Adolf Hitler suddenly wakes up lying on the ground of a park in Berlin in 2014. Initially confused that World War II is over and that Poland still exists, he sends his dirty uniform for dry cleaning. An unemployed reporter, Sawatzki, thinks he is only an abstract artist playing Hitler, so he drives him across Germany to film his interaction with modern Germans. When the video hits more than a million views on YouTube, TV CEO Sensenbrink hires Sawatzki and has Hitler appear on his program. Gaining fame by promising to save Germany from the "abyss", Hitler writes a hit book, "Look Who's Back" and quits the TV station. Sawatzki realizes this is the real Hitler, protests, but is sent to a mental asylum. A movie is made based on Hitler's book. As Hitler drives in a car, planning to rise to power again, mass protests inspired by his ethno-nationalism spread across Europe.
Several years before "JoJo Rabbit", Germans themselves proved that they can laugh at their own expense and their dark dictatorship past when the director David Wnendt made this questionable black comedy of what would happen if Hitler would appear in Germany of the 21st century. There is one unwritten rule regarding highly controversial topics: the more controversial and risky they are, the more the movie itself needs to be goddam brilliant and inspired to justify going to such areas. "Look Who's Back" is a mixed bag, mostly because in the first hour it doesn't know what to do with this premise. In this first half, the camera just randomly follows Hitler and reporter Sawatzki as they travel across Germany and talk to real life people about the situation of the country, but this documentary format feels lazy and as a cop-out of the filmmakers to themselves lead the story. One crazy sequence has Hitler walking in front of the Brandenburg Gate, as dozens of tourists surround him and want to make selfies with him, which looks like a surreal parody of celebrity tourism.
One good joke has Hitler narrating how through the last decades numerous dilettante actors tried to impersonate him and transfer his message to the world, as the movie shows clips of "The Great Dictator", "Downfall" and Jörg Haider. But this first half feels aimless and arbitrary, all until the story aligns into a more proper narrative when Hitler slowly listens to the frustrations of the people (who are mostly angry at immigrants and foreigners), takes notes, and then makes his move at a speech in a TV program: "In what kind of a country are we living in? Poverty among children, elderly, and unemployment. No wonder the birth rates are so low, who would want to bring kids into this country?... We are heading towards the abyss. But we cannot see the abyss on TV, only a cooking show!" The message is that these kind of politicians only use the dissatisfaction of the masses to falsely present themselves as their savior, but are in reality just seizing power. It is actual that the move was made in the era of QAnon, Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen, an era when the far-right was starting to present itself more and more as something "normal" and reasonable, pointing out that such rationalizing and passivity just turns extremism into mainstream. Sadly, the movie did not manage to shape a better narrative around this, since it is confused as to what it wants to be. One stand out joke is a parody of the viral video from "Downfall", as TV CEO Sensenbrink has an anger attack, removes his glasses with a shaking hand, and shouts at his associates because a celebrity left for another TV channel. But the movie needed more of that. In one moment, Hitler is confronted by an old woman who accuses him of gasing people in the Holocaust, and this is surprisingly one of the few more challenging takes on the Hitler persona: the movie presents this war criminal more as a benign meme, when it should have been far more critical of him in many instances.
Grade:+
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