Look Who’s Back
Published in HautLife
Category: Europe News/ Opinion
The new mockumentary about Adolf Hitler, titled “Look Who’s Back”, reveals the shocking truth about the world we live in. The audience laughs hilariously, then remains silent during the real life scenes filmed just recently.
His name is Adolf Hitler. He is back in Berlin to occupy the world again, what else? This time with millions of readers, and big screen fans. Enough for the beginning. It usually starts with fans and followers.
A couple of years ago, the German writer, Timur Vermes, hit the world with his novel, “Look who’s back” (MacLehose Press, 2014; first published by Eichborn Verlag, 2012), the political satire about Adolf Hitler, with more sold copies than Paulo Coelho or Dan Brown. The movie with the same title has been just released in German theaters.
The story starts in Berlin. It is summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up, alive and well. But, everything has changed. Where is Eva Brown? Where are the Russians? What happened to his powerful Nazi party? There is no war? His own, ethnically deep cleansed (he personally worked so hard on that), German country is filled with Turkish immigrants and run by a woman. Scandalous! This intolerable lack of social order and leadership calls for an immediate action. His “Fatherland” needs him.
But, his actions are interpreted as hilariously funny, convincing, and original. People believe he is just an actor, extremely good actor, and the offers start pouring in. He gets his own TV show, he becomes a TV celebrity, and YouTube star. In short, this new Adolf Hitler gains huge popularity. Of course, the “Fuhrer” has some secret ambition. This poor “Fatherland” of his needs to be back on its track, instantaneously. The problem here is, people usually listen to TV personalities.
Exactly, people begin to listen. The author makes a serious point here – If Adolf Hitler returned – what would happen?
This new Hitler’s character is created to be so different, human, almost sympathetic, some critics say. People might start to like him. Was it the author’s idea?
“The Fuhrer is usually portrayed as a monster, clown, idiot”, Timur Vermes explains. “In this novel, Hitler’s character is depicted as a human figure.” The author wants Germans to think about this potential character, and take seriously possible consequences.
In the screen adaptation, the director, David Wnendt, takes a different approach. He sent the actor, Oliver Masucci, dressed up as Hitler, all over Germany. These “documentary scenes” filmed with real people are incorporated into the “Borat-style” movie.
The film “Look Who’s Back”, recently premiered in Germany, answers the author’s question. The audience laughs hilariously, the kind of “laugh that sticks in the throat”. But, the same audience remains silent during the real life scenes. Not silent, ‘shocked’ would be the appropriate word.
People on the streets didn’t hesitate to cheer the fake Hitler. They raised their right arms in the Nazi salute, took selfies with him, talked and joked with him. Some openly expressed their worries for the ethnic future. Now more than ever, the nation needs a new fatherly figure who will take the situation under control, some believe.
“Yes, bring back labor camps!” - One man said to the fake Fuhrer.
These people are not all Germans. The real life scenes were filmed during the soccer World Cup in 2014. Soccer fans and tourists from all over the world were there. For many, the fake Hitler was nothing else but a laughing matter. So was the real one, was it not? At least in the beginning. No one took seriously the clownish figure that emerged in Germany in the 1930s. It started with a bunch of losers and psychopaths. The epilogue we all know.
The both creators of this new fake Hitler, Vermes and Wnendt, question the nation’s ability to cope with extreme-right ideologies. The documentary shows exactly what the critics were afraid of – people like the character of this fake dictator. The Nazi salute to the “Fuhrer” becomes instantly part of the background scene. Not many realize what they cheer, although the pictures of the killings and concentration camps are deeply imprinted into mind of each and every one of us. We follow celebrities, unquestionably. If, or rather when, some newly emerged quasi-leader decides to take over a country, any country, it will not take long. The modern media will finish the job in no time. Exactly what the real Hitler did once. The guy was an expert in the field. His propaganda machine convinced the nation that the war was their only salvation.
The silence is here what sticks in the throat, not laugh. People in the “Proud Nazi Pose”. Nowadays people, just ignorant, or maybe hungry for nationalism and radicalism, ready to confess their worries to someone like Hitler, even the fake one. Nobody cares about the fact that Hitler salute is illegal in Germany, not to mention one’s conscience. They let filmmakers shoot all that, and show to the world. As for the rest of us, ignorance is as poisonous as hatred, the small detail we tend to forget.
The new question presents itself here – What kind of world do we live in?
The final scenes feature the news footage from Dresden demonstration when 9,000 PEGIDA supporters, (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident), gathered to exercise the right to keep their country ethnically clean. This number seems not so significant, compared to 80 million residents of Germany. But, as we already mentioned, the nationalism as a solution is not only German problem anymore. As a matter of fact, some other European nations share the opinion that Hitler’s idea was not so bad. The footage from the speeches by French Front National’s Marine Le Pen and the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders is also included.
This enormous burst of popularity of the book, and now movie, has caused, as always, a lot of controversy. People share their own real life stories, which I prefer not to believe. One social media user claims - He was on a Scandinavian bar-boat along with hundreds of people. After enough bottles of vodka, an anonymous from the crowd took a microphone, and started the famous Nazi song “Lili Marlene”. Hundreds of people sang along with him. The anonymous then raised his arm in the Nazi salute. Everyone did the same. Just a few hours earlier, they all looked like ordinary hard-working people ready to get drunk, nothing else. They were not Germans.
I prefer not to believe, but it makes me think how easy it would be for some new Hitler to take over the power. Unfortunately, there always are enough “Hitlers” ready to jump off the psychiatric couches and take their paranoid ideas out into the world. They exist everywhere, even in the smallest communities.
The movie “Look Who’s Back” gives an answer to the author’s original question. Yes, nationalism of many colors is spreading rapidly over the world. The old continent slammed by all kinds of crisis and threats, refugee crisis, financial crisis, terrorism, separationalism, makes a fertile soil for potential dictators with fake solutions.
“There is a smoldering anger among the people, like in the 1930s,” concludes the satisfied Hitler-character while ending the movie.
Photo by: Top image: Mario Sanchez Prada|License|
Sources: Deutche Welle | Deadline
