Stylish but barely mediocre overall

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum) is a charming patient at a mental institution for Holocaust survivors in 1961 Israel. His doctor Nathan Gross (Derek Jacobi) is confounded. He is infatuated with nurse Gina Grey (Ayelet Zurer). He is haunted by dogs and starts to hallucinate. He finds a boy acting like a dog under his bed. Before the war, Adam was a magician, all-around entertainer. He was liked by everybody including the Nazis until he was put into a concentration camp. The camp was run by Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe) who recognized him. Adam survived by playing the part of the Commandant's "dog" while his family is killed off.There is an interesting performance from Jeff Goldblum. However everything else is done with such lifelessness. Both the asylum and the concentration camp are locations of absurd lunacy. There is a rambling nature to the story. It is almost Kafkaesque. I wonder if there is too much time at the asylum. At its core, this must be a battle between Adam and Commandant Klein rather than Adam and the boy. The problem is that the movie spends too little time with Klein.

I was immediately taken in by this movie. Jeff Goldblum is excellent and the storyline is intriguing - at first. However, as the plot unfolds, the story becomes more and more unbelievable.Jeff Goldblum plays a well known Jewish comic/psychic/magician in Berlin, who is being harassed as early as 1936 by the Nazis (extreme intimidation tactics like those depicted in the film don't really get underway until after Kristallnacht in November 1938.) He arrives in a camp in 1944 which seems particularly late for such a prominent Jewish citizen (the most well known Jews generally disappeared first, either through emigration or arrest.) Once interred, a peculiar relationship is created between the commandant and Jeff Goldblum who, as a prisoner, must act like a dog. He thinks this will save his family... It is difficult to believe he acted like a dog on a long term basis, but the reason this is introduced into the story is because fifteen years later he helps a boy who thinks he is a dog. This part of the story occurs in a psychiatric hospital for holocaust survivors. The boy who thinks he is a dog is about 11 years old, which means he was born well after the war and thus not a camp survivor, but this is never explained in the film.It all reads like a plot taken from literature, which is exactly where it came from. The actors and director did an excellent job, some of the art direction (costuming, sets) was peculiar (what the hell were those boots the nurse wore!) but ultimately, you have to like an almost surreal plot line to appreciate this film. I am not a fan of this kind of literature - I prefer realism and films based on true stories. After all, truth is stranger than fiction.

To deal with the inconceivable you need to create a vocabulary that extends beyond the conventional. The powerful performances, the extraordinary literary devices and the sublime directing and editing help enormously. The end result, a satisfying glimpse into the ineffable is achieved by providing a vision, revealing a landscape that defies revelation. An unique and necessary achievement. An artistic collaborative triumph of the spirit. The difficulties in the conventional narrative are actually an opportunity to explore facets of the spectrum human behavior, from the animal/dog, human and the divine within. Most helpful was the extras on the DVD that provided additional background. BRAVO! And now part II please.

Jeff acting is great, like always. It's the whole theme of the movie, dark and just a little wacky at times, like getting turned on if the woman barks like a dog. I would totally understand if this movie was based on a true story and the movie is a interpretation of the book or something, but it's not. It's fiction story based on a holocaust survivor. Just makes you think what's going on inside of the head of these writers to write such a fictional event. Relating a human to a dog and getting turned on by watching a human bark like a dog. It maybe disturbing for some, and I see the reason why HowardStern found it disturbing as well.Acting/performance is great, director shot is great. Just a shame so much talent and performance went into a fictional storyline that's a bit on the disturbing side.