The atrocities of Nazi concentration camps have received so many cinematic treatments that it's almost impossible to portray them in a way that continues to drive the horror home. The opening scnes of Volker Schlöndorff's new film The Ninth Day succeed in doing so by using the shorthand of a few key images to convey the subhuman treatment of Catholic dissenters housed at Dachau. In the film's opening scenes, Resistance-collaborating priest Ulrich Matthes watches as a fellow clergyman is beaten, dragged to a cross-shaped gallows pole, and hung up to die. The next day, when called away by a commandant, he fearfully heads to the next cross over before receiving news of his release.
It's important for the film to establish the concentration camp as a hell on earth from the start, but Schlöndorff has more in mind than creating another reminder of the inhumanity of fascism. A German director who has returned to the moral conflicts of World War II throughout his career, Schlöndorff here focuses on the role of the Catholic Church, a hot-button issue especially since the 1999 publication of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope. Working from a script by Eberhard Görner and Andreas Pflüger, who loosely adapted the diary of Luxembourg priest Jean Bernard, Schlöndorff narrows the focus to one man's struggle with his conscience when he's faced with two choices: an easy one and a right one.
Matthes returns to his family, but soon finds that his freedom has strings attached. Rather than an outright release, he's been given a nine-day "leave" from the camp. If he wants to extend that leave, baby-faced Gestapo officer August Diehl informs him, he'll need to help coax Luxembourg's bishop into giving up his daily anti-Nazi protests, and persuade the Luxembourgian clergy into adopting a more conciliatory position. If he fails or refuses, it's back to Dachau; if he flees, his family and fellow clergymen will die.
Much of the film centers on Matthes' debates with Diehl, who is later revealed to have abandoned a possible career in the priesthood himself. Crafting persuasive temptations, Diehl uses the particulars of their historical situation to cloud Matthes' sense of moral clarity. But a different exchange snaps the film's historical situation and personal stakes into focus: a tense breakfast between Diehl and Matthes' brother (Germain Wagner). With a smile that's made him a success in the business world, Wagner attempts to bribe Diehl into freeing Matthes. Diehl's response: Go along, or it's Dachau for Wagner too. Against that kind of pitiless persuasion, morality seems to have little chance, and the faith that Matthes calls upon to make his decision is the kind that accepts that God doesn't always mete out justice in this world. That's not exactly the faith he begins the film with, but it's one that's stronger for the bruises and scars it bears.