The Good
German (**1/2)
review by Jon
Waterman
Captain Jake Geismer, a military journalist, has been sent
to Berlin after the Second World War in order to cover the
Potsdam Conference. While there, he finds himself getting wrapped
up in a strange tale of intrigue involving the apparent murder
of his driver Tully. Tully was seeing a prostitute Lena, a
Jewish German who was married to a now dead, yet highly sought,
SS officer that nearly every country’s government believes
is alive and kicking. Oh, by the way, Lena has a history with
Jake. Well, Lena’s trying to escape Berlin and everyone
seems to be keen to help her except for the aforementioned
governments. Jake is just trying to wrap his head around everything
and figure out who’s really the good guy and who’s
no longer trustworthy before it’s too late. What “it” is,
however, he doesn’t know.
Remember when Steven Soderbergh used to make interesting films
that got the film community excited? Each one was so vastly
different from his last, yet they all seemed to be brilliant
in their own way. Well, he’s still making a wide variety
of movies (excluding the Ocean’s Trilogy), but they just
don’t seem to have that same artistry anymore. Maybe
I’m just seeing the lame ones. Unfortunately, “The
Good German” is no exception.
The film was marketed as a tribute to the 1940s Hays code
espionage noir thrillers, but the only thing really resembling
that is the storyline (not the script) and the black and white
aspect of the cinematography. The storyline works well as it’s
full of convoluted twists and turns that could easily lose
someone that either comes in late or leaves at any point in
the picture. There’s tons of back and forth and jumping
around between locations only to backtrack and pick up more
pieces of an ever-growing jigsaw puzzle. And it was relatively
interesting.
The script, however, fails because of several reasons. First,
there’s swearing here. Second, it includes scenes of
realistic violence. And third, it incorporates nudity and overt
sexual discussions. I wonder if they felt they had to include
this stuff so that the film would be good enough to stand up
on its own. No matter the reason, it certainly feels out of
place. I would have much preferred to see innuendo galore and
bloodless gunshots and anything else that would have forced
them to stay within the limits of the ridiculously strict Hays
code. That would also be good, because with all that stuff
that could no longer be included, the running time would be
reduced by about thirty minutes (a much needed drop from the
already exhaustingly long 105 minutes).
As far as the cinematography goes, it’s shot extremely
well. The camerawork looks great and all, but it’s hardly
true to the era. Aside from being shot in black and white,
and the use of wipes as transitions, there’s really little
here that could pose any sort of comparison to the other films
in the genre. Soderbergh should have cut out the end credits
and placed them all at the beginning and should have studied
that found footage he over-used in order to match up the style
a little better.
I have faith that Stevie Sod will be able to get back to making
great films again someday soon, but this certainly isn’t
one of those days. Not only are there three different narrators
in this film, but they’re all awkwardly placed, off-putting
and completely unneeded. At least his command of the camera
hasn’t waned one bit. It’s just a shame that it
wasn’t more faithful to the vision he seemed to be trying
to accomplish. Now I know why they didn’t call this movie “The
Great German.”
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