Hôtel Terminus

I saw "Hôtel Terminus" as part of a cycle of films dealing with Second World War, its protagonists and its effects. This was the last in the series in chronological order, but the first I saw: it was the only one dealing with modern consequences of that war. The film is what some people call a "talking heads", referring to documentaries made primarily of interviews. I did not know the term and heard it for the first time in the late 1980's in the Havana Film School. Students used it in a derogatory way. But as we all know, some talking heads are good. This one is, and a very good one. I am supposing that most everybody knows that Klaus Barbie was a Nazi agent, a torturer, then an anti-Communist spy for the CIA, that he escaped from Europe with the help of the Catholic Church and that he finally dealt with gun traffic in South America. He was caught, sent to France and judged in Lyon. In four hours and a half, Marcel Ophüls (who is not a very nice subject on camera), not only reconstructs Barbie's life, but he covers so much ground that it's noteworthy how his editors were able to maintain one's attention in so many persons, facts, dates and abundant references in the testimonies. I have been told that the film worked as an alert for the resurgence of neo-Nazis and the so-called "ordinary fascism". Well, it should be seen every now and then, because it seems that as long as there are human beings there will be totalitarians, traitors and assassins, and as long as there is a group of nations that want to control the world, there will be new holocausts. We all know that because of all the Klaus Barbies we have seen in power. This one won the Oscar as Best Documentary.

Marcel Ophuls's Academy Award-winning "Hôtel Terminus" is primarily a look at Nazi official Klaus Barbie, aka the Butcher of Lyon. But in focusing on Barbie's life - his plain childhood, his torturing of prisoners in France, his escape to South America, and his eventual capture - the movie addresses some points. One is the French authorities' complicity in the Nazis' deeds; much like how the police in Paris were responsible for the Vel d'Hiv roundup, the police in Lyon helped turn over Jews and resistance members to Barbie. Another is how the US helped Barbie avoid justice; his anti-communist views made him a natural ally to the US-backed juntas in Bolivia.

The point is that, much like how the Nazis' actions didn't come solely out of Hitler's evil little mind, Barbie's deeds and escape didn't happen in a vacuum. This was a carefully planned out scheme. All in all, it's a fine documentary, exactly the sort of thing that everyone should get required to see (especially since so many people have suddenly decided to defend Nazis).

Marcel Ophuls' mammoth four-and-one-half hour-long portrait of Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie, the notorious Butcher of Lyon, is more than just a biography of another Nazi mass murderer. The film also provides a meticulous study of the forces which allowed him to survive for so long, from wartime anti-Semitism to post-war Communist paranoia to a prevailing what's-done-is-done attitude of retroactive amnesia. Ophuls is not so complacent, and makes no apologies for his sometimes confrontational approach to the subject. In his mind those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and the sheer volume of verbal testimony, from enemies and friends alike, is only the director's way of ensuring we neither forgive nor forget. The scope of the film is vast, covering over forty years and spanning several continents, but the scale is intimate: one voice, one detail at a time, making it an exhaustive but hardly exhausting account of one monstrous but admittedly small cog in an evil machine, pieces of which are still well-oiled and operating even today.

Marcel Ophuls is an obnoxious jackass (think of a European Michael Moore), and he is overly obtrusive in this film, but it is a must-see nonetheless. We all know what Barbie did, but the role of the US government in shielding him from French authorities after the war is not so commonly known. This film leaves no stone unturned, and the bittersweet conclusion--Barbie finally was imprisoned, but only for four years, and after he had already lived free and wealthy for forty years--is sobering.

The film is very good but sags in the third hour. However, you must stay with it. Take a break, have some coffee, and come back. I saw this film a good five years ago, but the final few sentences were so moving I remember them still, word for word. It must be seen. We're talking hot tears and goosebumps.