Thursday, June 17, 2010

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2010: Moloch Tropical

“Moloch Tropical,” which follows the political and mental disintegration of a fictional democratically elected president in Haiti, is the latest from Haitian-born director Raoul Peck, who tread similar territory a decade ago in “Lumumba,” the story of Congo's heroic prime minister Patrice Lumumba. However, it's not his own earlier work that Peck has audaciously repurposed, but Alexander Sokurov's “Moloch,” a chamber piece detailing the mundane existence of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun at their Bavarian hideaway. (At least I think that's what “Moloch” is about—having seen it in the late '90s at a surreal Russian Film Festival screening with German subtitles and a live English translation.) Peck himself is a frustrating talent, one whose grandiosity is simultaneously his strength and his weakness—not unlike the lead character of “Moloch Tropical.”

To read the rest of my review visit The House Next Door at Slant Magazine.

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