The Conference (Die Wannseekonferenz) – REVIEW

The Conference (Die Wannseekonferenz) – REVIEW
Image: Bild 24 die Konferenz beginnt

No visual horror, no graphic imagery, no depictions of violence, yet this film will chill you to the core.  in January, 1942, a conference took place in the Wannsee Villa, a magnificent mansion on Lake Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin. It was a star chamber of 15 elite Nazi personnel, organised and led by Hitler’s right hand man, Reinhard Heydrich. Their purpose: to devise a final solution to the “Jewish problem”. This was the planning meeting for The Holocaust. 

Phillip Hochmair as Reinhard Heydrich in The Conference. Image: supplied

The entire film is a recreation of that meeting, pretty much in real time, with the dialogue being derived from a single remaining copy of the actual minutes. There’s no music, no stylised filming or other flourishes, just a hard focus on the men gathered around an enormous table discussing how to most discretely and efficiently rid Europe of its 11 million Jews. 

Director Matti Geschonneck has created an historical, psychological study that is gripping and confronting. From the first shot of a large black car driving through the woods, to the final similar scene of participants leaving, each beat is filled with tension. 

Geschonneck’s casting is on point, with Philipp Hochmair eerily convincing as Heydrich; Johannes Allmayer menacingly sour as Adolf Eichmann; and Thomas Loibl as the seemingly ambivalent, Wilhelm Kritzinger. Among an almost all-male cast is Lilli Fichtner who plays the only female in attendance, the secretary to Adolf Eichmann. Her outward femininity starkly contrasts her apparent complicity, or at least indifference to the horror being discussed. 

Though Geschonneck sticks predominantly to the actual transcript, he is able to hint at the personalities of this ignoble group of sadists. Through little touches like the placement and then switching over of name cards determining where each participant is seated, through body language, facial expressions, delivery of lines, Geschonneck reveals how egoistic, petty, vain, amoral, pretentious and utterly sociopathic these vile men are. 

There is a performative civility among the men. 

The conversations are challenging, in fact, horrendous. They speak pragmatically, bureaucratically about the “elimination” of the Jewish people. They get technical about definitions: what to do about mixed marriages, genealogy, associates and sympathisers. 

Wannsee Villa, Berlin – site of The conference

When Kritzinger expresses moral objection to having German soldiers shoot thousands of Jews at an industrial daily pace, he is admonished by the other participants. However, he clarifies that his objection is on behalf of the German soldiers and the psychological trauma this activity may cause them. 

It is then that the “final solution”, that is, using poisonous gas, is explained with such complete indifference it is spine tingling. 

“There’s practically no contact between the person concerned and the person performing the procedure. Any vicinity and pitiful stimuli are omitted. I and the specialists involved are convinced this allows us to achieve a pleasantly technical, efficient and completely anonymous process. It can be performed by our men in a very distanced manner.”

★★★★★

In cinemas now. 

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