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Invincible (2002)
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Reviews Counted:51
Fresh:27
Rotten:24
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: Sluggish and flawed, this is a minor work in Herzog's career.
Runtime: 2 hrs 15 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Werner Herzog's first fiction film since 1984's WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM, INVINCIBLE is based on the true story of Zishe Breitbart (Ahola), a Polish Jew from a humble shtetl who was touted as the... Werner Herzog's first fiction film since 1984's WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM, INVINCIBLE is based on the true story of Zishe Breitbart (Ahola), a Polish Jew from a humble shtetl who was touted as the world's strongest man. Discovered at a traveling carnival and brought to Berlin to perform in a nightclub run by the self proclaimed clairvoyant Erik-Jan Hanussen (Roth), Zishe is forced to perform feats of strength on stage in a blonde wig under the name Siegfried in order to mollify the club's significant Nazi contingent. However, as the naive Zishe begins to see the danger the Nazis represent to his people, he declares his heritage on stage, outraging the secretly Jewish Hanussen and his Aryan audience. Populating his cast with mostly nonprofessional actors, including Jouko Ahola, a Finnish real life "strongest man" contest winner, Herzog takes what could have been a rousing sentimental biopic and turns it into a brooding cautionary tale about a character with mythic aspirations. Providing contrast are Tim Roth's scaly and charismatic Hannussen, and Udo Kier's brief turn as the aristocratic Helldorf, which, combined with Herzog's dreamlike imagery, give the film the feeling of a surreal fable. [More]
Starring: Jouko Ahola, Tim Roth, Udo Kier, Ana Gourari
Starring: Jouko Ahola, Tim Roth, Udo Kier, Ana Gourari, Gustav-Peter Wöhler, Max Raabe, Renate Krossner, Zesha Breitbart
Director: Werner Herzog
Director: Werner Herzog
Screenwriter: Werner Herzog, E. Max Frye
Studio: Fine Line Features
Reviews for Invincible
A film which presses familiar Herzog tropes into the service of a limpid and conventional historical fiction, when really what we demand of the director is to be mesmerised.
Real-life strongman Ahola lacks the charisma and ability to carry the film on his admittedly broad shoulders.
By the time Papale does make it the big game, it's as if the air goes out of the movie and all Core can do is punt.
Edifies Herzog's preoccupation with blurring the distinction between performance and naturalism, fiction and documentary.
Invincible approaches history as myth, striving not to document reality, but to penetrate its tragic essence.
...the naivete of his performance has a humbling effect on a film that, while entirely too long and short on sizzling imagery, is meant to be taken simply as folkloric.
Herzog, a man of detail became enraptured with his subject and was unable to use his editing shears.
Blessed with immense physical prowess he may well be, but Ahola is simply not an actor. And in truth, cruel as it may sound, he makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Spencer Tracy.
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