Review: Andres Veiel’s ‘Riefenstahl’ is a Damning Look at Her Nazi Past
by Alex Billington
August 29, 2024
One of the most eye-opening, chilling, fascinating, and frightening documentaries this year just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It’s titled Riefenstahl, referencing the iconic & also infamous German female filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The film is sort of a biopic taking us through her life as a filmmaker, though it actually ends up being an indictment regarding her past association with the Nazis in the 1930s & 40s. It’s the latest film directed by acclaimed German filmmaker Andres Veiel, who previously made the excellent doc Beuys (which I saw at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival and wrote about back then). For much of the film, I was wondering if Veiel is trying to portray Riefenstahl as a misunderstood artist unfairly scrutinized, or if he was going to lean in on hinting she has always been a Nazi. It’s the latter. There’s no debate anymore. After watching scene after scene of irrefutable evidence (which she always refutes) this becomes an eye-opening experience. By the end, I couldn’t stop thinking this is a doc version of The Zone of Interest. It shows how a talented visionary artist who pioneered techniques could wholeheartedly support a dehumanizing ideology.
The debate about Leni Riefenstahl’s problematic past has been raging for decades. Was she just an innocent filmmaker caught up in the politics of the time? Afraid to say no to them but also not a full-on Nazi? Don’t buy it. As seen in many other stories these days, we’re discovering that some great artists were also terrible people, but their artistic contribution to the world has elevated them above criticism (this is also debatable). For decades, Riefenstahl enjoyed this look-the-other-way relief – she was always able to talk her way out of anything to do with her Nazi relationship in the past. I’m sure she still has her defenders, and I’m sure some people will still ride in to support her and defend her artistic side above all. It seems that Andres Veiel has had enough of this bullshit. While he doesn’t explicitly state it in the film, by the end of it there’s no way to ignore his ultimate point – Leni Riefenstahl was a Nazi. And her refusal to admit this or reconcile with her past is actually proof she really was a Nazi, not proof that she wasn’t. This documentary is full of nothing but archival footage throughout, with many shocking juxtapositions of scenes of evidence next to a scene of her rejecting that claim while getting angry it was brought up to begin with. She lived these lies to her grave.
Sadly, it just seems we have another classic case of denialism. A refusal to admit involvement and complicity – which is way more common than most of us realize. I’d love to hear a psychologists take on this film and all of the footage in it. There are candid scenes caught on camera where her frustration with an interviewer bringing up questions about her Nazi past is depicted clearly as a neurosis, as an inability to admit the truth and admit that she really was a Nazi, even if she never pledged it and/or joined the military officially. It’s so obvious. Ultimately it feels like a good case study in how someone complicity can live a life full of denial and never deal with the truth because it diminishes their reputation. There are mountains of evidence presented in here that not only prove that did Riefenstahl know what was going on in Germany, but also she never did a single thing about it, or cared much about any of the victims. She was a well-known friend of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, telling stories about how she’d just go chat with them at any time about some topic; she even married a Nazi Officer at one point near the end of the war. She absolutely knew what was going on, there’s no doubt about it. She just doesn’t want to admit that she knew. That’s what this is really about.
When I watch carefully crafted, complex, prickly documentary films like this one, I prefer not to try and tell other people what to think while watching. It’s up to you. But with Riefenstahl there is no debate, there is no way it’s acceptable to think she deserves to be considered innocent. By the halfway point, with footage after footage of her telling lies, it’s irrefutably clear that Veiel’s point is to settle the debate once and for all. This is where the film quietly shifts into becoming an examination of how many of the people who are involved in evil regimes almost always come across as normal – as regular people just calmly living their lives. The film is an totally unexpected yet remarkable companion to the Oscar winner The Zone of Interest – a powerful look at the banality of evil. They go hand-in-hand because they vividly show us that Nazis were not brooding monsters, they were “regular” people, like anyone you know. Most importantly the evilness perpetuated by the Nazis was never a real concern in their minds. While the Nuremberg trials did try to make them confront this directly, many others like Leni Riefenstahl got away without being indicted. This doc is a once-and-for-all final look at Leni Riefenstahl, settling her legacy – she was an exceptional filmmaker and she was a Nazi.
Alex’s Venice 2024 Rating: 9 out of 10
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