Film imagines final hours inside Hitler's bunker, mind.

MICHAEL FOX
Bulletin Correspondent

Newspaper columnists and talk-radio hosts, in recent years, have joined philosophers and historians in analyzing the nature of evil. All roads, it seems, eventually lead to Adolf Hitler.

Harvard educated writer-director Barry Hershey joins the fray with an audacious, thought-provoking new film, "The Empty Mirror," which imagines Hitler's ravings in his last days in his Berlin bunker.

"The Empty Mirror" opens Friday, May 14 at San Francisco's Opera Plaza Cinema in what is certain to be a short run, notwithstanding the film's wealth of ideas. Those with a strong interest in Hitler -- either in his deeds or in succeeding generations' infinite fascination with him -- should not hesitate to attend.

For all the artistry, ingeniousness and passion on display, however, "The Empty Mirror" is likely to bore casual viewers for stretches at a time. In the course of nearly two hours, evil loses some of its fascination.

Hershey depicts Hitler (energetically played by British actor Norman Rodway) as insane and brilliant, with a deep understanding of both public relations and human weakness. "My genius was combining two enemies, Jews and Marxism, into one," he boasts.

Hitler's rantings, which alternate between lucid insight and deranged paranoia, follow several strands. Sometimes he spins the historical record in his favor; sometimes he simply indulges in a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Occasionally he muses about his dictatorship and provides a primer on power and control. Start a man off, Hitler says, by ordering him to break a shop window.

"Go slow," he admonishes. "Take small steps." When the time comes to erase a group of people, it will be but another small step for that man.

Hershey suggests that Hitler only came up with the Final Solution after the German army's humiliating losses in Russia in 1941. With his myth of invincibility shattered, Hitler needed a diversion; he also needed a grandiose scheme to maintain his path to immortality.

Hitler's bunker confidants in "The Empty Mirror" include Eva Braun, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Goebbels (a sly cameo by Joel Grey) and a soldier to whom Hitler is dictating his memoirs.

But his most dedicated companion is the projector parading historic images across a screen. The archival material is what you'd expect -- Hitler speaking in public or heading a motorcade, war casualties, Holocaust victims -- but easily the most powerful shots are culled from Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," still the most artfully constructed propaganda in all of history.

The heart of "The Empty Mirror" lies in these films as much as in the unceasing stream of words that pours out of Hitler. For Hershey is arguably more interested in our relationship with Hitler half a century after his death than he is with Hitler himself.

We believe newsreels and documentaries provide a record and a way of understanding something we did not personally experience. But that's an illusion, Hershey suggests. When people today see Hitler onscreen, they don't see a man but a symbol, or perhaps a myth. In any event, it's a filtered perception that can't approach reality.

Egomaniac that he is, Hitler is convinced that he will have the last laugh. Anticipating the countless books, films and college courses inspired by his apocalyptic reign, Hitler grins malevolently at Goebbels.

"There's my thousand-year Reich," he gloats. "We gave them much to brood over, didn't we, Joseph?" "The Empty Mirror" opens Friday, May 14 at the Opera Plaza Cinema, Van Ness at Golden Gate, S.F. Information: (415) 352-0810.