Mein Kampf

After being very keen about watching a dramatization of young Adolf Hitler, and what lead him to join politics in stead of art, the writing of his "Mein Kampf" and the rise of his evil soul, I must admit I was quite disappointed with this film in more than one way.

First of all it doesn't tell the story in a vary accurate way, it's also in a way more focused on other persons than Hitler himself. This makes the story confusing and difficult to follow. You simply doesn't get what it's all about. It's in a way illogical to me. What's the worst sin here, though, is that the film tells what should be an exciting story, too boring.

The film is well played, though the acting is quite theatrical, suited for the theater scene more than the big screen. No wonder, since this is based upon a play by George Tabori. in many ways, this hasen't been tranfered to a feature like it should have been. I can imagine it was strong in a theater.

But Hitler is well depicted, by Tom Schilling, as the strange bird he obviously was, with the insane racial ideas he obviously was indoctrinated with, and at least we get to know why he got involved with politics, and how his trademark mustache origin end. We see the poor conditions in Austria (or in fact much of Europe) a good hundred years ago. We a So see the racial hate towards the Jews, something which Hitler was inbred with. This is the best part of the movie. It seems to be very historically accurate in depiction of the living conditions.

We get to know young Hitler as an almost insane, ungrateful, untalented young brat, with disgusting attitude, insulting language, and still with a terrible strong intensity, which we all have seen in film clips. Hitler wasn't a great speaker, but his intensity still was able to make him "Der Fuhrer" for a German/Austrian population.

This could have been so strong and interesting, but has one up as quite disappointing. At least I had much bigger expectations after seeing great Austrian films by Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl.

Having watched this movie and being interested lately in the world wars, specially world war two, I don't believe this to be a true or accurate historical account. It is more like a dramatized summery or caricature of how Hitler shaped his way to power. We see him as a young (20 or so years)person who fails to make it to the academy of arts (which according to historical accounts is true). He is portrayed as having unshakable self confidence and talks of his future glory (as artist or architect) even after his failure. Persons like that do have influence on others. If you believe in yourself, people will believe in you. Do not watch this movie if you're looking for historical accuracy. On the other hand, I was quite impressed by the fine acting of the leading characters. Schilling gives a nice performance as young Hitler. This being the main reason for giving the movie rating a 6.

I own and have read the real Mein Kampf, written by Adolf Hitler during his short stay in prison, and also quite a lot of other literature about Hitler and his early years, which is important, since Hitler did not shy from lying in the book.

Now, the film about Hitler's early years in Vienna could have been so good if it didn't try to explain every little thing that would later happen - the idea to the swastika for example, or even the growth of his now characteristic moustache.

The film portrays Hitler as a young, from the beginning hateful man who is adopted by a jew (of course) and how he drops from being a failed painter to a leader of a small group of thugs, leading them against the jews.

This is ridiculous and has very little with the truth to do. The only thing the film gets right is: Hitler failed getting into the art academy. That's it. The rest is a some kind of desperate attempt to explain every little detail with the later NSDAP and antisemitic movement and of course Hitler himself, which is a pity really, since I looked forward to seeing a film about the early years without the bias towards Hitler - which of course is hard to shy away from if one is a normal, thinking person.

Technically it is brilliant, and the acting is good - what the film lacks is a more observing eye or script, which is the basics in ANY good film.

I would not recommend it, unless one has nothing else to watch and don't care about details as a history buff, because it is good enough to kill a couple of hours with. Despite the flaws.

I find most movies generally at least okay to watch. I forced myself to finish this movie. I found it very boring and monotonous. Other than to depict the young Hitler as a nasty character, I didn't see the point of this movie. I'm quite fine with subtitles but perhaps that didn't help in the case of a boring movie. It was much longer than it needed to be for starters. I'm guessing this is all fiction but I don't know for sure. On a positive note I did like the acting and the set. They were very believable. My favourite scene was the one where Hitler starts singing during the opera. You could see how embarrassed his date was. I hadn't realized that it was adapted from a play. Oh, well at least it only cost me $5.

I strongly advise that this movie is far from an historical review of the actual facts about A.Hitler. Im really disappointed that there is no warning at the beginning of the movie to let the viewers know that it contains a large part of fiction.

here are some real facts that may let viewers appreciate this movie for what it is and not for what it is not: Hitler was in Vienne for the first time at 16 year old for only 15 days, he was rejected from the painting academy but accepted in architecture on conditions to complete his prior studies and then a second one in construction. He didn't liked school in general and this would have taken years to complete, thats why he abandoned this kind of career.

He wrote the REAL Mein Kampf in detention at Landsberg-am-Lech prison in 1924. This book is actually prohibited in Germany and most European country, the only non-Germanic accurate translation is the french one and maybe the newest Arab version. (Mein Kampf is a best seller in a few Arab country).

The movie is good for the acting and staging, quite entertaining but nothing more, i strongly suggest ready the book even if can only read the shorter English version to people who like to know real fact about this dark time of history.