Invincible

Now I can see that I still know very little about movies about the stories of the WWI. But that allowed me to be all the more surprised by this movie. I’m familiar with Werner Herzog as a director and this entire time, I’ve been under the impression that he surrounds himself with some very interesting characters. Here, it’s the occultist Hannusen and his right hand Zishe who’s from some place in Poland. The actor is a Finn and I must say that his acting is worse than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in some of his first movies. Luckily, his body does all the talking and so everything’s left to the two charismatic actors – Tim Roth and Udo Kier who are obviously enjoying this inter-war story as much as I was; perhaps a bit too much. But maybe I’d cut off some of the length, because by the end, I found myself counting down the minutes. (13.07.2014)

Werner Herzog was inspired by the life stories of Zishe Breitbart and Erik Jan Hanussen. Although Breitbart died in 1925, Herzog's fiction takes place shortly before Hitler came to power, even operating with specific dates in 1932. The message is clear: Herzog had a desire to tell the legend of a modern Samson. The result is something like a clumsy Golem in Hanussen's spiritualistic show. Hanussen plays only a secondary role here, yet similar motifs are highlighted as in other Hanussen dramas (his origin, intrigues with Nazi leaders, strange relationship with women). So in the end, the only thing that can truly please the audience is the presence of Max Raabe. (29.08.2023)