In many ways, “The People vs Fritz Bauer” is a smaller scale version of Steven Spielberg’s underrated “Bridge of Spies.” Both films are based on true stories of courage during the mid-20th Century. The main difference here is, instead of watching old diplomats make backdoor deals in boring offices in order to rescue a political prisoner, we watch old diplomats make backdoor deals in boring offices in order to capture one. Like “Bridge of Spies,” “The People vs Fritz Bauer” successfully uses the moral importance of its themes and the strength of its performances in order to build a riveting procedural that efficiently covers for its lack of visual pizzazz.
In fact, co-writer/director Lars Kraume manages to turn his film’s relatively meager budget to his advantage, extracting an emotionally engaging morality tale out of a fairly dry and straightforward narrative, a tale about how one person’s dedication for justice against all odds can begin to right horrible wrongs perpetrated on our fellow human beings. This is one terrific political thriller/procedural, one that fans of the genre, and especially those who are interested in post-Holocaust history, should seek out.
Burghart Klaubner is a renowned German actor who international viewers might recognize from “Goodbye Lenin,” Michael Haneke’s chilling “The White Ribbon,” and, wait for it, a small role in “Bridge of Spies.” In “The People vs Fritz Bauer,” he gets lost in the role as the title character, a socially awkward, curmudgeonly German prosecutor who’s obsessed with bringing Nazi war criminals to justice during the late ’50s. Pointing out the period that the story takes place matters, since Germany still wasn’t ready to face its sins even a decade after the Holocaust.
Everyone who watched Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next?” will be familiar with the section about how modern Germany doesn’t shy away from teaching its people the horrors of the Holocaust, but back then, especially with ex-Nazis still in various positions of power, Germany wasn’t as ready to go after its war criminals, mainly because those criminals could finger high ranking officials in government.
Yet, the many red tape obstructions that the government throws at Bauer, a closeted gay Jewish man who has experienced his share of discrimination and oppression, doesn’t keep him from stopping his search for one of the masterminds of the Holocaust, whom he believes is living in Argentina under a pseudonym. Since the German government won’t sanction his extraction, Bauer decides to involve Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, in order to bring him to justice. This is treason, and Bauer knows it, but to him, the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison is worth finally forcing such a monster to answer for his crimes.
However, you wouldn’t feel this passion just by looking at Bauer, with Klaubner’s patient and subtle performance creating a fascinating character, a deep thinker who always seems to be contemplating his next chess move. Yes, our protagonist is a socially awkward, fairly monotone and uncharismatic old man, and that’s what makes him a perfect fit to tell this story. People who are as dedicated to their work as Bauer rarely have time to worry about looking charismatic, sexy, or energetic. They’re too busy getting shit done, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when a life almost completely spent on one purpose can lead to an eccentric personality.
In his quest to overcome such insurmountable odds, Bauer is assisted by a young prosecutor named Karl, a closeted gay man like Bauer, living a lie as a married man. He’s played by Ronald Zehrfeld, whose unsettling performance as the world’s biggest asshole in Christian Petzold’s great romance/drama “Phoenix” made critics pay attention. It’s refreshing to see Zehrfeld try his hand at a much different character this time around, a mild-mannered man with airtight morals who’s terrified of his true identity being revealed.
A sub-plot centering on Karl’s secret relationship with a transsexual singer, a dalliance that could destroy his marriage, is a terrific example on how to introduce another story thread that seems to have a tangential thematic connection to the overall plot at the beginning, only to somehow deliver the main emotional anchor of the whole film. At first, we’re led to believe that the sub-plot is there to show the audience that even after going through such horrors because of some parts of their identity, Bauer and Karl are still oppressed because of who they are. Yet as we near the climax, Bauer and Karl’s plots intersect in an incredibly effective way, bringing home the film’s themes about the importance of staying true to one’s ideals despite any resistance.
Kraume almost goes out of his way to make his visual style as unsexy and unappealing as possible. These meetings about extremely important decisions that could forever alter the world’s perception of what happened during World War II took place in dry, grayscale offices, and Kraume’s admirable concentration on realism is what gives his film such an admirable political procedural aesthetic. By letting us focus more on the performances and the dialogue, he manages to create an emotionally engaging, important, and yes, cinematically alluring story. [A-]