Labyrinth of Lies is yet another movie that I knew nothing about. I became interested in it solely because of the cover and the swastika in particular. This led me to assume that the story-line would be about someone doing investigations about Nazi connections and were led into circles by lies from various people. I wasn’t so wrong. This is basically what Labyrinth of Lies is about. We get to follow this prosecutor who for some reason starts to investigate a teacher. This teacher supposedly had Nazi background and unfit for teaching in school. That’s the starting point of it all anyway. From there everything escalates into huge proportions.
I’m not sure when the movie takes place on the timeline but it’s after the end of world war II obviously. I would guess that it’s set in the late 50’s or 60’s but I can’t remember any dates being mentioned. Maybe there were and I wasn’t paying attention? It doesn’t really matter anyway. The important thing is that it’s set in a time before we could call ourselves enlightened. It’s set in Germany and that makes it very interesting. It’s also necessary for the film to work. If it hasn’t been for being set i Germany we would have the element of denial. That’s one thing that makes this a great movie. The lack of knowledge what actually happened in Auschwitz and the other camps.
It seems pretty far fetched that officials wouldn’t know what happened but the cover up stories has been very nicely made up. The “awakening” of the investigating prosecutor is very touching. Soon he won’t be able to separate those that were forced into “the party” to ensure their own survival and those that were true Nazis. Or those that still are Nazis. Everyone is a bad guy in his eyes. The genocide is something the entire country – collectively – should be ashamed of seems to be his stance in the mess. And a mess it is. There’s loads and loads of people to investigate and it’s impossible to prosecute them all. Instead it becomes a matter of spreading the knowledge of what really happened.
Labyrinth of Lies is based on true events. That makes it even more interesting in my book. I really like those movies and I like investigating reporters, even if it’s a investigating prosecutor in this case. The subject is strong and very important. The investigations even goes as high up as Mengele and Eichmann. Maybe the film turns out to be a glitch to long but it’s very interesting most of the time and no eye will be dry during the end scenes of the film. Highly recommended take of the World War II wake.
