Nazi spoof breaks German taboo
Berlin – A colony of Nazis living on the dark side of the Moon is plotting to invade Earth to take revenge for their World War II defeat. The unlikely premise of Iron Sky made it one of the hottest tickets at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and marked another step in Germany’s coming to terms with its past.
More than 65 years after the war, another taboo has been broken by the comedy, which sold out in an hour and gave Germans the chance to laugh at the Nazis in scenes that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
Under the slogan ‘‘The Space Hun is coming’’, the Nazi war machine is lampooned by slow motion goose-stepping on the lowgravity Moon and the death of a key character when his exuberant Hitler salute touches a power line.
Iron Sky has been several years in the making and attracted some of its 7.5 million (NZ$11.8M) budget from the German taxpayer, but needed nearly 1m from ‘‘crowd-sourcing’’ – donations from individual fans attracted by the film’s website. Its screening went ahead despite renewed concerns about neo-nazi activity in Germany after the discovery last year of a terror cell that killed at least 10 people, including nine immigrants.
Franco-german actress Julia Dietze, who plays a teacher drilling children in Nazi propaganda, told Bild newspaper that she took the role because she thought it was now acceptable to make Nazi comedies. ‘‘It is not only a satire, it is very much an anti-nazi film,’’ she said. ‘‘I asked many of my Jewish friends if I should take the role and they said yes.’’
She added that it had been ‘‘a real effort to do the Hitler salute’’, which remains a criminal offence in Germany and Austria. Like the swastika, its use is permissible only in artistic or educational work. This is something that Iron Sky makes the most of, basing its lunar Nazis in a swastika-shaped fortress accidentally discovered by an American moon mission.
The leading man, Udo Kier, also spoke of his discomfort at playing a Nazi. As a baby in 1944, he had to be rescued from the rubble with his mother after their hospital in Cologne was bombed in an Allied raid. ‘‘I find it difficult to wear a Nazi uniform and if you are wearing it and shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ you feel a shiver running down your spine. I did not want to do a pastiche on Hitler. I did not want to shout and bark. The film is a comedy. It is not about the Holocaust, but about power.’’
Directed by a Finn and mostly filmed in English, Iron Sky has received mixed reviews, with some critics claiming it did not live up to the internet hype.
‘‘It is neither as trashy as the fans hoped, nor as tasteless as the PC brigade feared,’’ the Reutlinger Nachrichten newspaper said. But Andreas Borcholte, in Der Spiegel, wrote: ‘‘Laughing at the Nazis, that’s refreshing – especially in the capital.’’