Review of The Goebbels Experiment (2005) by Raymond S — 16 Feb 2007

Someone on IMDB complains that this film does not give us perspective, that we cannot from this see [i]why[/i] Goebbels thought as he thought, why Nazism was so popular, why events unfolded as they did.

However, the point of this doucmentary--narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who does seem to spend a lot of his career stewed in the horrors of the Nazis, when it's not Shakespearean--is not to give us any kind of grand overview. Instead, we hear one voice, that of Goebbels himself.

True, there are a few clips where we hear other voices, even that of Hitler himself, but by and large, we are listening to Goebbels in monologue. Branagh reads from his meticulously-kept diaries, leading us through animosity and petty rivalry, through self-aggrandizement and self-doubt. We hear Goebbels first whine that he doesn't want to be Minister of Propaganda and then declare that only he truly understands the subject.

In a sense, we do start to understand why. We learn that this is a man with a remarkable capacity for self-delusion and a remarkable determination to delude others. Is it really so difficult to see this one man as a symbol for an entire system?

Branagh gives us an understated reading, delivering these words without passion. Whether it's Goebbels's despair at his single state or his delight at his wedding, Branagh reads them in the same voice. In a sense, his delivery serves to highlight the emotional complexity of the material with which he's working. Disdain for Churchill, Himmler, and the Jews are all inflected the same, often to chilling effect.

Underplaying all of this are clips from the era--a snippet of [i]Triumph of the Will[/i], shots of newsreel footage both German and British, clips of various other German films of the era and their "making of" footage. We see what can only be a Nazi-produced documentary about Goebbels as Branagh reads us Goebbels's own account of the places of his childhood. Each film segment seems perfectly selected, giving the whole a strong unity.

I will admit, however, that listening to what they [i]did[/i] choose to read us makes me wonder all the more about what they left out. I could also do without the footage that opens and closes the film, that of Goebbels's charred corpse. Bleah!