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.One can also see a link between making films about Hitler and enter-ing the new millennium.This is because Hitler, more than any otherhistorical figure, epitomises the twentieth century and modernity.Forsome authors, like Zygmunt Bauman, he embodies the dark extremity ofmodernism modernism as utter barbarity (Bauman 2000).For others, 68 European Cinema and Intertextualityhis reign was the last large-scale revolt against modernity and an attemptto create a utopia (Friedlander 1993b: 29).4 Whatever interpretation ischosen, Hitler s story still acts as a warning against what can happento Europe if its inhabitants are not vigilant and allow themselves to beseduced by grand-scale political projects.Hitler s rule and the SecondWorld War can thus be regarded as the last moment when history was great and real , before becoming fragmented into numerous mini-narratives and giving in to simulation and hyper-reality, as describedby Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard.Hence,Hitler offers cinema a chance to produce an epic film about eventswhich still belongs to our age , is still remembered, albeit by a rapidlyshrinking number of people.The upsurge of new films on Hitler can also be regarded as a reac-tion to the sheer number, commercial success and the character of thefilms tackling the Holocaust made in the past two decades or so.Thisis because, as I argued previously, although the taboos of represent-ing Hitler and representing the Holocaust are different, they are alsorelated, and changes in one of them affect the other.Accordingly, thefact that the Holocaust sells can be seen as a sign that Hitler will selltoo.Equally, the fact that more and more of the unrepresentable havebeen represented by a filmmaker as demonstrated by films such asThe Grey Zone (2001) by Tim Blake Nelson and the moral respectabilityof the Holocaust comedy La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1997) directedby Roberto Benigni could have emboldened filmmakers wanting toshow Hitler in the way deemed unacceptable in the 1970s or the 1980s.It is worth mentioning in this context that the director of Max, MennoMeyjes, had worked with Steven Spielberg before directing his Hitlerfilm and first offered his script to Spielberg, assuming that this director,who was so successful in introducing the Holocaust into mainstreamcinema, would be equally keen to mainstreamise and update Hitler.Another factor in the production of the new Hitler films might be thesuccess of such postmodern movies as Starship Troopers (1997), directedby Paul Verhoeven, Gattaca (1997), directed by Andrew Niccol, andHellboy (2004), directed by Guillermo del Toro.These films, as FlorentineStrzelczyk argues, recreate, amplify and revel in Nazi-like spectacles andeven edify the principles of Nazi society (Strzelczyk 2007), but thanks tobeing set in the future and using strategies of paracinema , convenientlyavoid any moral responsibility for their ideological stance.Making his-torical films about Hitler can be seen as capitalising on an unfalteringfascination with fascism, while purporting to unmask these postmodernpastiches by pointing to their original and proper context. Our Hitler 69Moloch or posttotalitarian Hitler à la russeThe prevailing tendency in the new films about Hitler is to historicisehim.Moloch, however, is born out of an opposite impulse to locateHitler outside history.This desire is already announced by its title moloch means a demon in a shape of a man or possessing a man.OneRussian reviewer described Sokurov s Hitler as an abstraction and a pos-sible embodiment of a basic (transhistorical) character (Mantsev 1999).Such demonisation of Hitler is a common practice of authors writing hisbiography (Lukacs 2000; Rosenfeld 1985; Rosenbaum 1998).Although itoften derives from noble impulses, such as bewilderment and outrage atthe enormity of crimes committed by the Führer and in his name, it mightbe seen as a tactic of circumventing the link between Hitler s crimes andsome wider historical formations and phenomena, such as modernismand (pan-European) anti-Semitism, and an attempt to obscure the con-nection between Hitler s ascent to power and the attitudes of ordinaryGermans, in order to absolve them from the Nazi crimes.The perception of tyrannical rulers as timeless demons incarnatingdifferent bodies is also typical to people subjected to them and betraysa desire to distance themselves from them.Russia, of course, had its fairshare of tyrants, the last being Stalin, famously alluded to in Ivan Groznyy(Ivan the Terrible, 1944) by Sergei Eisenstein to which Moloch was com-pared (Szaniawski 2006: 23; 2007: 148).It is easier in Russia than, let ussay, Holland or Britain, to see Hitler as an ahistorical figure.A reading ofconcrete evil acts as resulting from forces which are outside human capac-ity is also in accordance with a certain tradition in Russian literature, bestepitomised by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose works can also be located inthe context of the history of Russia as governed by tyrants.Such read-ing can be supported by the fact that Moloch is one of a number of filmsmade by Sokurov about the famous modern dictators, including Leninin Telets (Taurus, 2001), and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito in Solntse(The Sun, 2005).Through them, Sokurov attempts to find a commondenominator for dictators and dictatorships and, perhaps, understandthe history of Russia.The conviction that all dictatorships are essentiallythe same links Sokurov with Hannah Arendt, especially her The Originsof Totalitarianism (1958), or perhaps can even be partly explained by therespect with which she is treated in postcommunist countries (%7Å„i~ek2001: 2 3), of which Sokurov is most likely aware (on the comparisonbetween Hitler and Stalin see also Kershaw and Lewin 1997).Apart from the metaphysical title , the intention to situate Hitlersomewhat beyond or outside history is also betrayed by the film s setting 70 European Cinema and Intertextualityin the Berghof, Hitler s residence in the Bavarian Alps, known as hisfavourite retreat, where the echo of the world runs aground like a far-off rumbling (Lalanne 1999: 73).Yet, Sokurov conjures up the Berghofnot as a place of refuge from the not-so-sunny reality of war, but as aprison: a heavy, concrete fortress, blanketed by fog.Hitler and his entou-rage are thus prisoners of forces which he unleashed, but over whichneither he, nor anybody else, has power.5 The overall idea of Sokurov sfilm is to undermine Hitler as a man and politician
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