TORONTO -- It's a delicate matter, putting a human face on a monster. \nTwo entries at the Toronto International Film Festival present personal, often uncomfortable glimpses of Adolf Hitler, one in a fictional setting as an aspiring artist, the other in real, firsthand recollections from an aide. \nThe feature film, "Max," stars John Cusack as a fictional Jewish gallery owner in Munich at the end of World War I who becomes mentor to angry young painter Hitler, played by Noah Taylor. The movie had its world premiere on Tuesday. \nThe documentary, "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary," offers a rare account of the dictator from Traudl Junge, one of his private secretaries from 1942-45, who had declined to tell her story publicly for almost 60 years. The film is condensed from 10 hours of interviews last year with Junge, who died in February at age 81.
"Max," written and directed by Menno Meyjes, has drawn fire from critics who take issue with the notion of humanizing Hitler. \nNew York Times columnist Maureen Dowd included "Max" in a recent piece mocking a spate of "Young Man Hitler"-type TV and film projects. The Jewish Defense League's Web site includes a plea for "Max" distributor Lions Gate to shelve the film, saying there is nothing "human about the most vicious, vile murderer in world history." \nThe movie, due in theaters in December, shows a disturbingly human side to Hitler, portraying him as a disillusioned war veteran whose frailties -- envy, fear, loneliness -- are transforming him into a fiend. \n"What the man did is so sick and so heinous and so horrifying that people need a kind of grandeur of evil to him. They don't really want to see him just as this twisted little guy," Meyjes said. \nMax befriends Hitler, trying to steer him into pure art and away from his growing interest in politics. It provokes uneasy laughter when Max declares, "You're an awfully hard man to like, Hitler, but I'm going to try," or calls out, "Hitler, come on, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade." \n"We'd like (Hitler) to be a monster. That way he's not one of us," Cusack said in an interview. "It would be easier if he was Grendel or something in a cave. But Grendel doesn't drink lemonade. So we go, wait a minute, this is a guy who drank lemonade. It makes him more frightening to think of him as human." \nTaylor said he worried that taking on the role of such a hateful man could "end up with me being spat on and never working again." But the film presents insights, he said, into how a relatively charmless person manipulated millions by playing on their fear and prejudice. \n"We all know how the story ultimately ends," Taylor said. "I thought it would be almost creepier to make him almost likable at certain moments, so maybe the audience forgets even if just for a few seconds how they hated this person. Because you have to remember, one way or another, he charmed individuals, and then an entire nation." \nIn "Blind Spot," scheduled for release early next year, Junge's remarks are suffused with remorse. \n"I worked for a man and liked him, and he did such terrible things," says Junge, who went to work for Hitler at age 22. "It seems to me I should be angry with the child I was, that juvenile young girl." \nHer recollections offer no great insight into Hitler, but she presents a picture of a man who was cordial and courteous in private, as opposed to his ranting public persona. \n"Definitely it exposes that he had two faces," said Danny Krausz, a producer on "Blind Spot." \nThe Toronto festival runs through Saturday.
