‘Im Labyrinth der Schweigens‘, the original German title of the 2014 film directed byGiulio Ricciarelli, has been translated into English as ‘Labyrinth of Lies‘. This translation is, as the Italian saying goes, a betrayal. ‘In the labyrinth of silence’ would not only be more semantically exact, but would more accurately convey the theme and message of this excellent docu-drama. The story takes place in the late 1950s in the Federal Republic of Germany, a country experiencing a miracle of economic development and an apparent return to democracy and civilisation. The price of this social peace is a collective amnesia in which the crimes and horrors committed only 15-17 years before are buried in silence by those who had committed them and unknown to the young. The survivors, few and traumatised, were still silent. But building a new and healthy Germany meant getting out of this labyrinth of silence.
The film is inspired by a real case, which went to trial in Germany in the early 1960s and was investigated and prepared at about the same time as the trial of Adolf Eichman, captured in Argentina and brought to justice in Israel. The main hero is a young prosecutor named Johann Radmann, a fictional hero who represents a synthesis of several characters and a representative of a generation educated and raised immediately after the war, ignoring the very recent past of Germany but especially the role played by the parents’ generation, many of whom were guilty of murder or complicity in silence. A true life character also appears in the film, Fritz Bauer, a public prosecutor who played an important role in ensuring that society and the justice system in the post-war Federal Republic of Germany failed to simply suppress the history of the Holocaust and the camps. As the investigation progresses, Johann Radmann goes through a process of political maturation and confrontation not only with the past but also with those around him – friends, family, the woman he falls in love with. The strongest scenes of the film are those in which investigators face the ignorance and in many cases the resistance of those who had built the ‘labyrinth of silence’ and at the same time are confronted with the direct, shocking testimonies of witnesses and survivors. The Italian-born film director Giulio Ricciarelli was inspired to renounce to words in the key moments, leaving the actors to transmit through the expressions of their faces the pain and traumas related to their revelations.
‘Im Labyrinth der Schweigens‘ works quite well as a docu-drama and manages to recreate the atmosphere of post-war Germany prior to the admission of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Alexander Fehling, the actor who played in the key role of the young prosecutor, creates an interesting role, combining shyness and rigidity, an ignorance that seems almost incredible today with an idealism that ultimately overcomes doubts and personal crisis. From the rest of the cast, who do their job professionally, I would also mention Hansi Jochmann as the secretary of the prosecutor. Some of the side stories are less interesting, but in general the message of the film passes the screen effectively, the narrative is constantly and well paced, most of the dialogues are credible, and the public’s interest is constantly kept awake. The end coincides with the beginning of the trial of the war criminals and their accomplices, a judicial process that was the first confrontation of the German legal system with the crimes committed by their compatriots during the Nazi period, but also an important milestone in the critical re-evaluation of the past by the whole German society, destroying the labyrinth of silence and lies. Even if ‘Im Labyrinth der Schweigens’ is not the ultimate German film dedicated to this theme, it is a good quality docu-drama, capturing precisely a significant moment in the history of 20th century Germany.