Jewish, I felt the weight of Germany's recent historyAs an undergraduate German major who would eventually get a PhD in German literature, I went to Germany to study in the summer of 1974, barely thirty years after the Holocaust. Being Jewish, I felt the weight of Germany's recent history bearing down on me oppressively. As I walked around the streets of Munich and made a special trip to visit the Dachau concentration camp, I grappled with the fact of the atrocities. Were all Germans sick and sadistic? The answer was no, but the phenomenon of the Holocaust is such that the national hysteria that overtook a previously civilized country will have to be psychoanalyzed for at least a hundred years to come. True, Hitler implemented a police state with spies everywhere. Schoolchildren were brainwashed to turn in their own parents. If a citizen was suspected of being oppositional, SS trucks rolled into the village, rounded up the accused and shot them in the town square. It was a dire warning for any individual who wanted to protest the Hitler regime. But what about mass protests of a kind that overwhelmed and could not be suppressed? There was no such thing in Germany at that time.

Labyrinth of Lies (Im Labyrinth des Schweigens) addresses the West German state of the early 1960's, where a younger generation had grown up ignorant of the Holocaust and never even having heard of Auschwitz. This in spite of the fact that West Germany was paying monthly reparations to Holocaust victims (on par with Social Security checks), while East Germany blamed capitalist society for the Holocaust and denied all responsibility. Josef Mengele, the psychosadistic doctor who tortured and murdered children with revolting experiments, was still on the loose and would remain so for the rest of his life. Adolf Eichmann, who oversaw the mass deportation and systematic murder of Jewish multitudes, was being hunted down in Argentina by the Israelis, who would eventually abduct him, try him in Jerusalem, and hang him for war crimes. A young German prosecutor in Berlin, Johann Radmann, played by German actor Alexander Fehling, becomes aware that his generation did not know of the crimes perpetrated by their parents nor were they aware that Nazi criminals still walked among them. Radmann, who is a composite of several prosecutors in the real-life story, sought to rectify the injustices that were still under his control.

The film documents the attorneys' gathering of hard evidence and eye-witness accounts which were all faithfully recorded. It was a turning point for the Germans when the prosecutors went to court to try Nazi criminals who were still living their post-war lives in Germany as “normal” citizens, some of them holding important government positions. For the first time, the Germans were washing their own dirty laundry, even though from 1963 to 1965 only seventeen Nazi criminals from Auschwitz were tried for war crimes by their German peers. The film depicts Radmann collaborating with Mossad, Israel's CIA, in the failed search for Mengele, who was living in South America, but who continued to visit relatives every year in Germany.

The age of German denial is over. Today every German schoolchild spends two years studying the history of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime, including the Holocaust. The Kollektivschuld (collective guilt) that hovered over the Germans was extended to the adult children and grandchildren of the Holocaust criminals, and now seems to be fading out with the great-grandchildren. German students abroad complain that they are still asked difficult questions by foreigners. The psychological phenomenon of the gruesome and insane hold of a swarthy, ugly little sadistic murderer named Adolf Hitler, whose psychotic mental problems remained undiagnosed throughout his life, as well as the psychotic criminality of approximately 800,000 SS officers and soldiers who worked for him, is one that will be studied for years to come. This film, which has been masterfully constructed, gives us new insight into the German psyche, seen at both its worst in the persona of ex-Nazis who suffered no remorse, and its finest in the form of Radmann, who grapples with horror, disgust, and nightmares over the grim legacy that he has inherited from a generation of Germans who went mad.… Expand

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JuanSebastianDec 21, 2015

This movie brings history to people that are no into it, it's such a great production, the screenplay works very well and the direction is also a great one. There's something into its direction that magnifies the plot and the film intention.This movie brings history to people that are no into it, it's such a great production, the screenplay works very well and the direction is also a great one. There's something into its direction that magnifies the plot and the film intention. Drama and joy is what I experienced watching Labyrinth of Lies. I hope every German feels really proud of what happened in this film. While watching the movie I started to thinking about my country issues, it opened my mind about politics and social problems. I can't keep thinking about its cinematography and screenplay.… Expand

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RalfbergsNov 6, 2016

A really good movie which shows the history part which is rarely talked about - the aftermath of World War 2 in Germany. And it shows how people tried to deny the war crimes and tried to forget it, even though they should be put on trial forA really good movie which shows the history part which is rarely talked about - the aftermath of World War 2 in Germany. And it shows how people tried to deny the war crimes and tried to forget it, even though they should be put on trial for what they did. Really enjoyed the movie, only thing I missed is I think it should have included the trial scenes too and showed the idea that, even though you are made to do such horrible things, you can fight against it, or at least try.… Expand

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