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By
WAYNE KLEIN
"The Good German" reminds me
of the sauerkraut I had to eat as a kid.
Sauerkraut is an acquired taste. It looked like
sauerkraut but I remember hating the taste. Why?
Because my mom just couldn't get the flavor for it
right and we often had it from a can. I'm not sure
that I would have ever acquired a taste for
sauerkraut even if it was homemade but canned
sauerkraut captured the "look" of the dish but
lacked everything else. While "The Good German"
looks good it misses the essence of the 40's
melodramas it's trying to duplicate. The film
however certainly has its merits.
Director Steven Soderbergh affectionately
recreates the look of melodramas that were popular
in the 1940's with this film. "The Good German"
recalls both "Casablanca" crossed with "The Third
Man" with its moody black and white cinematography
(done by Soderbergh himself under the pseudonym
"Peter Andrews"). While not entirely successfully,
"The Good German" does try to marry a 21st century
sensibility with its mixture of profanity and the
look of a 1945 studio film. Set in post-war
Germany just before the Potsdam accord where
President Harry Truman, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
divided up Europe, American journalist Jake
Geismer (George Clooney) comes over to cover the
historical event taking place but suddenly finds
he's trapped in a web of deceit, double-crosses
and lies regarding the prosecution of Nazi war
criminals. The key to it all is a Lena (Cate
Blanchett) a former stringer for the reporter who
provided reports from Germany in the early days of
the war and his former lover. She has now taken up
with Tully (Tobey Maguire) a military man doing
anything he can to exploit post-War Germany and
make a buck in an effort to escape her past and
try to escape Berlin as well. Whatever the
Americans and Soviets are after, they are willing
to murder anyone that gets in their way to use
Lena for their own ends.
Soderbergh's film hits all the right technical
points including using visual references to other
classic melodramas from Hollywood's Golden Age but
lacks the soul of those films. The script by Paul
Attanasio (from the novel by Joseph Kanon) seems
as disjointed and emotionless as Soderbergh's
glacial direction. "The Good German" is all about
the "look" of the film and surfaces providing an
excellent example in recreating the techniques of
40's films without having any of the emotional
content. Don't get me wrong "The Good German"
isn't a bad film--viewers will have a hard time
connecting with the characters and being pulled
into the film. The mystery at its heart just isn't
made compelling enough by the disjointed narrative
and even the performances are all about recreating
the right "moments" from previous films not about
creating memorable moments of the performers own.
This is the kind of film that you might have
casually watched on TV while doing the dishes and
other chores without truly becoming involved
enough to actually sit down and watch it. The film
is R rated for profanity and sexual situations
neither one of which would have made it into a
1940's melodrama.
The DVD doesn't have any extras which is too
bad--it would have allowed the director to
elaborate on his experiment and assess where it
succeeded and failed. The film looks quite good
with some stunning black and white photography
that captures the shimmering whites and rich
blacks that were characteristic of films from the
time.
Although "The Good German" doesn't taste genuine,
it certainly looks it. While I didn't find it
emotionally involving, it's an entertaining movie
that reminds me of some of Hitchcock's technical
experiments like "Rope" where the technique was
far more important than the material. It's a solid
rental for fans of 40's films recapturing an era
long gone. |
