Today, two comic dramas are coming to the screens about difficult and rigid widowers who are not friendly to the people, who live day by day in a dreary routine, until new neighbors enter the house next door who give them a serious jolt and break their loneliness. The comic-dramatic pattern is familiar, and for the most part, as in “A man named Otto” – an American remake of a Swedish film – the new neighbors shower the grumpy hero with a niceness that melts his rough shell. In the case of “My Neighbor Adolf” – an Israeli film filmed in Colombia – the new neighbor is as hard and rigid as the hero, which challenges the viewers to find an emotional grip. But it’s a calculated risk that director/screenwriter Leon Prodovsky (“Five Hours from Paris”) took upon himself.
Before I continue, full disclosure: about six years ago I read the script of “My Neighbor Adolf” at the request of Prodovsky. When I sat down to watch the final result hit the screen I remembered that I liked the script, but apart from the most basic outline of the plot, I didn’t remember any details, nor its resolution, so my viewing experience was pretty clean.
The film begins in the 1930s in Poland, where we see a happy family preparing for a family photo in the garden. The next scene already takes place in South America in 1960, right after the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and we understand that the Jewish Mr. Polsky (David Heyman) is the only survivor from that family. He lives alone on a hill, in a house surrounded by a high wooden fence, and cultivates a bush of black roses in his neglected yard – the favorite flower of his deceased wife. One night, a German-speaking man about Pulaski’s age known as Mr. Herzog moves into the house next door, which is also surrounded by a high fence. The man is surrounded by an entourage that creates the impression that he is someone important.
Like “The Strange Couple”, only with the Nazis. “Haschan Shelley Adolph” (Courtesy of United King. Photo: Luis Cano)
When Herzog’s wolf dog breaks into Pulaski’s yard and shits near the beloved rose bush, this is the beginning of a neighborly conflict, during which Pulaski begins to suspect that Herzog is none other than Adolf Hitler, who may not have been killed in a bunker as the Soviets said. He, for example, notices that Herzog paints landscapes, with his left hand, just like Fürrer. The Israeli embassy does not take his suspicions seriously, and he develops an obsession with collecting details that will prove that the neighbor is indeed who he thinks he is. It should be added that Pulaski remembers seeing Hitler himself at a chess championship at the beginning of his political career, and he is sure that the eyes are the same eyes. Amused music composed by Lukasz Targosz hints to us that this is a kind of comedy, despite the heavy weight carried by the hero, and the gray tones of the beautiful cinematography, signed by Radek Ledzok (“Princess”, “The Babadook”).
It is not easy to create a balance between the conflicting tones of this charged situation, but most of the time Prodovsky achieves it, through a restrained direction reminiscent of the ironic and bitter Czech comedies of the sixties, except for a few stylistic outbursts of a horror film. Much of the film’s success depends on the accurate performance of the Scottish Hyman in the role of Pulaski. His face will seem familiar to you from a number of films (“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”) and TV series (“Doc Martin”, “Andor”), but he does not often play leading roles. The obsession that drives Pulaski and gives new flavor to his life is ridiculous but also painful, and Heyman’s performance combines the two.
Hitler? With such an old man? “My neighbor Adolf” (courtesy of United King. Photo: Luis Cano)
Udo Kier, a German actor associated with the campy side of world cinema, appears in the role of the suspicious neighbor. During his long career, Kier played Hitler no less than four times. One of those times was in the 2002 short British comedy “Mrs. Maytelmeier”, whose starting point was that Hitler did not commit suicide in a bunker, but lived in a small flat in London in 1947, disguised as a woman. Even in that film, a sleazy Jew complicates matters, but he is not suspicious at all – on the contrary, the Holocaust survivor woos the blonde lady with vodka and gefilte fish. In “My Neighbor Adolf”, Kier balances Heyman’s intense performance with a quiet, almost sleepy performance. And when a strained friendship develops between the lonely neighbors, something surprising and interesting, and even touching, happens there. The one who messes up the tone of the film is Kinneret Peled, who plays an intelligence officer with an exaggerated Israeli accent. Her cartoonish appearance in the scenes where Pulaski arrives at the Israeli embassy is really jarring. The transformation in the climactic scene of the film is also not completely resolved in terms of direction, but the final chord is really beautiful.
3.5 stars. My Neighbor Adolf directed by: Leon Prodovsky. With David Heyman, Udo Kier. Israel 2022, 93 min.