German can sound nice sometimes
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Video is blocked for viewing in Israel:)
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It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that’s right from the books. I remember the standoff at the foot of Orthanc beginning with a warning from Gandalf that he could do almost exactly that, and Saruman getting increasingly desperate as, one by one, it didn’t work on all of the people he’d screwed over.
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Interesting what he says about how Germany would have been doomed if Russia took Romania’s petroleum wells. The same is true of the U.S., had the Zero fighters bombed what they mistakenly thought to be water tanks surrounding Pearl Harbor.
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I kind of like the idea that Saruman didn’t need to depend on magical hypnosis to raise an evil army or overthrow kingdoms, he just needed to tell people (and/or orcs) what they wanted to hear in a persuasive enough tone. Truer to life that way.
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Interesting you liked it. I didn’t watch it, but the overwhelming majority of critics I remember were writing its short of terrible. (Regardless of the outlets political inclination, btw.)
The book sold quite well in Germany. But so did Thilo Sarrazin’s, at about he same time, if I am not mistaken.
Well, I’d rather have the Pythons or Walter Moers taking the piss than watching this film. =)
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I did like it… I thought it struck the right tone. Much of the man on the street interviews I think were real, so it was interesting to see him talking with Germans about the economy, immigration, and such.
Have you read the book? If so, how do you think it compares to the movie?
Maybe critics didn’t like it because they either thought it glorified hitler or didn’t take him seriously enough as a threat to democracy? I thought it did precisely that, though, showing how authoritarianism can easily make itself seem like common sense nationalism, and how it can easily be adopted again in periods of heightened tension.
It kind of reminded me Bamboozled by Spike Lee. I seem to remember the critics not like it much, either.
I’m not familiar with this author? German, I assume? What did they write?
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I thought his oratory-shouting voice (with his hands flailing about) WAS his normal speaking voice:
COULD YOU PLEASE PASS ME A SLICE OF THAT BAVARIAN CHOCOLATE CAKE??!!!
THANK YOU!!!
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[quote=“LutherBlisset, post:26, topic:100994”]
Well, I’d rather have the Pythons or Walter Moers taking the piss than watching this film. =)
[/quote]https://youtube.com/watch?v=grQf9OOphFs
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It’s hard for me to hear this as remarkable, because I had a couple of very good friends - both German, both anaesthesiologists - who worked at the same hospital as me.
F, he was the low talker from the south, with Dutch ancestry, but C, she could yell very sternly in German - which she did quite often when residents would be rather misogynistic towards her.
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I really liked that film. I actually felt like I learned something from Oliver Masucci’s portrayal of Hitler. We’ve all read that he was charismatic, and we’ve had that explained to us in academic terms, but Masucci actually shows you what that looks like—his aura of competent self-assurance, unwavering sense of his own destiny, and direct, seemingly honest manner. And that charisma, in turn, make his cold, calculating psychopathy all the more chilling.
I watched it in 2016 and the parallel between Hitler and Trump starting out as clowns, only to be taken seriously as their ideas were grated a wider platform, were damned uncanny. At the same time, I took some comfort in the differences between the two.
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It strikes me that part of what’s so creepy about this recording is that unlike other recordings or footage of the public Hitler, where you are placed in the position of a member of the public audience, here you imagine yourself in the same room with the guy.
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She makes me tingle when she speaks German. Sorry if I shared too much… 
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No, it’s not particularly deep or commanding, and it has no maniacal rhythms. The only thing that’s unnerving about this recording is that we’re told it’s Hitler speaking.
Everything else is just your (and other people’s) prejudices.
Yes, German is not usually pronounced in the same high-register singsong that American English is. It also has a higher proportion of unvoiced consonants than English has.
And that’s all.
Yes, Hitler was an evil person, but he died over 70 years ago, and the English-speaking world’s tradition to constantly insult the German language goes back longer than that, to a time when it was considered normal to find excuses why all other nations were culturally inferior.
By the time the average English speaker is first exposed to actual German, they’ve been told so many times that German is ugly that they won’t form their own opinion any more.
This is getting old.
I would be very surprised if you liked what he wrote.
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Are we sure that really is him?
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Yeah, there’s just no coming back from that conversation.
I just spent the last five minutes trying to come up with an appropriate answer to that. Each one was worse than the last.
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The show went on too long to keep JD as a sympathetic character.
All the stuff that’s fun and charming at 26 is just kind of creepy and sad at 34.
WE’RE GOING TO BUILD A WALL, AND WE’RE GOING TO GET GONDOR TO PAY FOR IT!
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a higher audio quality would probably show you your other side and so much more ok that’s the hype
Half my family is German; I don’t speak it, but I hear it everyday.
My prejudices, your insecurities, happy together at last!
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I quite liked it, and actually much prefered it over the novel. I like the whiplash between humor and horror (that scene with the dog), and the way the public reacts to Hitlers speeches - “he’s not afraid to say it like it is”, or “he’s not all that wrong”. And that last scene, where he talks about PEGIDA and the AfD - “I can work with that” - ouch. Too close to home.
The producers (and Vermes) said that they wanted the reader/audience to laugh AT him, until they realize they are laughing WITH him.
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