Wakolda: Directed by Lucía Puenzo. With Alex Brendemühl, Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti, Elena Roger. The true story of an Argentine family who lived with Josef Mengele without knowing his true identity, and of a girl who fell in love with one of the biggest criminals of all time.
There is a scene in this film ^ which always sticks out in my memory. It’s when Mengele (we don’t know it’s specifically Mengele at this point; we just know him as this weird doctor in Argentina) meets up with his other Nazi crony, in secret.
They meet up in the wilderness. And the crony starts talking about how he had a dream that the Fuhrer was still alive … that he was still a living person and that the Reich was still a possibility.
I’ve always been fascinated by Hitler myself. John F Kennedy, when he visited Berlin after WWII ended, said he found Hitler’s legacy ‘the stuff dreams are made of’.
Adolph was a horrible cunt. I’m not saying that I admire him, in any way. I just find his persona tingly, almost as if he were a fictional character, as if the Nazis belonged in these fantastic novels, rather than being real.
And I think this movie ^ taps in with these notions. Mengele was one of those fictitious villains. This film is not 100% real, as to exact dialogue and so on - but this odd, disturbing story did actually happen as well. And I enjoyed watching it. (When I did see it, in the cinema, eight or even years ago or however long ago it was, I didn’t actually know that Mengele was a real person. I got that it was based on a Nazi escapee but I thought it was fiction.)
And the ending is just brutal and brilliant.
You may choose to disagree with what I’m saying, and/or find my opinions offensive. They aren’t meant to be. I just mean that from an artistic and historical perspective I find this film alluring and memorable.
The flick has no violence in it, is not gory, lends nothing to the horror genre per se … but it has those dark qualities which makes the viewer think about it for years afterwards. With me, at least.
