But this tantalizing ambiguity is one of a few welcome elements that add complexity to an otherwise straightforward, even old-fashioned melodrama. It’s never entirely clear how large a role ego plays in clouding his judgment. “Labyrinth of Lies” is a story of ambition as well as idealism, and the young prosecutor becomes so intent on punishing war criminals that, for a dangerously long stretch, he neglects the pursuit of lesser monsters while setting his sights on the elusive Dr. Radmann inevitably is radicalized - though not always for the good of his cause.
When Radmann’s matronly secretary leaves the interview room with a stunned expression on her face, the filmmakers make their point with an impact undiminished by their respectful subtlety.
But the audience sees only the faces of the pained but resolute witnesses, and hears not their words but elegiac music. During their film’s most powerful sequence, several Auschwitz survivors file through Radmann’s office, each telling of atrocities they endured or viewed. To their credit, however, Ricciarelli and Bartel do not exploit the real-life horrors by turning them into character-building object lessons. On one level, it is a coming-of-age story, with Radmann becoming indelibly marked by the education he receives from the testimony of eyewitnesses. This is the phenomenon at the heart of “Labyrinth of Lies,” a prosaic but fascinating account of how a dense fog of nationwide amnesia was dissipated by the relentless pursuit of justice. And their elders - not just Nazis, but Germans who preferred to forget - were not of a mind to educate them.
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This, however, does not prove to be an insurmountable restriction.Īfter so many decades of exposure to books, novels, films and TV miniseries that have graphically catalogued the horrors of the Holocaust, contemporary audiences may find it difficult if not impossible to believe that, well into the 1950s, most Germans of Radmann’s generation knew nothing of what transpired at Auschwitz. The only catch: Given the statutes of limitation for lesser crimes, he can prosecute only those who can be charged with murder. As a result, Radmann gets the opportunity to build cases against the war criminals of Auschwitz. Fritz Bauer (the late Gert Voss, to whom this film is dedicated) is impressed by his young associate’s industriousness. Much like the indefatigable truth teller of “The Nasty Girl,” Michael Verhoeven’s fact-inspired 1990 drama about a schoolgirl curious about her town’s Nazi past, Radmann finds his investigation is viewed as an annoying self-indulgence, or worse, by many around him. His diligence, it should be noted, is not universally applauded.
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Army Document Center, he finds evidence that thousands of former Nazis simply returned to their everyday lives following the war, and were left free to do so by a German citizenry eager to return to normalcy during the postwar era of the economic miracle. And none of them has anything to worry about.” Sure enough, as Radmann delves through the mountains of files stored at the U.S.
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It takes only a few more inquiries for Radmann to realize that this is not an isolated case, and that, as a more informed associate explains, “The public sector is full of Nazis. Radmann is initially bewildered by this institutionalized disinterest, especially after he discovers, after only the most cursory of investigations, that the teacher had been a member of the Waffen SS in Auschwitz. Trouble is, no police official wants to accept a complaint against the schoolteacher, and no one at the prosecutor’s office wants to file a charge. His curiosity is piqued - and, yes, his ambition is stoked - during a brief encounter with Thomas Gneilka (Andre Szymanski), a gadfly journalist seeking justice for his artist friend Simon Kirsch (Johannes Krisch), an Auschwitz survivor who recently spotted one of his wartime tormentors teaching at a local school. When he is introduced in 1958 Frankfurt, Radmann is a new hire at the public prosecutor’s office, and already impatient for tasks more meaningful than working in traffic court. Alexander Fehling (“Inglourious Basterds”) evinces an effective mix of naivete, idealism and implacable dedication - along with flashes of self-righteousness, and bottled-up rage that occasionally is uncorked – in the lead role of Johann Radmann, a composite of three real-life prosecutors who participated in the 1963-65 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.