By Josh Hornbeck
Steven Soderbergh is one of
the hardest working
professionals in Hollywood.
In any given year he will be
directing – at the very
least – two movies and
producing a handful of
others. Sometimes the films
are big-budget blockbusters
(Ocean’s Eleven,
Ocean’s Twelve) and
at others they are small
features meant only for art
houses and film festivals
(Bubble, Full
Frontal). No matter the
scale, there is always an
exciting sense of risk and
adventure to a Soderbergh
film. Erin
Brockovich was a
courtroom drama with no
courtroom scenes.
Solaris was a
measured adaptation of a
Russian science fiction
classic. He shot
Bubble on consumer-
grade video and used a cast
of non-professional actors.
He always seems to be
interested in placing
restrictions on himself to
see what he can do within a
series of constraints. His
latest film, The Good
German, is no exception
to this desire for the
unfamiliar
challenge.
Captain Jake Geismer has
just stepped off a plane in
post-war Berlin, hoping to
use inside connections to
get a big scoop for his
newspaper on the “Big Three”
peace conference between
Britain, America, and the
Soviet Union. His driver –
the conniving and
duplicitous Patrick Tully –
has other plans. At first
he just wants to use Geismer
to smuggle his German
girlfriend, Lena, out of the
country. But when he
realizes that there’s money
to be made by turning her
and her supposedly dead
husband in to one of the
war’s surviving military
powers, he winds up drawing
Jack into a deadly mystery
that could claim the lives
of everyone
involved.
In The Good German,
Soderbergh has set out to
recreate the great Hollywood
studio films of the 1940’s –
only this time with all of
the subversive elements
intact and upfront.
Soderbergh, acting as his
own Director of Photography
(and sometimes his own
cameraman), only uses
equipment and techniques
that would have been
available in the 1940’s.
This means shooting the
entire film on a soundstage
in black-and-white, using
stock photography of post-
war Berlin, and relying on
boom mics and old-school
rear projection screens.
All of the actors manage to
capture the external, old
Hollywood-style of mannered
and slightly artificial
performances. George
Clooney (as Geismer) and
Cate Blanchett (Lena) both
have a classic movie star
quality that serves them
well here. Toby Maguire
breaks his pretty-boy image
and plays Tully with a quiet
and frightening malevolence,
drawing from the tradition
of the best character actors
of old. Yet in spite of its
classical tone and style,
the film is filled with both
base and profane moments.
This juxtaposition of
classical filmmaking
techniques and a sordid
story creates an odd,
intentionally jarring
effect. But because the
film is more concerned with
style than story, the plot
is slightly obfuscated in
the midst of Soderbergh’s
gimmickry. The resultant
effect will prove fairly
frustrating to most
viewers.
Luckily, the film’s meaning
isn’t really wrapped up in
its plot or story. No,
Soderbergh uses his very act
of experimentation to convey
everything he’s trying to
communicate with this film.
In America, we have a
mistaken and unhealthy
notion about our past –
especially the forties and
the fifties. While a few
films of that time were a
bit dark in tone or mood,
the stringent Hollywood
Production Code kept much of
that darkness out of movies
theaters and off of
television screens. Sex was
unheard of (even the
suggestion was frowned upon)
and cursing was all but
nonexistent. Violence was
spare and criminals never
profited from their
misdeeds. It was a very
unrealistic portrait of the
world. Now, this isn’t to
say that the current
proliferation of sex and
profanity and violence is
any better, but the
Production Code has left us
with a rose-tinted view of
the forties and
fifties.
Soderbergh, by using the
filmmaking style of the
forties and by allowing his
film to have graphic
language, sex and violence,
is telling us to stop
thinking about our
collective past with
sentimental, nostalgic
silliness. Even his
characters represent this
dichotomy. Tully may
pretend to be the all-
American, baseball and
apple-pie loving kid, but he
harbors a deep cynicism and
darkness. Lena, the
prostitute with – what we
assume to be – a heart of
gold, turns out to be as
corrupt and selfish as
anyone in Berlin. Jack, the
film’s one noble character,
is naïve and clueless about
the way the world really
works. He bungles his way
through a murder
investigation and, harboring
a sappy and romantic notion
about the Lena he knew years
before, discovers that she
isn’t and never was the
woman he thought her to be.
Just as Soderbergh is
telling us that the past is
never rosy as we wish it
was.
Why shouldn’t we harbor our
delusions about the past?
Why shouldn’t we keep
pretending that the forties
and fifties were bastions of
goodness and decency? After
all, what’s the harm in a
little good old nostalgia?
Looking back on our past
with such a dishonest sense
of unreality keeps us from
ever truly moving forward as
a culture. We point to this
bastion of goodness and
purity that never really
existed in the first place,
saying that this is the
ideal we need to recapture.
But it’s an unattainable
goal. We need to look at
the past for what it was,
not what we always wished it
could be. We need to
acknowledge the bad as well
as the good things of our
culture, realizing that it
is only through honesty with
ourselves as a society that
we will ever truly escape
the moral quagmires we sink
into on a daily basis. We
need to recognize the
failings of past generations
– the grime and corruption
below the surface – just as
we need to recognize the
failings of our current
period in time. Then we can
look not to the past to find
our moral compass and
guidance, but to the future
and the hope of Christ’s
redeeming presence, calling
us to the true restoration
we are in desperate need
of.
Lena’s husband, Emil, knows
this truth. He is the ‘good
German’ referred to in the
film’s title. He was a
scientist working for the
S.S. As he looks back over
his actions during the war,
he realizes that he needs to
pay for his crimes. He
wants to turn himself in.
But he also knows that all
of the “Big Three” countries
want to whisk him away and
absolve him of his guilt and
force him to do the same
kind of terrible work for
them. They may be willing
to forgive and forget – with
nary a slap on the wrist –
but Emil knows that he must
face the reality of his
actions. So throughout the
film he struggles to make
others know the truth. On
the other side of the coin
is Lena herself, a woman who
did whatever she could
during the war to survive –
prostitution, turning Jewish
families in to the Gestapo
(she’s Jewish herself). She
sees no problem with her
actions. She would rather
wash over the past and
forget everything than come
to a true peace and face
real justice for her
crimes.
Living in honesty is
essential to our lives as
Christians. It’s too easy,
in the culture of Church-
life, to brush things off
and deny our sin and our
pain. In the Catholic
church we had scandals of
child molestation that were
covered up rather than
facing the reality of this
horrific sin. In the
Evangelical church, we had
Ted Haggard who never faced
up to the reality of his own
personal sins and
temptations. These blows
hurt every one of us as
believers. We need to come
to a point of truth and
honesty with ourselves and
with the world we live in.
We need to acknowledge that
we are all fallen, but saved
through the cross of Christ.
We need to realize that we
are all broken, but
redeemed. We need to stop
condemning each other for
these picky points of
doctrine and theology,
recognizing that the only
thing that truly matters is
the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. We need to
allow each other to be open
and honest, expressing our
doubts, sharing our
weakness, confessing our
sin. And then we need to be
willing to strengthen,
encourage, and carry one
another through the
difficulties this life has
to offer us.
It is only then that we will
truly be able to transform
the culture in which we
live. But it has to start
here, with us.
There is quite a bit of swearing throughout the film, especially from the character of Tully. It feels a bit gratuitous at times, but does help illustrate a large part of the film’s message.
There is one brief sexual sequence that is a bit graphic, even though there isn’t any nudity. It isn’t pleasant or arousing, nor is it meant to be, but it may be a bit much from some viewers. There is another moment in the film set in a burlesque club. There is some brief nudity there.
The film was shot in black- and-white, so the violence in the film isn’t very bloody, but it can still be a little graphic at times, especially during the climactic showdown at the end of the film.
Nearly every one of the characters smokes or drinks, which fits the time-period, but it is present nonetheless.
(Posted 01/17/2007)
