Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

SnoopyStyle It's 1958 Frankfurt, West Germany. Johann Radmann is a young by-the-books prosecutor toiling in traffic court and believing his father to be anti-Nazi. Reporter Thomas Gnielka brings the case of Charles Schulz, a teacher suspected of being a Nazi guard in Auschwitz. Nobody cares about what happened there and actively ignores the collective Nazi past. He starts a relationship with Marlene Wondrak. Gnielka introduces him to camp survivor Simon Kirsch. Radmann starts digging into the past and building a case against many. His main obsession is camp doctor Josef Mengele who experimented on the prisoners.The history is very compelling. However, the story lacks danger or intensity. It needs some additional drama. There is some professional and personal drama but none of it is that intense. The production and acting is first rate. It is a very compelling watch although there are no big surprises.

Antonia Tejeda Barros Major Parker (Tim Williams). Originally in German in the movie (the American Major speaks German to Johann Radmann): "You were all Nazis. In the Eastern sector, now you are all communists. Jesus, you Germans! If little green men from Mars landed tomorrow, you would all become green".Finally a movie that shows the culpability of the common German people in the Holocaust! The Holocaust didn't happen just because of 4 Nazi psychos, but thanks to millions of ordinary men (90% of the Germans from 1940-41) who supported the Nazi ideology and happily collaborated in the massacres of millions of innocent men, women and children. By the way, two books that brilliantly demonstrate the collaboration of the vast and overwhelming majority of Germans in the gigantic Nazi killing machine are Rethinking the Holocaust, by Yehuda Bauer (a masterpiece) and Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Goldhagen.Im Labyrinth des Schweigens shows the fast oblivion in Germany of the atrocities committed by the Germans just 10 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, and the impunity millions of murderers enjoyed, people who tortured, massacred and gassed millions of Jews and non-Jews in the 1940s. Only very few Germans heard about Auschwitz before the famous Eichmann trial in 1961.Im Labyrinth des Schweigens focuses on the the period prior to the trials that took place in Frankfurt between December 20, 1963 and August, 1965 (called in German der Auschwitz- Prozess) against very few SS members who operated in Auschwitz. The trials were ridiculous and a spit on the 1,100,000 victims who were massacred and gassed in Auschwitz. From the 7,000 SS members who operated in Auschwitz during the war, only 22 dogs were judged at the Frankfurt Trials. Nevertheless, the attempt for a pinch of justice was important. From the 22 SS members, only 6 got life imprisonment, many got ridiculous sentences ranging from 3 to 10 years, and 5 were simply released.Im Labyrinth des Schweigens shows the extreme difficulty of judging the murderers because of the silence the Germans kept and their attempt to hide the truth.Im Labyrinth des Schweigens got many prizes (although none were extremely important) and it was the film that Germany presented for the category 'Best Foreign Language Film' (Oscars, 2016), although it was not nominated.I always believed that the only way Germans (and Austrians) have today to clean the blood their parents and grandparents spilled is to be deeply anti-Nazi. But how many Germans and Austrians are there today who are deeply anti-Nazi?"Schweigen" is "silence" in German. The correct translation of the title would be: "In the Labyrinth of Silence". In English the title has been poorly translated as Labyrinth of Lies.The best: the fact that the culpability of the German common pig in the Holocaust finally arouses.The worst: that even when the film shows Fritz Bauer (the judge who made the Frankfurt Trials possible), the character of Johann Radmann (brilliantly performed by Alexander Fehling) is fictitious.

Karl Self In Germany, particularly tricky historical scenarios are seen as ideal stomping grounds for budding directors. This has to do with the labyrinthine system of public film subsidies, which tend to favour movies that deal with important and worthwhile subjects. Ideally Germany's notorious semi-recent history.The result is often something like Im Labyrinth des Schweigens, in which bloody murder is given the soap opera treatment. The story of how grizzled chief public prosecutor Fritz Bauer prosecuted some of the murderers of the Auschwitz concentration camp is replaced by a cheesy tale of a handsome, young and naive attorney stumbling on the largest crime in history.

Lucas Versantvoort It's always fascinating to see how WWII still lives on. The question of remembering vs letting bygones be bygones is still as relevant as ever. It seems like every year or so another film on the Holocaust is released. All the more interesting then when it's Germany releasing such a film. Im Labyrinth des Schweigens takes a (for me at least) little explored subsection of postwar Germany, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials that started in 1963.Johann Radmann is a typical protagonist: young and ambitious; he's also a lawyer. Besides the fact he, like many of his countrymen, is oblivious to the horrors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust is his only character flaw. When an angry journalist alerts him to this fact, he starts to pursue the case of the unprosecuted SS officers with unmatched zeal. Time and again, however, he finds himself with confronted with a society either too ignorant or too unwilling to air its dirty laundry, to really get its troubled past out in the open. Nevertheless, after a herculean effort on the part of Radmann and others, the trial did eventually took place which led to the conviction of 17 people—Gestapos, dentists, adjutants and so on—who were involved in the horrors of Auschwitz.If there's anything Im Labyrinth des Schweigens does well, it's conveying the very silence conveyed in the title. The notion that Nazism was rooted out with the Nuremberg trials is treated with great disdain by the film. The film conveys the naiveté of many of Germany's citizens at the time as well as their reasons for doing so. There's a short scene that perfectly encapsulates this idea: Radmann and his superior are at odds with two colleagues. One of them states that digging up this part of Germany's past can only do more harm than good. Just now, when we're 'trying to move on', a case like this might force every German child to look at his parents with suspicion. Such an effect is toxic he claims to which Radmann's superior responds that it's precisely the forced silence which is toxic, particularly in a democracy which is still so young. In a single short scene we're treated to a convincing representation of both sides of the argument.The film has two weaknesses: strange tonal shifts and a boring, irrelevant romance. The first one is difficult to describe as it makes it sound like I wanted Im Labyrinth to be a melodramatic trauermarsch of sorts with zero comic relief. This is not the case. Aptly timed humor and other non-dramatic content can add greatly to character development and so on, but with Im Labyrinth I felt there were certain tonal inconsistencies. It also doesn't help the film features an incredibly forced romance between Radmann and a young woman. I get that the romance is there to generate a conflict not dissimilar to Fincher's Zodiac, where the investigator's family life is threatened by his obsessions. Im Labyrinth tries to do the same thing, but—save for a few moments—the romance is never really connected to the main storyline, so it feels like an afterthought. There's also some really cringe-worthy writing: during their first (and thankfully only) lovemaking session, she for some reason tells him that 'life's good'…uhh, okay. You see where I'm going with this? It just feels like it's going through the motions. The filmmakers first create the obligatory romance and then threaten to disrupt it to make us feel for Radmann, but it never works. This is made all the more strange by the fact that a certain plot twist regarding Radmann's own family is far more convincing in making us feel for him.All in all though, despite the occasional cringe, Im Labyrinth des Schweigens is very interesting to watch. In the end, it undeniably succeeds at what is undoubtedly its main task: illuminating the why and how of Germany's postwar silence on the Holocaust.