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Like Todd Haynes' gorgeous Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven,
Steven Soderbergh's experimental drama The Good German isn't merely
an attempt to pay tribute to Hollywood's past, but to recreate it as
meticulously as possible. In a technical sense, Soderbergh's efforts
to mimic the craftsmanship of house directors like Michael Curtiz
(Casablanca) are even more rigorous than Haynes'; to capture the
look and feel of post-war Hollywood cinema, he imposed Dogme-like
restrictions on the equipment that could be used for photography and
sound, and had his actors perform in a more old-fashioned,
theatrical style. However, the key difference between Soderbergh and
Haynes has less to do with fidelity than feeling: Both of their
films are uncanny and transporting, but Haynes' deep connection to
florid Sirkian melodrama couldn't be further from Soderbergh's
clinical detachment. As a result, The Good German is chilly around
the heart, but equally infused with knowing sophistication and a
surprising amount of depth.
With his dashing looks and unfussy leading-man confidence, George
Clooney has always been a throwback to another era, so he fits in
perfectly as an American military correspondent sent to cover the
historic Potsdam Conference in Berlin. The end of the war has
brought with it an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty in the city,
and the absence of order has given rise to a bustling black market
and a whole new set of dangers. Bringing a sinister edge to his
trademark aw-shucks innocence, Tobey Maguire plays Clooney's escort,
an Army motor pool lackey who has happily exploited the market for
cheap sex and other vices. Through Maguire's dealings, Clooney comes
into contact with former lover Cate Blanchett, a German Jew who's
had to make some chilling compromises in order to survive.
Channeling Marlene Dietrich with the same natural aplomb that she
brought to Katherine Hepburn in 2004's The Aviator, Blanchett plays
a sort of tragic seductress, ruined by her instincts for
self-preservation. It isn't until the end of the movie that the full
brunt of her courage and sacrifice becomes achingly clear. During
this period of post-war reckoning, The Good German quietly suggests
that moral compromises were made on all sides and that parsing out
the good guys from the bad guys was not such a clear-cut task. In
that sense, the film has more in common with the romantic cynicism
of Curtiz's Casablanca and The Third Man than other period works
that commented on the war. With a few self-conscious exceptions,
Soderbergh makes an earnest attempt to return to that place and time
in both history and American filmmaking, and his risk-taking pays
fascinating dividends.
A.V. Club Rating: B+
© Scott Tobias, A.V. Club |
