Music Box

The film won the Golden Bear for the Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film rests on the original screenplay by Joe Eszterhas, the commendable performances of Jessica Lange (Oscar nominated performance), the enigmatic Armin-Mueller Stahl, and the wonderful Hungarian actress Mari Torocsik (best known for her lead role in Karoly Makk's 1971 film "Love") playing a brief but important role in this film, and of course the typical Costa-Gavras direction that relies on editing and music to a subtle perfection.

The importance of the script of this film will not be obvious to many because the importance came to the fore long after the film won the Golden Bear. Mr Eszterhas' own real life father was a Hungarian who migrated to the US and was found to be a Nazi collaborator just as the film's story presents its lead character. The scriptwriter arguably knew or suspected this when he wrote the script. Many of the original scripts of Eszterhas,("Basic Instinct", "Sliver," "Betrayed," "Jade," etc.) deal with a hidden personality in people that we trust/love. He has been conferred with several Razzie awards but his work needs to be appreciated as important works of a tormented mind that provided entertainment for us without the viewers realizing this.

I was astounded in reading the comments on these films to see people saying that Armin Muehler-Stall's character is flat and empty.Also, those that say his angry outbursts are not threatening.

My father is a Hungarian immigrant who I have wondered where he has a similar "true story". I can say from personal experience that Armin's performances are consistent with my father's outbursts and for me personally were terrifying when seeing the movie.

In terms of the generalization that the performance was "flat", there is a cold, clinical, almost sociapathic sense to some elderly Hungarians. Additionally, I found Jessica Lange's performance COMPLETELY believeable as someone raised under such strong expectations and often silent or restrained about true expressions of emotion or fear.

That's my two cents. DO NOT underestimate the ACCURACY of this film.

The movie is based on the case of the alleged war criminal John Demjanjuk whose American citizenship was revoked and he was extradited to Israel for trial. In Israel, he finally was acquitted for lack of evidence. In the movie Costa-Gavras does have a strong opinion about the case, but in real life the all-important question "guilty or not guilty" was never answered properly.

A good movie, too good to stay in the cinemas for a long time.

Awright, I don't approve of all your politics, Mr. Costa Gavras, particularly in "State of Siege" and "Hanna K.", but in this one you truly excel, both in terms of authenticity and a willingness to stay unprovocative when dealing with a sensitive issue as the Holocaust.

The movie is supposed to have been inspired by the real-life case of John Demjanjuk, an Ohio resident accused of war crimes at Treblinka and Sobibor, extradited to Israel for trial in the mid 80's. The movie even has a brief reference to this Demjanjuk guy when someone tries to pronounce his complicated last name in a conversation with Jessica Lange. Costa Gavras seems to be intrigued by our very perception of the Holocaust and our ambivalent approach toward it. Lawyer Ann Talbot's Hungarian-born father is accused of war crimes, her ex-father-in-law is somewhat scornful towards the inviolability of the Holocaust, and even had drinks with "those monsters" when the West used ex-Nazis as spies against Communism. Not to mention the difficulty of prosecuting war crimes 40 odd years later when justice can be won by either concocted evidence or the cunning of legal argument, and historical truth becomes less important.

The courtroom scenes and dialogues are truly remarkable in their restraint, and give the viewer just enough background as is needed about the atrocities of Arrow Cross in Hungary between 1944 and 1945. Specially the testimony of one Mr. Bodai is awesome, that of man so much ravaged by horror that his delivery is almost a monotone, with little emotional difference between responding a "yes" and a "no".

But it is Jessica Lange that outshines everyone else in performance, may be one of her best ever.

Jessica Lange is very good as Ann Talbot, a lawyer who takes up the task of defending her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) against charges of Nazi war crimes. The charges are ridiculous to her at first, but she slowly begins to realize they might be true. Lukas Haas, giving an exceptionally bright-eyed and intelligent performance, plays Ann's 12-year-old son, who believes unquestioningly that his beloved grandfather is innocent.

Roger Ebert wrote that the father, while very well-played by Mueller-Stahl, does not devote enough time to helping us to understand his character, but I don't know that any film could do that for such a person. Mueller-Stahl and the script at least offer suggestions and let our imaginations do the rest.

I found this film, scripted by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Costa-Gavras, to be a quietly effective courtroom thriller (even though the idea of a lawyer defending her own father in this situation requires a high suspension of disbelief) and found the central drama of a woman discovering her father is, or at least was, a monster to be moving.