The Bargain Nexus - Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

This is a spellbinding four hour, twenty eight minute documentary, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary film in 1988. Yes, it rings as true 16 years later as it did then, perhaps even more so! It is as timeless a documentary as Leni Riefenstahls "Triumph of the Will" documenting the aspirations of the Third Reich itself. Interlaced with Barbies story, Ophüls hangs out in pool halls with "everyday" Frenchmen, hears their opinions, visits Barbie's childhood home where the high school he attended has no institutional memory of him, to the mountains of Bolivia where even the uniforms of the President and his minions are reminiscent of Hugo Boss's designs of uniforms for the Third Reich...

This is a fascinating trip through the Western World of the 20th century that, in my opinion stands the test of time as one of the best on the personalities of the Third Reich. The legal problems facing Jackson at Nuremberg reappear in the 1980s as Barbie is finally, after many years, extradited back to France although his whereabouts are known. France struggles to deal with its own complicity, the failings of its own legal system...and in the days to come, we will see this drama re-emerge in the post-Iraq War II.

Barbie re-emerges as a brutal man, though ill in late life, and the witnesses bring him to life. The Jewish children, hidden in the countryside, whom he deported to Auschwitz are heard from once again. A deported Jew is but vaguely remembered by an apartment-house neighbor. The stench of Evil remains, even in the prevarications of common bureaucrats.

Although not rated, this film is not appropriate for pre-teens, and should be seen by teenagers and young adults only when the context can be discussed with informed adults.

Had Marcel Ophüls produced no other work, and this one obviously took years, it would have been enough.

Although repeated many times, those who do not learn from history seem bound to repeat it. Globally, we're not doing very well, as it would seem so aptly demonstrated here.

Ophuls is best known for two reasons, one being the butt of a famous Woody Allen line, and the other for his father, the director Max Ophuls. He is a first rate documentarian and commentator in his own right, and it is best evidenced here.

He tells this story in an original fashion, a well organized fashion. While his appearance may at times appear to be comic his questions are well placed, and the answers he gets while sometimes offensive and absurd, are real, there is no spin.

His central theme may be that justice was only served when it served those in power, namely the Reagan administration and French President Francois Mitterand. The Cold War made strange bedfellows, and French confusion over the Vichy Regime and the Holocaust clouded the journey to bring Klaus Barbie to justice. Ophuls shows all of that, a myriad of people who all thought they were doing the right thing, Germans, French, Americans, and South Americans.

This movie does run over four hours, but I feel almost anyone will be fascinated by the subject and more so the people which run the gambit from heroes to rogues. You may be offended and shocked at times, you will also find humor, and most of all that people will say anything. This movie will also leave you with many questions, Ophuls answers many, but his movie leaves many more, not his failing but a tribute to his work, so in the end Woody Allen was wrong about Ophuls in general.