Movie Review: "The German Doctor"

"The German Doctor": B-.  In the decade following the end of World War II, Argentina was one of the main South American countries which served as a safe haven for German military officers, SS police and their assorted leaders and sympathizers.  Spain had colonized the country in the sixteenth century, and by the twentieth century a large segment of Argentina's citizenry had ancestral origins not only from Spain but from Italy and Germany as well.  Thus, it was not shocking that one would find German enclaves in Argentina, including its beautifully desolate Patagonia.  That is the setting for The German Doctor.

For the average American moviegoer, it is unfortunate that the film does not provide the background cited in the above paragraph, probably because this film was made in Argentina and directed by Lucia Puenzo, a young Argentinian.  No doubt the audience she had in mind for this project was her fellow countrymen, who presumably would already know of their country's nexus with the Nazis.  A short introductory narrative would have been nice for us Yanks, but no such luck.

The title character is based on Josef Mengele, a notorious Nazi physician who gained infamy for his detestable experiments on human beings in the Auschwitz concentration camp.  The German Doctor takes place in 1960, and Mengele (Alex Brendemuhl) has long ago avoided the Nuremberg war crimes trials by fleeing to South America and assuming a new identity, Dr. Helmut Gregor.  He innocuously meets the family of Enzo (Diego Peretti) and Eva (Natalia Oreiro) on a Patagonian dirt highway, and with their permission follows them in his car to Bariloche, where Eva has inherited a vacant hotel.  The doctor has a curious interest in the family's twelve year old daughter, Lilith (Florencia Bado), because she is noticeably smaller in stature than her peers.  Is this interest in Lilith creepy and subversive, or are we letting our imaginations get the better of us?

When Eva tells "Gregor" that she is fifteen weeks pregnant, he correctly surmises, due to the size of Eva's stomach, that she is carrying twins.  Thus the mysterious doctor's fascination with this family elevates even more.  Eva trusts him, and lets him give Lilith experimental hormonal drugs, even after Enzo tells his wife he doesn't want Gregor going anywhere near their daughter.  When complications with Eva's pregnancy arise, Gregor is at the ready.  Is he there to help, or is this going to be another one of his terrible experiments?

The only person other than Enzo who thinks something is amiss regarding the doctor is Nora Eldoc (Elena Roger), an employee at the nearby German school who surreptitiously takes photographs of Gregor.  She suspects Gregor is really Mengele, and alerts the Mossad, the Israeli spy and security agency which is scouring the continent looking for alleged war criminals.

 

What harm, if any, will come of the German doctor's treatment of Lilith and Eva?  Will the Mossad get their man, or will Gregor escape from their clutches just like he escaped from Europe after the war?

 

Prior to attending the movie I had seen the trailer for The German Doctor several times, and was impressed enough to put the film on my must see list.  The trailer staged the plot as a nail biting thriller.  Instead, the story kind of plods along.  Even though we know that Mengele did despicable deeds under Hitler's regime, Brendemuhl does not convey the sense that his character could do something similarly terrible in Bariloche.  His creepiness quotient is too low.  The fact that the story is narrated by Lilith -- an ill-advised choice by director Puenzo -- also takes some of the edge off.  Furthermore, the Mossad's quest, with the help of Eldoc, is terribly underplayed.  Still, The German Doctor is interesting as a history lesson.  It also makes one aware of an additional reason why the United States so quickly took England's side in its 1982 battle with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.