Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

pegasus3 A documentary film combining letters and diary entries made by Heinrich Himmler and his family along with extraordinary archival footage involving most aspects of Himmler's life from his birth as well as concerning the rise of the Nazis in Germany from the 20s on through to the end of WWII. The letters and diaries were from a cache of materials discovered in Himmler's home by American soldiers at the end of the war. An amazing chronology made even more vivid by the recitation throughout of Himmler's actual words from his letters and diary entries, and enhanced even more by archival photography which I consider to be some of the best I've ever seen in films about the Holocaust or WWII.

gavin6942 A documentary that uses a cache of letters, diaries and documents to reveal the life of SS-leader Heinrich Himmler.How can a film about Heinrich Himmler be bland? A documentary that explores his personal life, mixed with his professional life, ought to flesh out a very interesting individual. And to some degree it does, but presents the story in as bland and boring a way as possible, with nothing but voice-overs of letters and other documents. No experts reflecting on the importance of any of it.Students of Himmler or World War II may enjoy this, and learn something new about this man. His strong distaste for homosexuals is interesting, for example. But presented like this, out of context, it remains lacking.

John Johnson I liked the first half or so. They use German voices to read letters, and using these letters they paint a very intimate portrait of Himmler and his family. It honestly got so intimate that I had to remind myself that it's an Israeli production. Towards the end though, their use of era footage, which seemed like stock footage, was very graphic. This footage turned away from a psychological examination to just gore. I think the idea of a psychological examination of a mass murderer is a very good idea, but the footage was too distracting and seemed more like a History Channel documentary. If they had labeled where some of the footage was from, perhaps it would have been OK.

Alex Deleon Der Anständige" (Himmer's private letters) is saddled with the unfortunately banal English release title of "The DECENT ONE" which will undoubtedly cause too many people to overlook it -- which is indeed unfortunate, because this film --fortunately caught at the Miskolc film festival in Hungary in September -- is definitely one of the more interesting documentaries to probe the background of top Nazi leaders and Holocaust perpetrators to come out in recent years. What this film does is is let Himmler, the most notorious Nazi of all next to Hitler himself -- speak for himself, through private letters sent to his wife throughout his unbelievably nefarious career. We therefore see an absolutely callous mass murderer as he saw himself -- which is to say as basically a warm hearted family man in love with a woman whom he eventually marries, but having to sacrifice his love in the name of duty -- a higher calling ...to exterminate all enemies of the Third Reich -- revealing his personal feelings to her in private letters at various stages of his insanely murderous career which is barely hinted at in the nebulous background lurking behind these letters. As Hanna Arendt pointed out in "The Banality of Evil" it is necessary to see that mass murderers like Himmler, Eichman, and company, did have private lives, and did not see themselves as evil bastards but rather as devoted men carrying out a lofty mission. Ugh. Shrug. Shudder. This remarkable documentary will evoke a different kind of revulsion in a new dimension. A must see for all having any interest in Naziism and Holocaust studies as well as, on a purely formal level, styles of documentation. Belgian~Israeli director Vanessa Lapa assembled this utterly amazing film from a cache of Himmler family letters that were "liberated" by advancing American troops at the end of the war and circulated for decades on a paper black market until winding up somehow in the hands of Vanessa's father in Israel -- but that is sordid story of its own.