Amen. is the story about Kurt Gerstein, an SS officer responsible for disinfection during the war. His job is to disinfect bunkers, purifying drinking water and keeping the German soldiers as healthy as possible, or at least that is what he think he’s doing. In fact the SS uses his gas in the gas chambers in the death camps all over eastern Europe. When Gerstein learns this truth he is sickened and has a hard time believing and understanding what he’s a part of. He tries to contact both the Swedish embassy and members of the Catholic Church to get the information about the Holocaust out to the world. The movie tells two stories, the one of Gerstein and one about a Jesuit priest that Gerstein comes in contact with.

The story about Gerstein is historically correct, but the rest of the story is a bit harder to validate. Most of the information about it on the Internet is biased, they seem to have their own agenda for either praising or condemning this movie. The movie is based on the play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth. This seems to be one of the most controversial movies I’ve seen. And there’s so much misinformation about it, even with such a simple thing as what language it was shot it. I’ve read that it was filmed in: French, German, French and German, and English. I’ve come to the conclusion myself that it must have been filmed in English, because I saw the English version and it did not look dubbed at all. Many people however is saying the same thing about the French version.

The movie begins with a very powerful scene in which we see Stefan Lux’s suicide inside the League of Nations in Geneva. I would personally say that it’s the most powerful scene in the entire movie, but I think most people would disagree with me there. Either way, it’s based on an actual event — Stefan Lux did commit suicide in the hope to reach out to the world about what was going on inside Germany, sadly it had little effect.

There are some good scenes and the story is interesting but it’s not very well directed. There are some really weird lines and the dialog is in general rather unconvincing. I do however don’t mind that you never learn about what date it is, even what year it is. The character talks about events, such as the Battle of Stalingrad, which gives us some information about the date.