The Good German
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| The Good German | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster for The Good German |
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| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Written by | Joseph Kanon (Novel) Paul Attanasio (screenplay) |
| Starring | George Clooney Cate Blanchett Tobey Maguire |
| Music by | Thomas Newman |
| Cinematography | Steven Soderbergh as Peter Andrews |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | December 8, 2006 |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $ 32,000,000 (estimated) |
| Official website | |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Good German is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 feature film adaptation of a novel by Joseph Kanon. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire, the film uses archival Russian footage and archived film from Corbis -- edited to blend with scenes shot on soundstages and on Universal Studios' backlot -- to tell a tale which on the surface is a murder mystery, but which weaves elements hinting at NASA's origins -- and the American postwar employment of Nazi rocket scientists. Shot in color, (which allowed the use of faster film than available black-and-white film stocks, and afforded the ability to use green screen techniques) the film was reduced in post-production -- through the use of a D.I. -- to grainier black and white, to blend with the (carefully restored) archival material.
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[edit] Title and theme
The film's title alludes to the concept of "a good German", ostensibly one who was not to blame for allowing Hitler to do the evil that he did, and who did not see the Holocaust as it occurred before their eyes. Thematically, the film centers on guilt, and the unanswered question: "Is it possible to both survive the atrocities and yet to be unaware of and uncomplicit in them?"
[edit] Plot
Jacob ('Jake') Geismer, an American war correspondent — played by George Clooney — returns to Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers after World War II was over in Europe (May 1945) but before hostilities ended in Asia (August 1945). Jacob witnesses his murdered driver, a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully (played by Tobey Maguire), being fished from a river eddy, suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds. The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 100,000 German reichsmarks — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces.
Geismer becomes entwined both in the mystery of his murdered driver, and with the clandestine search by both Russian and American forces for the missing German Emil Brandt (the title character, played by Christian Oliver). Jake becomes more involved in both mysteries as his investigation intersects his search for Lena Brandt (played by Cate Blanchett), a German Jew — and Emil's wife — with whom Jacob had been in a relationship prior to the war. Lena has survived the Holocaust by doing "what she had to" to stay alive — early in the film this is assumed to be just prostitution, but Lena holds a darker secret of complicity and guilt.
In the film, character Emil Brandt is a former SS officer who was the secretary of Franz Bettmann, Chief Production Engineer of the V2 at concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora/Mittelwerk. (Bettman is only a minor character in the film; he appears to be based on the real Arthur Rudolph.) Russians, Americans, and the English all try to get hold of Emil Brandt, for different reasons. In the film, the American already detain Bettmann in a safehouse and intend to ferry him back as part of their Operation Overcast to the U.S. to have him work on their own rocket program (c.f. also Wernher von Braun). They are—in the film—fully aware of Bettmann's role at Camp Dora and know about the slave labour used in the V2 program, but want to cover up his involvement (because they could not possible employ a known war criminal), which includes eliminating Emil Brandt, whose testimony or written notes would prevent whitewashing Bettmann. Geismer, in his attempts to get his former love Lena out of Berlin, gets more and more involved in the search for Emil Brandt. At one point, Lena gives Emil's notes on Camp Dora to Geismer. When Lena and Geismer try to turn in Emil Brandt to the English authorities, they are intercepted by the Americans, and Brandt gets killed. But Geismer still has Brandt's notebooks, which he now trades in to the war crimes investigators of the U.S. Army (i.e. to the ones who want to keep that evidence confidential to whitewash Bettmann) in exchange for a Persilschein (a denazification document) and a visa for Lena, such that she can leave to England or the U.S. (that's not clear in the film).
Through a minor character of a Jewish owner of a pawn shop who survived the Holocaust with his legs amputated, the film refers to the Nazi human experimentation, in particular to bone transplantation experiments as they were done at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
[edit] Reception
While some critics, such as Peter Travers, greatly appreciated the film [1], the film received generally poor reviews, with many critics complaining the film was too reliant on style and did not concentrate on the building of characters [2].
UK website Mansized scored the 2/5, stating that The Good German contains, "occasionally laughable dialogue." [3]
[edit] Awards
The movie received minor praise, earning a single Oscar nomination.
[edit] Nominations
- Academy Award for Best Original Score (Thomas Newman)
- Berlin International Film Festival: Golden Berlin Bear Award (Steven Soderbergh)
- Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards: Best Composer (Thomas Newman)
[edit] Cast
| Principal Cast & Characters | |
|---|---|
| George Clooney | as Jake Geismer |
| Cate Blanchett | as Lena Brandt |
| Tobey Maguire | as Tully |
| Beau Bridges | as Colonel Müller |
| Tony Curran | as Danny |
| Leland Orser | as Bernie Teitel |
| Jack Thompson | as Congressman Breimer |
| Robin Weigert | as Hannelore |
| Ravil Isyanov | as General Sikorsky |
| Dave Power | as Lieutenant Schäffer |
[edit] Trivia
- The movie poster is an homage to a poster for the classic Warner Bros. film Casablanca, as is the closing scene at the airport.
- Tobey Maguire is dunked in a toilet[citation needed] in the beginning of the movie. This wouldn't be possible because German toilets at this time weren't filled with water to this level, instead of this the bowls allowed feces to rest on a ledge before being washed away by the flush.
[edit] External links
- Official Website
- / Zoom In Online, archival researcher Kenn Rabin
- The Good German Reviews at Metacritic
- NYT: Dave Kehr: You Can Make 'Em Like They Used To An interview that goes into technical detail about Soderbergh's attempt to re-create studio-era conditions for The Good German
- Filmscholar David Bordwell on studio films and what they might mean for The Good German: Not Back to the Future, but Ahead to the Past & Cutting remarks: On THE GOOD GERMAN, Classical Style, and the Police Tactical Unit
- The Good German Review by Jürgen Fauth
- Clooney Studio
