I Is Another Review: Claes Bang Plays Himmlers Masseur in Weighty Meditation on a WWII Footnote

In the compelling German suspense story I Is Another (Ich ist ein Anderer), protean Danish polyglot Claes Bang stars as Felix Kersten, an actual physiotherapist/masseur who claimed he was instrumental in persuading his client Heinrich Himmler to let Jewish prisoners go at the end of World War II but whose account remains disputed to this day. Writer-director Felix Randau finds an economical way to distill the mystery around the attractive but clearly egomaniacal Kersten by putting him in conversation on a train with Valerie Pachner’s fictional East German journalist, a woman with her own shady past.

The combustible onscreen chemistry of Bang (The Northman, Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Square, Apple TV’s Bad Sisters) and Pachner (Mata Hari in The King’s Man) represents a major selling point for this sly study of deception and delusion, one that feels eerily relevant in these “post-truth” times. Premiering in Locarno’s Piazza Grande, I Is Another could stretch its legs commercially with niche distributors beyond Germany.

Although the action flashes back periodically to the war years, most of the plot unfolds in a series of cramped cabins on a train bound for Oslo in 1952 on which Kersten is traveling, accompanied by his chirpy, bird-like wife Irmgard (a vivid Susanne Wuest, who co-starred in Randau’s earlier feature Iceman).

They are on their way to Norway to attend the press conference announcing candidates for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize, full of expectations that Felix is being considered for securing the release of concentration camp inmates in the Spring of 1945. This freeing of Scandinavian prisoners, also known as the White Buses incident, was (and is) generally credited to the intervention of Swedish Red Cross president Folke Bernadotte, who negotiated directly with Himmler.

In 1952, Kersten published a letter allegedly written by Bernadotte that painted the latter in a very unflattering light while making Kersten look like the real hero, a plot point incorporated into the script here in a way that’s not strictly historically accurate.

But that all happens later in the film. At the opening, unbeknownst to the Kerstens, another couple has booked the cabin next to them: Hedda (Pachner) and Winfried Wohmann (Timocin Ziegler), a reporter and photographer, respectively, from the German Democratic Republic. Hedda, clad in a blouse whose stripes reflect the zigs and zags of the plot’s twists and has a Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday vibe, launches a charm offensive to persuade Kersten to give her an interview.

The flattery and fluttering eyelashes work, and they settle down in his cabin with a vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder to go over his story, shown in flashbacks. Kersten describes how he came to treat SS Reich Leader Himmler (played with aptly martinetish froideur by Christoph Mueller) for chronic stomach pain. Over time, he gained the Nazi’s confidence, although Kersten insists he was never an employee of the SS as such or even a member of the Nazi Party.

Hedda and Felix’s interview is interrupted when he is summoned to take a phone call, giving her a chance to rummage around in his luggage for evidence of her suspicions, revealed earlier in a conversation with Winfried, that Kersten is not telling the whole truth. When Kersten catches her red-handed looking for his diary, he insists she take it away, read it and judge his honesty for herself.

His persuasive written testimony may seed in Hedda some small doubts about her previous doubts, but as she explains to Winfried, the diary could easily have been written years after the events it describes. As the interview resumes, she reveals knowledge of details that contradict his account, enraging the bearish Baltic German who reveals a violent streak under all that urbanity and command of five languages.

Bang is perfectly cast for the role, on account both of his own linguistic skills and his looming stature, creating a strong contrast with Pachner’s slight, elfin figure. When he bangs his fist on the rickety table and raises his voice, it looks like the next minute he might hit her or drag her to bed — either outcome seems possible.

Plus, it turns out that Hedda, her name echoing that of Henrik Ibsen’s famously complex character, is no exemplar of honesty herself. A scandal in her recent career resulted in her and Winfried being internally exiled from Berlin to provincial Halle, and she’s clearly hoping a big scoop will put her back in favor. Winfried has become an alcoholic, tortured by the memory of atrocities he committed as a soldier during the war. Hedda has her own personal history she’d like forgotten.

Unfortunately, Kersten, with his connections to Swedish intelligence, finds out more than she’d like about her background, so their conversation turns into a game of tit for tat, threats and counterthreats.

Randau orchestrates these shifts in power well, building up suspense with strong assists from editor Joana Scrinzi and an understated score by Bernhard Fleischmann. Nevertheless, the way the script is structured as a series of two-handers lends a theatrical air to the proceedings, not necessarily a bad thing in itself, though something other viewers might fidget through. But the considerable charisma of the main leads carries the feature along and makes this a work that feels more substantial and weighty than the footnote in history it might have played like in the hands of a different cast and director.