'Amen' idealists run up against Vatican stonewall

By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times

•	'Amen' Not rated; complex adult themes 140 minutes

In this instance, Costa-Gavras is covering familiar territory yet nonetheless is able to evoke the timeless horror of widespread complacency and indifference to human suffering of genocidal proportions.

In drawing upon Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play "The Deputy" as his starting point, Costa-Gavras and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Grumberg, focus on two men, one based on an actual person, the other a fictional composite. The men desperately try to spread the word of the horrors in German concentration camps, in particular the extermination camps in Poland. They strive to get through to Pope Pius XII, whom they believe will speak out against the Nazi atrocities once they are able to secure an audience with him and lay out their evidence.

Hochhuth's play, which was called "The Representative" in England and "The Vicar" in France, created an international furor that has never really died down, with Pius XII emerging as a pope reluctant to speak out for political reasons and because of personal prejudice.

Despite all that has been written and discussed about the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the

Holocaust since 1963, Costa-Gavras generates fresh impact because he so deeply involves us in the complex character of Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur), whose thoughts and actions are echoed by Father Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), an Italian Jesuit.

When we meet Gerstein, a respected scientist and doctor, he is about to discover that the Zyklon B pellets he developed as a lieutenant in the SS to disinfect the drinking water of German soldiers — and thus halt the spread of typhus — are being used to gas Jews at Treblinka in Poland. A devout Protestant with a history of anti-fascist protest, Gerstein decides to let the world know of the escalating slaughter of Jews.

He secretly contacts various political and religious dignitaries, including a Swedish diplomat, but sets his hopes on the pope. He is, however, sharply rebuffed by various Vatican representatives — except for Fontana, an aristocrat with close family ties to the pope.

"Amen" has such immediacy and briskness that we are caught up in the increasingly risky actions of

Gerstein and Fontana, both of whom possess the strength of character to put the welfare of others first, regardless of personal consequences.

They are men of faith but also naivete.

As the film unfolds, it inevitably becomes an indictment of a vast international indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews, yet, as devout men, the protagonists have no doubt that the pontiff will speak out once they get word to him.

Filmed largely in Romania amid striking and varied locales, "Amen" is a handsome period production of much fluidity and subtlety, at once intimate and large-scale.

Costa-Gavras shot the film in English with an international cast and crew, and there is a certain vagueness in time lines and locales that tends to occur when virtually all key players behind the camera as well as in front of it are working in what is for them a second language. This is not a major drawback, fortunately, and it is offset by Tukur's and Kassovitz's absorbing portrayals.

Tukur, a stage actor from eastern Germany who strongly resembles the actual Gerstein, is the epitome of bland Teutonic good looks, but ever so gradually he fills out the archetypal image with a portrait of a man of depth, individuality and courage.

Kassovitz, an esteemed young French actor-director, similarly shows us a Fontana capable of calm yet passionate self-sacrifice.

Ulrich Mhe is a cynical SS doctor, suggestive not just of the infamous Josef Mengele but of all those Nazis who made their way to South America — sometimes, the film suggests, with help from inside the Vatican.

Costa-Gavras wanted to make "Amen" for nearly four decades, and it was worth the wait.