THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL 1978

(Spoiler Alert)

To understand the movie, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, you must have a grasp of what became of high- ranking Nazis in the aftermath of WWII.  After Germany’s involvement ended in May 1945, the allied countries set about putting party leaders on trial.  This took place in Nuremburg from November of 1945 through the following October.  For the first time ever, the charge of genocide, defined as "the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others." was added as a specific type of war crime.  Of the twenty-two defendants tried, only three were not found guilty; the rest received varying degrees of punishment.  Among those convicted was Herman Goering, one-time commander of the Gestapo, who was sentenced to death but committed suicide the night before his execution.   Another leading Nazi party member that was jailed for his actions was Rudolph Hess, the deputy Führer under Hitler; he had been captured in 1941 when he came to England in a supposed attempt to negotiate peace.  He was sentenced to life in prison, and, later, also committed suicide.*
   

Some of the most sought-after Nazis, however, avoided the tribunals.  Adolph Hitler and his close ally, Joseph Goebbels, both committed suicide right before the war ended; and Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust, and Dr. Joseph Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death of Auschwitz, escaped to South America.  Eichmann, who was responsible for the Final Solution and drew up the plans that transported Jews to concentration camps, was captured in Buenos Aires in May of 1960 using information obtained by an Austrian-Jew named Simon Wiesenthal.  Wiesenthal, also known as the Nazi Hunter, spent four years in a series of concentration camps, from 1941 to May of 1945 when the Americans liberated Mauthausen. As soon as the camp was under allied control, Wiesenthal turned over a list of a hundred names of suspected Nazis to the American Counterintelligence Corps that had been set up at the camp.  He continued to work with the Corps when it was moved to Linz, and later turned to helping Europeans Jews get into Palestine and gathering information against Nazi personnel from concentration camp victims.  When the Nuremburg trials ended, Wiesenthal kept the files he had collected and continued pursuing Nazis, which was how he became involved in the Eichmann case.  Through his research, Wiesenthal discovered Eichmann’s location and forwarded that information to the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.  Israeli officials convinced Argentina to extradite Eichmann to their county where he stood trial, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people, and was hanged in 1962.  


After his success in the Eichmann case, Wiesenthal continued his search for Nazi criminals, one of which was Dr. Joseph Mengele, the chief medical doctor of Auschwitz.  Mengele’s duties included making selections for the gas chambers and supervising the camp’s medical facilities where he experimented on inmates; he was most interested in identical twins, but also studied pregnancy, dwarfism, physical deformity, and heterochromia iridium (different colored eyes).  Survivors of his experiments reported that he amputated limbs, intentionally infected children, and ordered the death of patients to collect samples for study.  Wiesenthal traced the doctor’s movements from Europe to South America but was never able to pinpoint his exact location.  In 1985 it came to light that the doctor had lived in numerous South American countries working as a farm hand or practicing medicine without a license under an assumed name.  He died of a stroke while swimming in 1979 and was buried in Brazil.  Once the location of the grave was revealed, forensic scientists exhumed the remains and used DNA testing to prove the body was that of Dr. Mengele.  Now that you’re caught up, let’s discuss the film.   


The movie opens to the strains of an original score written by Jerry Goldsmith and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra.  The melody, which vacillates between major cords reminiscent of a waltz and minor cords that turn the music threatening, alerts the viewer that the characters and their behaviors are not necessarily as innocent as they appear.  The location is Paraguay, the setting is a street festival where adults eat and drink while children play games or ride the merry-go-round.  Amid the frivolity, a Mercedes Limo crosses the plaza, a cadre of Nazi soldiers goose-step up the street, more soldiers ride past in jeeps blaring sirens, and men in suits stand in a tight group conferring in low whispers.  On the sideline is a lone young man, Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg), who is holding a camera and watching the goings on closely.  When he sees the limo pull through the gates of the colonial mansion that belongs to the Comrades Organization, an association run by Nazis, Kohler approaches a young boy on the property and talks to him; after a short discussion, he clandestinely hands the kid a radio, as if it’s in payment for something.  

In another part of town, a landlord is telling Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) that rent is overdue and that his countless boxes of files are so heavy they are causing the water pipes to break.  Then, the phone rings.  On the other end of the line is Kohler who says he’s read the many books and articles the Nazi hunter has written and wants to know whether the old man has looked at the photos that were sent to him.  As Lieberman’s sister, Esther (Lilli Palmer), digs around trying to find the documents, the young man continues with a warning that something is going on at the Comrades’ Organization.  Their limo picked up a man at the airport and transported him to the estate where a group of Nazis has gathered.  Lieberman, who is skeptical of the young man’s motives, brushes him off and Kohler is left to return to the mansion alone.  Once he’s hidden on the property, he uses a radio to pick up the group’s conversation through the bug he bribed the boy to plant.   

It turns out that the important guest is none other than Dr. Joseph Mengele.  As the boy sits on the steps in the hall, the doctor begins to address his audience, presenting a list of 94 ordinary men that he orders them to kill on specified dates over the next two and a half years.  Suddenly, the boy’s radio picks up the speech; Mengele hears it and grabs him.  Knowing the jig is up, Kohler runs back to his room, calls Lieberman, and begins to play a tape of the doctor’s speech.  Even though Nazis break in and kill the young man before the recording finishes, Lieberman has learned enough to be frightened of the doctor’s intents and begins to investigate. 

As his minions begin killing their targets by running them down with cars or throwing them off high buildings, Mengele returns to his remote manor where he experiments on natives and metes out punishments as if he’s the commandant of his own personal concentration camp.  The Comrades, who have learned of Lieberman’s investigation, send an emissary, Eduard Seibert (James Mason), who voices concerns about their nemesis, but Mengele is not swayed.  He doesn’t believe the older man poses a threat, and refuses to compromise his project, which has never been clarified, by recalling the assassins. But maybe Mengele should be worried.  Lieberman has been traveling Europe and the U.S., visiting families of the victims.  When he meets the first victim’s son, he is struck by the boy’s dark-haired blue- eyed good looks and age, which is early teens.  When Liberman asks the boy’s mother, who obviously spoils her son, whether her husband was a Nazi, she replies that he was not political at all; he was just a mean man who beat her child.  

Lieberman goes to the home of the next victim and finds that family also has a son who is identical to the first boy he met, and just as rude.  When Lieberman mentions the uncanny coincidence to the boy’s mother (Anna Meara), she becomes upset and makes him leave.  Later that night, however, she visits Lieberman at his hotel and confesses that her son is adopted and could be the other boy’s twin.  The woman explains that she and her husband got their son from a German woman named Frieda Maloney (Uta Hagen) who worked for the adoption agency.  Lieberman is appalled.  He knows Frieda Maloney is the pseudonym that a former guard in a women’s concentration camp began to use when she fled to the United States.  He helped catch her and provided witnesses at her trial who testified that the guard strangled inmates with their own hair and bayonetted babies; she was found guilty of crimes against humanity and incarcerated.  Lieberman obtains the prison’s permission to speak with Frieda about the adoptions.  The former Nazi explains that after coming to the U.S. her German comrades got her a job at an adoption agency so she could place certain white babies with Nordic couples where the husband was much older than his wife and worked as a civil servant.  When asked to describe the children, Frieda describes them as boys with black hair and blue eyes.  She brags that one of the families was so happy with her performance, they gave her a Doberman puppy; Lieberman uses the age of the dog to determine that the next man to be killed will be a Pennsylvania farmer named Henry Wheelock (John Dehner).  

He has a little time before the murder will take place, so Lieberman consults with Professor Bruckner (Bruno Ganz), a geneticist, to understand how unrelated children can have both identical looks and personalities.   Dr. Bruckner says that being identical twins would not explain the phenomenon because studies on children raised in different families showed they displayed dissimilar behaviors.  Instead, he says that the only explanation for the case Lieberman describes would be mononuclear reproduction, or cloning, which occurs when the genetic material of an unfertilized egg is destroyed and replaced with the DNA of an adult donor.  The donor does not even have to be alive because all that is needed is genetic code.  Once he understands the process, Lieberman realizes the only spoiled child with black hair, blue eyes, a domineering father that died at age 65, and a much younger mother that Mengele would want to clone is Adolph Hitler.   In a panic, he immediately sets out for the Wheelock residence.   

While Lieberman is getting a lesson in biology, Mengele is being informed by Siebert that, due to concerns over the Nazi hunter’s interference, the assassins have been recalled and the experiment cancelled.  Knowing that Mr. Wheelock is the next father on his list, Mengele heads to the man’s farm to perform the assassination himself before Lieberman can prevent it.  The doctor is the first to arrive; he is greeted by an older man, almost certainly Mr. Wheelock, who answers the door surrounded by half a dozen Dobermans.   After he tricks the man into letting him come in, Mengele makes up a story about being attacked by dogs as a child and convinces him to lock the pets in another room so they can talk.  Then, ascertaining that the man is at home alone, Mengele forces his hapless victim into the basement at gunpoint, shoots him, and returns to the living room where he waits for the man’s son, Bobby, to get home from school.  Then Lieberman arrives and, even though Mengele wounds him, he has just enough strength to set the dogs free; they immediately go after Mengele because he has a gun.


When Bobby gets home, he is intrigued by the goings on and starts photographing both men. Mengele asks him to call off dogs saying that he is a friend of the family and the doctor who delivered him.  He tries to say that Lieberman is dangerous, but Bobby knows Mengele is the threat because the dogs are guarding him.  Lieberman has nearly convinced Bobby to call the police when Mengele starts telling the boy how special he is; that he is different, that he is misunderstood…that he is the duplicate of Hitler. Unimpressed, Bobby calls the doctor weird.  Then, Lieberman tells him that the doctor killed his father and the boy begins to search the house and grounds.  When he finds his father’s lifeless body, Bobby instructs the dogs to attack the doctor and they tear Mengele apart.  The boy agrees to call an ambulance for Lieberman only if the old man promises not to tell the police what he did.  While Bobby is on the phone, Lieberman takes something from Mengele.  

Later at the hospital, someone comes into Lieberman’s room while he is sleeping.  It is David, a Mossad agent who supposedly came to replace Kohler.  He wants the list of the boys’ names so he can kill them.  Lieberman takes the list out of his pocket, puts a cigarette in his mouth, and picks up his lighter from the table, but instead of lighting his cigarette, the old man burns the paper in his hand.  In the final scene, Bobby is shown developing photos of Mengele’s corpse.  He seems unmoved by the carnage.  Will he turn out to be like Hitler?  


Throughout the film, we hear echoes of reality.  Lieberman’s many files, reputation as a Nazi hunter, and tireless pursuit of Mengele all point to him as being Wiesenthal.  There is even mention that he was involved in the capture of Eichmann.  Likewise, the doctor’s experiments on natives, hatred of Jews, and dedication to building an Aryan race all fit the real Mengele.  The only thing that does not ring quite true is his insistence that the clones’ environments match Hitler’s childhood, because the real Mengele adhered to the belief that heredity dictates behavior regardless of environment.  


Overall, my final analysis is that while ‘Eve’ intimated that nature is the most important predictor of behavior, and Anna to the Infinite Power suggested that nurture rules supreme, The Boys from Brazil indicates that both criteria are equally important.   This ends my series on the cloning films.  I will be back in two weeks to switch gears and talk about the musical Across the Universe.  Until then…enjoy a lot of flicks because fourteen days gives you plenty of time.



*The definition of genocide, information about the Nuremburg trials, and biographical data were taken from various articles in Wikipedia.