The Cremator follows Kopfrkingl, a man who runs a crematorium, as he devolves from minor oddball to full-blown lunatic. A dabbler in Tibetan Buddhism, he eventually comes to believe that, through cremation, he is liberating the souls of those individuals from the suffering they endure on earth. As the Germans, under Hitler, move into the country, Kopfrkingl has little difficulty merging his salvation ideology with the ethnic purification aims of the Third Reich. He is told that his wife is (or at least may be) Jewish, so he "saves" her by hanging her and having her cremated. Since his wife is (or might be) Jewish, so too are his children; Kopfrkingl promptly sets off to "liberate" their souls as well. As this all unfolds, Kopfrkingl increasingly experiences visions of an Asian monk who tells him that his good work at liberating souls will result in him becoming the next Dali Lama. In the end, the Germans take power and offer Kopfrkingl the opportunity to run the gas ovens at the concentration camps, which he accepts happily, as this will allow him to liberate souls all the more efficiently.
The movie comes highly acclaimed, both critically and by its fans (who likely are self-selecting into the film). The Cremator is shot well, with eerie, gothic cinematography, and Kopfrkingl is quite well acted, as he must be, seeing as most of the movie is a series of monologues by him. Big picture, you can have any number of discussions about the meaning of the film, whether as a caustic satire of the Holocaust and the ideas that caused it, as a dig at the ability of malleable, incompletely formed ideologies to accommodate and/or rationalize evil with little difficulty, or as a critique of the complicity of seemingly ordinary locals participating in horrific crimes against humanity.
But, for whatever reason, the film didn't leave me as wowed as it did many other reviews. I saw little comedy in it and would be hard pressed to describe it as a dark comedy. Instead, it came across as a satirical, almost absurdist depiction of derangement as it unfolds, with occasional bouts of boredom. I really wanted to love it, but it didn't land for me. Perhaps you'll love it.
The movie comes highly acclaimed, both critically and by its fans (who likely are self-selecting into the film). The Cremator is shot well, with eerie, gothic cinematography, and Kopfrkingl is quite well acted, as he must be, seeing as most of the movie is a series of monologues by him. Big picture, you can have any number of discussions about the meaning of the film, whether as a caustic satire of the Holocaust and the ideas that caused it, as a dig at the ability of malleable, incompletely formed ideologies to accommodate and/or rationalize evil with little difficulty, or as a critique of the complicity of seemingly ordinary locals participating in horrific crimes against humanity.
But, for whatever reason, the film didn't leave me as wowed as it did many other reviews. I saw little comedy in it and would be hard pressed to describe it as a dark comedy. Instead, it came across as a satirical, almost absurdist depiction of derangement as it unfolds, with occasional bouts of boredom. I really wanted to love it, but it didn't land for me. Perhaps you'll love it.