Day 8 - Jud Süss

 

Gives bad movies a bad name

There are bad films, there are terrible films, and there are movies that make your facial muscles twist up while your intestines attempt to make a hernia. And then there's Oskar Roehler's Jud Süss, depicting the making of the wartime Nazi propaganda film of the same name. It's so bad it makes your arms ache and all your organs shut down. Sometimes it is so bad you actually start experiencing a kind of sacred delirium, as felt by medieval monks and Native Americans on peyote, and you float into a parallel universe where Mel Brooks is God and break down laughing helplessly. But this film would make Mel Brooks blush and start a lecture tour about good taste. You'll be left staggering out of the cinema like a deer waking up from a heavy dose of rohypnol.

Moritz Bleibtreu plays Goebbels. He waggles his arms a lot. A LOT. It's a virtuoso display of arm-waggling. He must have had coaching from a professional arm-waggler. In fact, he must have spent six months on a special arm-waggling training camp. Actually, what am I saying? Talent like that you can't teach. Bleibtreu must have started waggling his arms aged 3 and kept working on it until he became the student and protege of a celebrated arm-waggler at aged 6, shortly after which he gave his first solo waggling. After that he won various young waggler's competitions, forfeiting a normal childhood and being emotionally stifled by his overbearing mother, who was obsessed with his career. All he ever cared about was waggling his arms.

This is a spectacularly bad, grotesque, horrific film. It redefines the concept of 'bad' in a way never before imagined by the human mind. You must see it.