Picture the joyfully-united, post-Cold War, skies-crowded-with-hopes -and construction-cranes, newly-reborn city of Berlin. Against this dynamic background, picture the New German: an up-and-coming public prosecutor named Peter Rohm (Kai Wiesinger). Rohm is very good at what he does (which includes defending the occasional drug dealer) but is curiously unable to finish a book he's been working on about a notorious historical figure: Dr. Josef Mengele, "the Angel of Death of Auschwitz", and "the worst criminal of all time" as he is bitterly described in this film.

Following a strange series of encounters in Berlin, Peter Rohm is kidnapped and taken to Argentina, where Mengele fled after Nazi Germany's defeat, dying — reportedly — in 1979, and leaving bones found six years later in a well-publicized exhumation. Those bones, it is explained to Rohm on arrival, were actually the bones of Mengele's cousin: the doctor himself, with his flesh still firmly attached to his own bones, is the explainer. The location is the cozy cottage of Mengele's exile — which, he also explains, is over. For Dr. Mengele wants to go home to die, and he wants the dynamic Peter Rohm to defend him when he faces the trial inevitably awaiting. Though he first refuses, Rohm realizes — as does the crafty Mengele — that this is an offer which cannot be refused.

After the Truth (or, Nothing But The Truth) kicked up a nasty controversy when it was released in Germany last month: it was the first German film to shine so bright a light on the darkest moment of that country's past. Even financing the film was a bit of an adventure, for the lead actors had to pitch in a half-million dollars of their own money after nervous investors withrew their support just as production was about to begin.

The storm in Germany over the film matches the storm in Germany depicted in the film. The judge overseeing what seems a trial pitting "Humanity versus Josef Mengele" takes it for granted that the doctor's attorney, like everyone else, has already made up his mind that Mengele is an inhuman monster. Yet Rohm ends up doing his job all too well, as the very questions that posed obstacles to finishing his book fuel his impassioned and effective defense.

Götz George embues the mythic Mengele with undeniable Darth Vader-like magnetism (or did George Lucas do the opposite?): indeed, this is the face that should have been under that black helmet — a cross between the bald-headed vampire of classic German cinema, Nosferatu, and the likewise shaven Marlon Brando as the mad genius Kurtz in Apocalypse Now — though George's Mengele is not nearly as as distracted by the profound mystery of human evil was the Brando Kurtz. Indeed, Mengele is focussed and shrewd: like Hanibal Lector, he gets inside the mind of his young foe (for even though he must defend Mengele, Rohm remains his antagonist) and makes him face his own worst fears: a truth he already knows.

At the end of Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish village — the "Shtele" (shteh-t-l) — Anatevka, packs up after a persecution and scatters. Some are going to the Holy Land. A few, to the Promised Land of America. Viewers with a sense of subsequent European history know that others headed West aren't going far enough: Tevye's daughter Hodel and her Russian husband are bound for Cracow, Poland, and one wants to shout at the screen: "Don't go there!" — knowing Tevye's daughter's and descendents' final destination in Poland might well be Auschwitz. The movie Train of Life begins almost as just this sort of tragic sequel to Fiddler on the Roof: the setting is another Eastern European Shtele, full of the same magic and idiosycracies as Anatevka — full also of the same "Fiddleresque" precariousness of existence in a hostile world, and balanced by the same "Trad-dish-shuuuunn!".

Unfortunately, this shtetle is haunted by the same Tradition of violent anti-semitism, though in the case depicted in this film, the scientific pograms of the Nazis, the ultimate aim was a "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem", leaving no survivors to emigrate and start over elsewhere.

It was in last year's Best Foreign Picture, Life Is Beautiful that Italian comic genius (and Best Director winner) Roberto Benigni demonstrated to viewers worldwide that such somber subject matter might be treated with humor. And indeed, in the likewise comic film Train of Life, it is the village fool, Shlomo, who comes up with an idea so crazy it might just work: why not escape the invading Nazis by creating a phony deportation train — thereby saving the entire shtele? Of all the subtitled foreign films at this year's Chicago International Film Festival, this one was the only one I noticed that had sewn-up a big U.S. distribution deal. You can just imagine the village — er, executives at Paramount thinking this one over: "It's an Italian comedy about the Holocaust — it even has the word 'Life' in the title! Deja vu all over again!" At least, that's what they're banking on you to think. But don't let Paramount make a fool out of you: this Life isn't nearly so beautiful.

Unlike Roberto Benigni, the director of this Holocaust comedy is Jewish: and so Radu Mihaileanu has embued his scenes of shtele life with an ethnic richness that wasn't necessarily present in the more universal approach of Life is Beautiful. But what I want to know is, if this director has so much reverence for his people's tradition, why violate that tradition with gratuitous nude scenes? And why interrupt a scene depicting a Shabbat service with a heckler, who lays out his own "God is dead" theology, a message to which the Rabbi's response is, basically, "Gee, why didn't I think of that?" Flannery O'Connor spoke of the artist's task as capturing the "mystery and manners" of a people; Mihaileanu captures well his people's manners, but he doesn't seem to have the first clue about the mystery.

Neither does he have the firmest grip on the manners of farce: for even that loopy subgenre has certain rules, and this one sometimes strains credulity so hard it isn't funny — the "Bolshevik revolution" that occurs on the train as it is escaping the Nazis being just one example. At times I felt I was in the middle of a Mel Brooks film that just wasn't working: indeed, unlike Life Is Beautiful, I felt this "Holocaust comedy" brought us into the neighborhood of "Springtime for Hitler", the centerpiece for a Mel Brooks film that did work, The Producers: that film turned on a notorious musical about Hitler that was funny because it was supposed to be in terrible taste. Lest we forget, there was a good reason that "Holocaust comedy" was not a popular genre when Benigni made his film.

The publicity campaign for Train of Life includes this poster slogan: "An Unforgettable Fable About the Search for A Miracle". Without telling you how the film ends, I will close noting that it seemed to me a tragic comment on the nature of the miraculous, leaving one wondering just what moral of the story we were supposed to draw from this celebration of a lost tradition.

An attempt to create a Mexican "Joan of Arc": Sister Maria Inez hears voices, leads a revolution of sorts, and ends burned as a witch/martyr. The setting is a Spanish mission in La Nueva Espain, 1659. The Padre in charge thinks less about the needs of his indigent flock than raising money to build a cathedral. The sisters are separated even further from the outside world, their lives reduced to doing laundry and washing dishes for the monks. Among them is Maria, the meztizo child of a Spanish aristocrat who went home to Spain, leaving his daughter at the mission. There Maria grew into an unusally modern woman: an independent thinker, a whiz at botony, astronomy, cartography. Indeed, a swashbuckling friend of dubious reputation urges Maria to escape the cloister to the wide world that is clearly opening up for her. She hesitates, and then the monks and nuns, long jealous of Maria's independence and intellect, are given the opportunity to take that world away from Maria: after her father's death, they falsely accuse her of various sins, and as punishment Maria is locked into a tiny cell. Except for the cartoon baddies, Ave Maria is relatively promising up until this point: but Maria's turning point is also the point at which this Mexican film goes South.

Alone in her cell, Maria has a mystical religious experience that seems to most observers to be a form of madness. Gone is the multi-talented modern woman (unfortunately), replaced by a mystic who reaches out with an ecumenical (and colorless) Gospel to her conquered people. It's hard to argue with Maria when, in one scene, she stops a conquistador from raping an Indian, ripping a crucifix from his neck ("How can you wear this symbol while you inflict so much suffering!"). On the other hand, it's hard to take the the simplistic superhero approach to the story, or the questionable (but increasingly common) tactic of depicting a religious figure rejecting the essentials their religion so they can spout the director's creed.

Give this film an "E" for Effort. An "A+" for production values. But Ave Maria fails at subtlety and depth: when a director sets out to depict a kangaroo court, he must be careful he doesn't create one in the process, thereby falling into the role of marsupial judge. Neither this film nor Train of Life speak with an authoritative voice: and I'm not talking about the ethnic settings or cinematic craftsmanship, but spiritual authority, a depiction of religious experience from the inside.

For that, see the next film.

The "other-worldly" orientation of the religious believer seems an irresponsible escape from the "real world" to the more practical-minded among us, those more "down-to-earth". Thus, "cloister" can be a relatively neutral term referring to the lives and home of people who live in monestaries or convents, but it can also be used as a term of contempt by practical people against those who would seek to separate themselves from "the world".

Not of this World is a profound and beautiful film, exploring both the notion of cloisters and that of escapism: asking of the latter a question usually forgotten in the rush to judgment — namely, what is it one is seeking escape from and to? This Italian film won the Silver Hugo at the 1999 Chicago International Film Festival (Second Place over-all), and embodies the collision of two worlds in a pious nun and a very practical businessman.

Sister Caterina (Margherita Buy) plans to take her perpetual vows soon and join a mission in Latin America. During a visit to the convent, her mother stirs up what is clearly an old argument between them, sighing "Why throw your life away like this?" The aroma of nervous anger clinging to this practical woman reminds us there's plenty in "this world" to drive one into the cloister.

Businessman Ernesto (Silvio Orlando), on the other hand, manages to be "of" without being "in" the world. Though resembling Peter Sellers, his stress and sadness are not the least farcical: he is cloistered in busyness, closed-off even from his employees, whose lives hold no interest for him, whose names he cannot even remember. Clearly, Ernesto could use a little restorative silence: paradoxically, his life is one of quiet desperation.

The worlds of Caterina and Ernesto collide when the nun, walking through the park, is suddenly handed an abandoned baby — a child Ernesto, through various circumstances, is forced realize he may have fathered. The infant pulls nun and businessman from their respective cloisters into worlds both had shut themselves away from. Or pulled — literally — from cloister to cloister: Ernesto follows Sister Caterina into a soup kitchen (where this man of Scrooge-like tendencies ends up serving street people) and into the convent (where he finds himself playing a game of Bingo with the sisters.)

As they are drawn deeper into the life of the child and into one another's lives, the conflict between worlds becomes a running argument between Ernesto and Sister Caterina. "What do you know of life?" says Ernesto, predictably. "You're not of this world." But don't think this film sets the "reality" of the streets against the "illusion" of religious faith. Indeed, I'd love to have a book of the sayings of Sister Caterina, whose voice of spiritual experience is as authentic as any I've ever heard in a film.

"God is hard work sometimes."

"God doesn't have to listen to us. We have to listen to Him."

The film uses a motif similar to the trademark bit from When Harry Met Sally. In the latter film, the action was periodically interupted by documentary-style interviews with married couples describing how they met. In Not of This World, the recurring chorus consists of group shots of characters from the film, shyly smiling at the camera like they were posing for a photo. These groups include background characters we may not have otherwise noticed, often grouped by occupation — employees of Ernesto's laundry, the staff of the hospital where the baby was taken, workers in a grocery, a soda fountain, security guards. Sometimes included in these groups shots are people who don't appear at all in the main narrative — "spouses" or "friends" of the characters, jarring the viewer with a sense that even the background characters in this film have individual lives, hopes and dreams.