Grade: B

When Rolf Hochhuth’s “Der Stellvertreter” appeared on stage and in print in 1963, it caused a sensation: few voices had previously been raised to accuse Pope Pius XII of tacitly accepting the Nazi Final Solution and thereby betraying his moral duty to speak out forcefully against the slaughter of the Jews, and certainly none had previously had the audacity to make the charge in so public a forum. Over the intervening forty years arguments about the papacy’s World War II policies toward Hitler’s regime have grown far more prevalent (John Cornwell’s bestseller “Hitler’s Pope” is the most recent example), and the play–which, to tell the truth, was always self-indulgently pedantic and overlong–has faded into obscurity, more significant from a historical perspective than a dramatic one. Now Constantin Costa-Gavras, that most activist of mainstream filmmakers, has unearthed the drama and adapted it for the screen. “Amen.,” as he’s retitled the play (the period is apparently part of the moniker), is extremely well-made–a diligent, intelligent piece of work. But it can’t escape a slightly musty feel, as though the material were well past its prime, and the melodramatic turns of the final act work less well in the more realistic cinematic medium than they did on the boards. In addition, Costa-Gavras deliberately distances the viewer from the horrors of the holocaust–an approach that deliberately keeps the picture more an intellectual exercise than an emotional journey. As a result, “Amen.” is certainly admirable, but it isn’t the wrenching experience it might have been.

The picture is structured around the experiences of two men. One is an historical figure, Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur)–an SS chemist who heads a program of treating contaminated water to make it drinkable again. He learns that the process he’s devised–and in particular the gas used in it–has become the preferred means of killing Jews in the death camps. Overwhelmed by the enormity of what’s happening, Gerstein does what he can to sabotage the Final Solution, but he also takes word of the atrocity to the papal nuncio in Munich, who dismisses him as a Nazi provocateur. However, the nuncio’s secretary, a young (and fictional) Jesuit named Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), takes the information seriously and tries to bring it to the attention of the pope, believing that he will act on it immediately and publicly denounce the murder of the Jews. (Riccardo’s well situated to do so, since his father is a member of the papal administration and he’s well acquainted with many of the most powerful cardinals in the curia.) But even though he enlists Gerstein to come to Rome and provide direct testimony, the Vatican proves reluctant to protest, believing it important to allow Hitler to defeat Stalin before denouncing him. When word of the genocide is passed along to the American ambassador, he too proves hesitant to become involved. Gerstein is compelled to live with the reality of the German policy until the war concludes. Meanwhile Riccardo, disgusted at what he perceives as the pope’s shirking of his moral duty, attaches a Star of David to his robe and is himself taken to the camp to which Rome’s Jews are being deported.

Costa-Gavras opens up Hochhuth’s play visually, of course; he and cinematographer Patrick Blossier employ the Italian and Romanian locations to considerable effect–the supposed Vatican interiors are extremely impressive, and the compositions equally so. But dramatically he keeps the focus squarely on the conversations among the major characters, concentrating on their reactions to the horrors around them rather than the horrors themselves. Thus we’re given Gerstein’s appalled face as he observes the gassing of Jews through a small window in the camp wall rather than the event itself, and the process of the Final Solution is simply indicated by periodic shots of long trains of cattle cars steaming across the countryside, their human cargo implied but not actually shown, and when the narrative moves to the camps themselves, they seem curiously deserted (a glimpse of bodies being buried is shot from a discreet distance). The most direct dramatization of the Holocaust comes toward the close, when the Roman Jews are being rounded up, and the scene is positively decorous beside similar sequences in “Schindler’s List” and “The Pianist.” This is quite intentional, of course; it focuses our attention on the debates among the characters, leaving us to imagine what lies behind them. The result is a very wordy film, even if the words are on a very powerful subject and often incisively expressed.

Of the actors, Tukur is certainly the most impressive, drawing a sensitive and affecting portrait of a man driven by a sense of moral outrage but trapped by circumstances (including a family to protect). Kassovitz, in a less shaded role, expresses simmering indignation well enough, but is asked to do little more. Marcel Iures cuts a suitably remote figure as Pius XII, and Michel Duchaussoy a properly diplomatic one as the papal secretary of state, but the most memorable supporting turn comes from Ulrich Muhe as a smugly odious German officer–the very image of the bad Nazi.

“Amen.” is a well-made film on a topic of historical significance, but it’s less a gripping drama than a stimulating bit of polemic. Anyone looking for a balanced treatment of the subject is advised to search elsewhere, but on its own argumentative terms, Costa-Garvas’ picture has a certain fascination.

C

Some films are deliberate and profound. Others are simply slow. Ed Solomon’s “Levity” falls into the latter category. The ironically-titled picture is a fable of redemption with a capital “R,” the story of an ex-con carrying a heavy burden of guilt who tries to make amends for his past misdeeds and in the process touches the lives of others in a positive way. It’s obviously a serious and well-intentioned film, but a stylistically ponderous, dramatically muddled one as well. While one can hardly expect that viewing it would put actual convicts on the road to repentance and reform, it could nonetheless serve a useful function in prisons if it were screened for agitated inmates in lieu of sedatives. It would certainly have the same effect, and could save the penal system a substantial amount in medicinal expenses.

Billy Bob Thornton, in a minimalist performance that rivals his work in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” plays Manuel Jordan, a lifer who’s astonished to find himself paroled after 22 years in the slammer. Still haunted by the memory of the young convenience store clerk named Abner Easely (Luke Robertson) he killed in a robbery, Manuel returns to what’s supposed to be Chicago determined to make expiation. (I say it’s supposed to be Chicago, because apart from the snow the location shares almost nothing with the Windy City. A hint to filmmakers: it’s not enough to hang a “Chicago Rush” sign on the wall of a subway tunnel unlike anything in the city to provide an authentic sense of place.) Sporting a Jesus haircut that remains miraculously unmussed throughout, Manuel accidentally falls in with Miles Evans (Morgan Freeman), an inner-city preacher who gives him a room and a position as a handyman. The job brings him into contact with Sofia Mellinger (Kirsten Dunst), a poor little rich girl who parks her car in the preacher’s lot while attending wild parties down the street. His main goal, however, is to connect with Adele (Holly Hunter), the hard-nosed sister of his victim, to whom he hopes to make a kind of reparation. Concealing his identity, he gradually develops a tentative romance with her and tries to protect her son (Geoffrey Wigdor), also named Abner, from street violence that threatens his life. Meanwhile he’s occasionally visited by the spirit of the Abner he’d killed two decades earlier, who offers him forgiveness and encourages him to start his life anew.

The basic thrust of the film–the struggle of a murderer to deal with his feelings of guilt–is potentially gripping, but Solomon fails to dramatize it effectively. None of the characters are appreciably more convincing than the attempt to turn a Canadian location into an Illinois one, and though the cast is a starry one, none of the fine performers–Freeman, Hunter, Dunst–can persuade us that these are real, flesh-and-blood people rather than a writer’s contrivances: their motives are never adequately clarified, and as a result their actions often come across as arbitrary. Thornton has proven in the past that he can maintain a sense of stillness and repose indefinitely, and he does so again here–but Manuel Jordan never ceases to be more symbol than individual. Visually the picture is impressive for a low-budget effort–cinematographer Roger Deakins is a pro, and achieves the mood of solemnity that the writer-director’s striving for. But since the script doesn’t manage to tease out the subtleties of its theme, Deakins’ efforts, while skilled, merely reinforce the general feeling of turgid predetermination rather than adding layers of meaning to it.

The title, incidentally, is best explained in a rooftop scene–a conversation between Jordan and the ghostly young Abner that shows a snowball made by the dead boy rising into the sky rather than falling to the ground, as Manuel’s does–a poetic representation of how guilt has to be made to fly away rather than permitted to weigh one down. The moment has an ethereal quality, a hint of magic that briefly justifies the picture’s name. Unhappily the rest of “Levity” remains resolutely earthbound, like a sermon delivered very deliberately, and at excessive length, by a well-meaning but uncharismatic minister. Under the circumstances, dozing off in the pew is at most a venial sin.