ADAM RESURRECTED (2008)

[indianasmith]

This is one of the most intriguing Holocaust films I have ever seen.

Adam Steyn was a successful Jewish comedian in prewar Germany - billed as "the funniest man in Germany," his career began in the fleshpots of Weimar Berlin and prospered even through the early years of the Nazi regime.  Then in 1942, he and his family are shipped to a death camp.

The camp Commandant (Willem Defoe) recognizes Adam - Adam had prevented him from committing suicide years before.  In a gesture of mangled mercy, he keeps Adam alive as his "dog" - forcing him to sleep in a kennel with a German Shepherd, and miaking him roll over and beg for his meals.  All the while Adam begs for the safety of his wife and daugthers, to no avail.  The oldest girl is transferred to another camp; the wife and younger girl go to the ovens.

Now, after the war, Adam is an on-again, off-again patient at a sanitarium in Israel for deranged survivors of the Holocaust.  He is loved by patients and staff alike for his quick wit and sympathetic ear, and has a passionate affair with the head nurse.  He is able to help some inmates with their delusions, but he is still racked with guilt over his own survivial, and no therapy can exorcise his inner demons.

  Then he meets the sanitarium's newest patient - a young boy who has mentally become a dog, howling and barking at all he encounters, and refusing all human communication.  As Adam triies to unlock the boy's tortured psyche, he himself finally begins to confront his own emotions.

this is a very deep film that I cannot stop thinking about, two days after seeing it.  I'm not normally drawn to deep psychological drama, but this film is very much worth seeing.

[Neville]

The story didn't seem that apealing to me, but being a Paul Schrader film I was willing to give it a try. I'm glad I did, it's a very rich film and Jeff Goldblum is absolutely briliant as Adam. Really, it's the finest acting I've ever seen him doing, and he should get the adequate credit for it. 

Still, I have to say that the film had to many ups and downs, and that I didn't find the ending particularly convincing. Also, I felt the film was strangely restrained for a Paul Schrader film. It does have its share of disturbing moments (like the sexual encounters between Adam and the nurse), but I've often felt, regarding Schader films made after "Affliction", that he no longer feels the rage against the world that fueled him in the past, and that this results in films that feel blander than they should.