The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)
A Man Kills Hitler
Chasing Bigfoot in the Woods
Was it Just a Dream?
This movie is not what you think. If you believe the things you see are real, it will make you crazy. The Man… is almost all metaphor, allegory, and delusion.
Calvin Barr, played masterfully by Sam Elliott (A Star is Born), is a WWII vet (the film appears to be set in the mid-80s) who, if you believe his memories, killed Hitler, only to see him replaced by impersonators. The movie flashes back and forth between his recollections of the war (young Calvin is played by Aidan Turner) and his latest mission, traveling to Canada to kill a Bigfoot that is carrying a planet threatening disease.
What’s this movie really about? Have to get a little Spoilerish on this one.
Regret and futility are big themes in The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. It seems likely that Calvin did not kill the actual Hitler (or a body double), but that his memories of Hitler are a construct he has made to represent his time in the war. Each person he killed in the war was “Hitler,” and even with their deaths and the death of the actual dictator, evil and injustice continue in the world…so was all the violence and sacrifice worth it?
A lot of possibilities exist when it comes to Bigfoot, the most obvious being that it represented Calvin’s own mortality. There are several others. I’ll leave it to you to unpack them.
Finally, in a scene likely to be missed, Calvin - before flying off into Bigfoot land - is seen opening his medicine case, rolling a pill around in his fingers, and then throwing all of his drugs into the trash. Again, lots of ways to interpret that but one thing is clear: the scenes of Calvin in Black Helicopter and Cryptid territory all take place after he is literally “off his meds.”
Look past the title. Don’t believe what you see. Search for deeper meaning.
The truth is out there in the movie…and it ain’t Hitler or Bigfoot.
You can catch Sam, Hitler, and the Bigfoot HERE.
Four out of Five Old Shoes for brilliant cinematography, a multi-layered story, and Sam Elliott being Sam Elliott.
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