However, these alluring flourishes quickly fade, as the movie settles into rote rhythms reminiscent of Serebrennikov’s most recent effort (the agitator biopic “Limonov: The Ballad”), in which the political is but window dressing to the personal, rather than part-and-parcel of it. For the most part, “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele” hobbles between Mengele’s stints in various South American countries — primarily, a Nazi-friendly Argentina under Juan Perón, and eventually a military-controlled Brazil — from the ‘50s through to the ’70s. Take, for example, a kind of scene that has become practically expected of modern films on human atrocities — from the 2013 Indonesian genocide documentary “The Act of Killing,” to the recent World War II dramas “Oppenheimer” and “The Zone of Interest” — in which a figure confronted with the reality of their mass murders keels over and vomits, as if in pithy attempt to expel their guilt.
Author: Siddhant Adlakha
Published at: 2025-05-20 22:45:00
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