Der Unhold (The Ogre)-Volker Schlondorff 1996

His halting, eccentric style seems well suited to the story's main character, Abel, a naive man whose sense of innocence leads him to become a party to evil. With his slightly cross- eyed gaze of wonderment mixed with ferocious intensity, Malkovich makes Abel both childlike and frightening.
As a boy in a brutal Roman Catholic boarding school in France, Abel comes to believe that he has magical powers after he makes a demonic wish that his school would catch fire, and it does.
The notion that he is a ``magical creature'' sustains Abel as an adult. With benign sincerity, he is unperturbed by the swirl of events he experiences. His inexplicable affinity for children underscores his belief that he has special powers.