Nazis will never go out of style. The Weinstein Company has just picked up a nazi-related documentary called My Enemy's Enemy from Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald for distribution.
The film examines the story of "The Butcher of Lyndon", Klaus Barbie. As a Gestapo commander he terrorized Lyndon and its surrounding area from November 1942 to August 1944. The documentary follows Klaus as he changes his Nazi ways to become an American counter-intelligence officer, ending in his 1987 trial where he's forced to face justice for his World War II crimes.
As boring documentaries go, anything about Nazis is always good. Even though Macdonald makes it sound more like history lesson than an examination brutality. He say, " What I wanted to do in ‘My Enemy's Enemy’ was to reveal an alternate history of the post-war world. This is a version of history where, in contrast to what we were all told, fascist ideology prevailed. The story of Klaus Barbie - Nazi torturer, American spy, tool of repressive right-wing regimes - is symbolic of the real relationship that the ‘Western’ governments had with fascism and makes us see the world as it is today - and the politicians who inhabit it - in a different way."
My Enemy's Enemy is being touted to the press as "controversial", though what could possibly be controversial about a long-dead Nazi war criminal is hard to fathom. Maybe he tries to steal Christmas.
