I admit I wasn’t too excited to watch Look Who’s Back, a 2014 German comedy with a dumb-looking poster of a bemused Adolf Hitler lying on some crumpled fall leaves. The Netflix synopsis is even worse: “A notorious dictator wakes up in the new millennium. The YouTube generation can’t possibly take him seriously. Can it?”
Spoiler: They can.
Thankfully, this movie is far more clever, in fact eerily prescient, than its slapstick branding suggests, and it makes a strong case for how a conniving, manipulative, power-hungry bigot could rise to political power in the 21st century. (Spelling out the Donald Trump parallels for each scene would be overkill, so just keep him in the back of your mind while reading the rest of this article.)
The film opens with Hitler, in full military dress, magically reappearing with an explosive poof in Berlin. He doesn’t know how he got there, and nobody takes him seriously – to them, he’s just a prankster dressed like Hitler, and his insane hate speech sounds anachronistically funny.
As the weeks pass, he quickly learns as much as he can about this new Germany. He reads every newspaper, watches (with disgust) local television and teams up with a desperate freelance videographer, who, in return for some exclusive viral-prone footage, grants him a window to achieve his new goal: returning to Germany’s political stage.
Though the movie is based on a 2012 German novel by the same name, director David Wnendt flips back and forth between this cartoonish “I’ll scratch your back” buddy comedy and actual, real-world shaky-cam documentary footage of Hitler touring Germany, talking to locals about what’s gone wrong since he disappeared 60 years ago. This double cinematic style makes for an uneven two-hour movie – the plot isn’t very gripping, especially toward the end – but the doc footage following this villainous Borat is grimly frightening.
One woman, a former east Berliner, believes modern elections are just as rigged in this “democratic” society as they were in communist times, and blames immigrants for the struggling economy. (“You can’t say anything either,” she laments. “If you do, they’ll call you xenophobic.”)
The next man wants to bring back labour camps, boasting that he tells it “like it is” – a sentiment Hitler solemnly agrees with. Another, older gentleman is even more blunt: “All those bearded folks, the ones who are suspicious, should be kicked out.”
On the road, Hitler narrates to the audience: “There was a silent anger, a discontent among the people that reminded me of 1930.” Later, he reveals his plan to an interviewee: he wants “to make Germany great again.”
Eventually, Hitler reaches a nationally televised audience. He’s a hit on social media. His speeches are auto-tuned on YouTube. Late-night hosts crack jokes about him. Throughout it all, Hitler appears confident, charming and in control of the narrative.
Even when rocked by a scandalous video leaked to the public, which threatens his public future, he recovers and re-emerges, stronger and more valuable to TV ratings than ever.
Look Who’s Back was released in 2014, before global eyes turned to Europe’s migrant crisis and Brexit sent shock waves across Europe. The rise of far-right Westerners has been a long time coming. Only Hitler, and his like-minded real-world counterparts, cared to really listen.
I suspect Wnendt omitted footage of his Hitler actor being yelled at or accosted in public while trying to make this film. Fair enough – he’s making a political point, so he’s only going to use content that suits his argument.
But he gives us at least one moment, when Hitler is sketching caricatures in a Bavarian public square for giddy passersby taking photos on their smartphones, of a civilian speaking up: “If someone comes to the central square in Bayreuth impersonating Hitler, and if that is being tolerated by the general public, then I have to say: this is bad for Germany.”
He’s right, of course. But no one else said anything
