Amen

Amen

Directed by Costa-Gavras

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Amazon Customer Reviews:

An important film, but flawed a bit historically and technically...
Overall, this is a must-have flick for WWII history buffs. It tells the story of Kurt Gerstein reasonably well and the fellow playing his part does a great job. The characters are good, the storyline is good, the historical events are a little off here and there, but overall, the movie stays on course and is worth buying.

My peeves with this movie may seem trivial, but I am a history buff and if you're going to do a movie like this, get the details right because those details kept distracting me. There were many errors in the movie regarding uniforms, rank insignia, flags, and a number of other things. The sinister looking black SS uniforms are used throughout the movie by Concentration Camp officers and SD personel, when in reality, those uniforms were gone by 1940. SD/SS officers also did not wear "SS" collar patches, nor did concentration camp personel. SD men wore blank black collar patches, camp guards and officers wore the Totenkopf skulls or blank black collar patches as well. Also, Gerstein's rank insignia changes inexplicably several times in the movie, which would seem to be a continuity problem. In addition to that, for some reason, the SS offices throughout the movie are festooned and bedecked with Hitler Youth flags, which made no sense to me at all, and early in the movie, SA and SS troops are marching carrying Hitler Youth banners - just seems like poor research on the technical end.

Lastly, the gassing which Gerstein witnessed is not portrayed accurately and I have no idea why, as this is the most important part of the movie. His "confession" is easily found and he describes the scene, and the scene in the movie doesn't match at all. Why? I have no idea.

Overall, despite all this, I like the movie a lot and highly recommend it. It does point out the Catholic church's refusal to deal with the persecusion of the Jews, and finally, it gives the outside world a look at Kurt Gerstein, who's been largely forgotten by history. Not all SS men were Godless monsters, and finally there's a movie which dares to touch on that subject.

All Catholics should watch this DVD
This film, in the framework of World War II, helps Catholics understand the silence of many local church leaders on injustices happening right now. Consider the Iraq War. John Paul II and Benedict XVI made multiple powerful statements that the Iraq War is unjust. Nonetheless, many Catholics are unaware of this in the US as US church leaders fear losing memberships and even student enrollments as some members earn their income from participating in the violence.

COSTA-GAVRAS, OPUS
***1/2 2002. Co-written and directed by Costa-Gavras. Seven nominations for the French César awards but only one win in the Best Writing category. The real story of SS Kurt Gerstein who tried to alert the world about concentration camps. The problem with this kind of film is that the people who should watch it will never buy or rent such a movie.