LABYRINTH OF LIES
Director: Giulio Ricciarelli
Cast: Alexander Fehling, Andre Szymanski, Johannes Krisch, Friederike Becht, Hansi Jochmann, Robert Hunger-Bunler, Gert Voss, Tim Williams
Rating: (M)
Four and a half stars (out of five)
German film Labyrinth of Lies (Rialto) deals with the time after the war when everyone who could get away with it has gone home, put that damning uniform to the back of the wardrobe and returned to prewar normality.
It is 1958 and young lawyer Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling) dreams of convicting murderers but as the newest member of the crown prosecution office in Frankfurt he is on traffic violations.
He sees his opportunity when Simon Kirsch (Johannes Krisch) recognises a former SS camp guard from Auschwitz, working as a schoolteacher.
He tries to get the man removed from his job but no-one will help him.
Radmann takes the case on and is perplexed that his efforts get no further than Kirsch's did.
He finds an unexpected ally in Attorney-general Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss) who sets him the task of locating other former SS members who were posted to Auschwitz.
When he begins, Auschwitz is just a name without context and the more he learns the more emotional it becomes for him.
He starts to fixate on Josef Mengele and then question just what the people around him did in the war.
The fictional story of Johann Radmann and his crisis of conscience is at its most powerful when it sticks to the historical facts, as the fictional aspects are often weirdly wrong.
- Christine Powley
