At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.