THE NINTH DAY (Volker Schlöndorff, 2004)

Volker Schlöndorff’s The Ninth Day is based on Jean Bernard’s death-camp diary.
     It begins in Dachau, with Bernard—here, rechristened Kremer—among the Roman Catholic clerics in the “priest block.” Schlöndorff presents the most graphically brutal portrait of life inside a death camp I have seen. Although he offers an interesting defense of this in an interview that is included on the DVD of the film, I found this part of his procedure nauseating and gratuitous. This is stuff I didn’t want or need to have my nose rubbed into.
     As actually happened (so, please, no comments from the peanut gallery that this is farfetched), the Germans give Bernard/Kremer a nine-day furlough during which he is charged with convincing the Bishop of Luxembourg to publish support of the Third Reich. Much of the film involves a battle of wits between Kremer and the young Nazi officer who is overseeing the project. August Diehl’s brilliant performance as Untersturmführer Gebhardt outshines Ulrich Matthes’s by-the-numbers Henri Kremer. I, for one, was not moved by Kremer’s ultimate courage in refusing to sacrifice a jot of his faith in the face of overwhelming incentives to do so. In the interview, Schlöndorff says he was inspired by Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). I don’t believe him.
     I’ve enjoyed other Schlöndorff movies, most notably The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, which perhaps owes more to then-wife Margarethe von Trotta, who co-directed, and, more recently, The Legend of Rita. But The Ninth Day left me cold; and I found the film’s indications of each day—”The First Day,” “The Second Day,” etc.—inadvertently funny. It’s hard to take such weighty material seriously when it gives you a case of the giggles.