Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, David Wnendt’s film ‘Look Who’s Back’ sees Adolf Hitler wake up to find himself in the 21st
ADVERTISEMENTBased on the best-selling novel of the same name, David Wnendt’s film ‘Look Who’s Back’ sees Adolf Hitler wake up to find himself in the 21st century. After he gets used to the idea that he has taken a 70-year leap in time, the former Führer makes a surprise and successful career turn as a stand-up comedian.
The director added an extra element to the book by staging situations with ordinary Germans, who readily disclosed their right-wing tendencies on camera in conversations with the fake Hitler.
At the film’s Berlin premiere, Wnendt said he was shocked at the result: “What was particularly scary was to see how widespread far-right ideology is. No matter the region or the age group, there were so many people who were against foreigners, against Islam, against democracy. That was the really frightening.”
German actor Oliver Masucci, who plays Hitler, was also astonished at how readily people disclosed their political views to him even though they knew everything was staged.
“It was frightening to see how many people poured out their feelings to this character, Hitler. They saw him as someone you could confide in. And at times people’s thoughts were quite dangerous. What I gather from this film is that the middle class is shifting to the right and we ought to ask ourselves why this is happening,” he said at the Berlin premiere.
The director says he was inspired by films like ‘Borat’, whom he calls “the agent provocateur, who entices people to say things they really think”, as well as Bertolt Brecht’s ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’, which Wnendt says ““shows how (Hitler’s) rise would not have been possible without normal German people”“:http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/06/hitler-look-whos-back-director-david-wnendt-interview.
‘Look Who’s Back’ is out now in Germany.
