Max is the directorial debut of Menno Meyjes, (scribe of a number of successful films including Spielberg's The Color Purple) has managed to tastefully pose this fascinating piece of speculative history about the pre-Maniacal days of Adolf Hitler. The story centers more around the title character, Max Rothman, played well (if not a bit too studied) by John Cusack whom prior to World War I was a promising Modernist painter. Returning to Munich minus one arm, Rothman successfully sets up an art-scene and dealership in an abandoned train station. A family man with a supportive wife, children and a healthy relationship with his mistress Leelee Sobieski, Rothman happens onto a angry, yet fascinatingly intelligent young artist who was a fellow War veteran by the name of Adolf Hitler.

The film imagines a set of circumstances that are amazingly compelling from a number of standpoints. Max posits the manner whereby Hitler acquires his ethno-political ideology and the random happenstance that vaults him and his passionate beliefs before a dispirited nation ready to grasp onto anything to restore their national pride after the humiliation that resulted from their WWI defeat and the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. The film does not seek to either apologize nor demonize the infamous Nazi monster, but rather places Hitler into situations where every decision he makes has potentially enormous consequences on the history of the world. The origins of the German obsession with anti-Semitism and ethnic cleansing is handled with remarkable finesse due to the intelligence and restraint of Meyjes script. Much praise must also go to Noah Taylor's wonderfully nuanced performance of this solitary and disturbed man turned his intrinsically artistic nature into the beginnings of the most unGodly cult of personality in world History.

The scenes between Cusack and Taylor are full of fascinating exchanges of ideas and passionate opinions regarding art and society and brazenly suggests that had Cusack's character not been coerced, Hitler would be remembered for his painting rather than the most ugly legacy that any man has left behind. Cusack was very instrumental in bringing this film about (he serves as associate producer) and he is to be commended for having the guts to push this film into existence, I watched it three times in one day.