This is a must watch film. It's a complex and controversial story, well written, well acted, and the direction is superb.

The one dimensional nature of the main characters works very well - we see but a snapshot of the complexity of human nature and this begs you to ask the question of what would you do if you found yourself placed in such circumstances.

This is perhaps a trademark of Costa-Gavras's work (Mad City, Missing and Z in particular)

It is not just a cold view of the history of the time nor is it seeking to provide an answer to the big question - just shed light on the circumstances and on human nature.

One of a plethora of films about the WWII Jewish holocaust, "Amen" is a fact/fiction accounting of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's futile attempts to ameliorate the extermination of Jews in Nazi death camps; particularly his appeals to Pope Pius XII whose papacy was at the center of a firestorm of postwar criticism for everything from negligence to cowardice. This serious minded film portrays Gerstein, a technical consultant who reluctantly helped plan the gassing of Jews, as a man tortured by conscience who attempts to exploit his position with the SS in support of the Jews. "Amen" offers good production value for a story which is probably too esoteric and anticlimactic to have broad dramatic appeal among movie patrons. Given that the ratio of fact to fiction is lost in history and the outcome is a given, "Amen" will find little appreciation beyond those with an abiding interest in the holocaust. (B)

In World War II, the sanitation engineer and family man Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) is assigned by SS to be the Head of the Institute for Hygiene to purify the water for the German Army in the front. Later, he is invited to participate in termination of plagues in the concentration camps and he develops the lethal gas Zyklon-B. When he witnesses that the SS is killing Jews instead, he decides to denounce the genocide to the Pope to expose to the world and save the Jewish families. The idealist Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz) from an influent Italian family gives his best efforts being the liaison of Gerstein and the leaders of the Vatican.

I do not have the knowledge of history to know whether this story is accurate or manipulative, but as a movie it is powerful and striking. Costa-Gavras directs this film about Holocaust based on the history of the German Kurt Gerstein, who unsuccessfully tried to tell the world about the mass murderers in the concentration camps. The performance of Ulrich Tukur is magnificent, giving total credibility to his character. With regard to the role of the Catholic Church, I believe the exposition is simplistic and does not show the big picture of the political environment that the Vatican was living in that historical moment, focusing only in the attempt of the SS officer in having an audience with the Pope. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Amém." ("Amen.")