Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is appalled to discover that a poison gas he helped discover is being used to kill Jews. Driven by his conscience to alert the rest of the world, Gerstein teams up with a young Jesuit priest, Riccardo Fontana, but their protestations fall on deaf ears in the Vatican.
Costa-Gavras's adaptation of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial play tackles the Holocaust with unflinching moral urgency. The plot is genuinely compelling — the dual narrative of Gerstein's desperate warnings and Fontana's escalating disillusionment with Vatican silence creates strong dramatic tension, earning a high mark. The ending, in which both men meet tragic fates while institutional indifference prevails, is powerfully bleak and thematically coherent — a genuine standout. Acting is solid if occasionally theatrical, reflecting the stage origins of the material. Cinematography is functional and assured but not strikingly original. Novelty is moderate — the Vatican-complicity-in-the-Holocaust angle was provocative, but the film follows a fairly conventional historical-drama structure and Costa-Gavras's political filmmaking style is well-established by this point.