There are films that prod at the intellect, others that wrestle with moral complexity, and then there’s V13, Richard Ledes’ ambitious and often provocative adaptation of Alain Didier-Weill’s play Vienne 1913. The film doesn’t so much invite you in as it does hurl you headlong into the dense terrain of psychoanalysis, history, and philosophical inquiry, a kind of cinematic fever dream where time is porous, and the spectres of the past peer out with unsettling relevance.
Set in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, the film draws together a trio of unlikely bedfellows: Sigmund Freud (Alan Cumming), a young and embittered Adolf Hitler (Samuel H. Levine), and Hugo (Liam Aiken), a privileged yet tormented pianist caught between the poles of reason and revulsion. That Freud and Hitler were contemporaries in the city is historical fact; that they might be drawn into this triangular, symbolic dance of ideas and influence is the film’s bold hypothesis.
Cumming is a powerful presence – urbane, warm, quietly devastating. His Freud isn’t a caricature or museum exhibit, but a man grappling with his own identity as much as the psychological fractures of those around him. Opposite him, Levine’s Hitler simmers with self-pitying rage and nascent fascism, his worldview already ossifying into dangerous conviction. Aiken’s Hugo, meanwhile, becomes a kind of unwitting bridge between these extremes, wracked with antisemitic instincts he doesn’t understand, yet drawn to Freud’s probing intellect.
“…That Freud and Hitler were contemporaries in Vienna is historical fact…”
V13’s visual language is deliberately disorienting. Black-and-white therapy sessions give way to full-colour street scenes in modern-day Brooklyn. Vienna becomes New York; 1913 seeps into the present. A Dunkin’ Donuts looms in the background. Characters wear contemporary clothing. This collision of eras isn’t a budgetary oversight. It’s the film’s central conceit. The past is not a foreign country; it’s your own city in a different light.
Ledes borrows as much from Walter Benjamin as he does from Freud. The film opens with a quote about history flashing up “in a moment of danger,” and what follows is a cinematic collage of symbols: tarot cards, ferris wheels, Greek mythology, Klimt paintings, and mother complexes all collide in a breathless torrent of ideas. At times, it’s overwhelming, like watching a dissertation unfold on stage with added close-ups. But beneath the intellectual thicket lies real emotional heft. Hugo’s crisis of self, torn between prejudice and longing, becomes quietly tragic.
The film occasionally loses focus in its more abstract detours. Some moments, particularly when Ledes plays his own mother in imagined dialogues, feel a little indulgent. But the sincerity behind these choices bleeds through, and the broader ambition is undeniable.
V13 is not an easy watch, nor is it meant to be. It’s a film about historical recursion, the psychological roots of hatred, and the fragility of progress. At a time when old ghosts are rearing their heads again in global politics, their warnings feel salient. You don’t watch V13 for narrative comfort. You watch it to be rattled. And in that, it succeeds.
"…beneath the intellectual thicket lies real emotional heft..."
