Armin Mueller who? While at MOMA a few weekends ago to see Laura Dunn’s powerful documentary The Unforeseen, I got into a conversation with a gentleman about the year in movies and we got to talking about David Cronenberg and his film Eastern Promises. The man claimed that the actor who played the head of the crime family did a really good job and he tried for a moment or two to remember who the actor was that played the old man.

After a moment I said - “It’s Armin Mueller-Stahl.”

The man shook his head, and said “no no, it’s not him”. I reasserted my position that it was in fact Armin Mueller-Stahl and the man again told me I was wrong. We talked about it until we got let into the theater and my friend decided to look up the answer on his I-Phone.

It was in fact Armin Mueller-Stahl. I resisted the urge to find the man and tell him I was correct and instead thought back to my introduction to the actor.

I first learned of Mueller-Stahl back in 1996 when he was in the film Shine, my favorite movie that year. He played the dad of Geoffrey Rush’s David Helfgott, the famous pianist that suffered a break-down after a childhood of pressure from his father. I was captivated by him and remember hating his character so much. As I got older and started watching more foriegn films, I started to see Armin Mueller-Stahl popping up more and more. He starred in two of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films, Lola and Veronika Voss, that make up 2/3’s of this BRD trilogy and also in Andrzej Wajda’s A Love in Germany (1984).

But why you ask, should I care who Armin Mueller Stahl is?

Müller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia, Germany, (now Sovetsk, Russia), the son of Editta and Alfred Mueller-Stahl, a bank teller.^[1] He was a noted concert violinist while he was a teenager. He turned to film acting in East Berlin in 1950. He was a successful film and stage actor in East Germany, but being blacklisted by the government, he emigrated to West Germany in 1980 after protesting against Wolf Biermann’s denaturalisation in 1976. [Wikipedia]

From here he started work with Fassbinder and Wajda, and finally in the 90’s made appearances in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth and Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka.

Beyond his inspirational history that started his acting career and his amazing performances, the above roles and films are all ones that inspire, teach or discuss political ideas. Shine is without a doubt one of the most inspiring and touching films I have ever seen, it speaks to the power of music, love and never giving up. A Love in Germany is a portrait of love in wartime and touches in POW’s and how war effects people. Kafka and Night on Earth are champions of American independent cinema, both bringing new styles and new ideas.

Lola, one of my favorite films, features what I think is one of Mueller-Stahl’s best performances. He plays an honest building commissioner named Von Bohm in a town that is corrupt and sleazy. The journey of Von Bohm paints a picture of how easy it is to be corrupted and the dangers of capitalism.

Add being in the remake of 12 Angry Men, an appearance as the prime minister of Israel on The West Wing and a role in the truth questioning X-Files movie and it becomes clear that Armin Mueller-Stahl has helped to tell stories that are important and make us think about things we might not normally be inclined to think about. So remember his name and to watch one of his many movies so that you’ll never not know who he is.

For a small Mueller-Stahl taste, watch a trailer from Lola, a clip from Night on Earth (AMAZING!) and trailers for Shine and Eastern Promises.