Zwartboek (Black Book), He Said

In Black Book, director, writer Paul Verhoeven paints a picture of the the crumbling control of the Nazi's in 1945 Holland. Our heroine, Rachael is separated from her family and living with a sympathetic Christian family. The Nazi's discover her and her benefactors. But before they can strike Rachael and her friend take the offer of a resistance fighter and attempt an escape. The escape offer is a trap. The boat full of wealthy Jewish families and their valuables is attacked. The passengers are mercilessly gunned down and their belongings are looted. Only Rachael escapes.

Here in starts a journey of unbelievable violence, intrigue and romance. If I were to describe our heroine in this Dutch German film as plucky it wouldn't quiet carry the day. Instead, if you will, visualize Gidgit played by Angelina Jolie. Rachael is saved by the real resistance fighters. Since Rachael, played by Carice van Houton, is a name that is Jewish in origin, she changes her name to Ellis. She serves faithfully at lower levels of the resistance movement and when she is asked to assume a more dangerous role, she accepts eagerly.

Being raised in a time when duplicity, particularly for a Jew, was a life saving skill, Ellis excels at the subterfuge and diversion necessary to succeed at this kind of war craft. Soon she is put in a position of getting inside the SS headquarters. In a move which might possibly save the lives of her captured colleagues, her task is to bed and therefore compromise, the head of the SS, Luwig Muntze, portrayed by Sabastian Koch. They bed, but in the process they fall in love.

He is aware, almost from the beginning, that she is not what she represents herself to be, but his loneliness and his fascination with her overrules his judgement. While this will lead to his downfall, it is also emblematic of the crumbling of the Nazi resolve at his point in the war. Muntz is aware that the end, for the Germans, is near and that continuing slaughter is senseless and self defeating when he considers the aftermath.

In a way these issues with the writer batting us back and forth like a tennis ball on the matter of who is loyal to their respective organizations and who is a traitor is the driving the story. However, what we discover as the story progresses is that given the situation anybody can behave in a manner that they don't want to visit in their saner moments. For it is when the Nazis turned tail, that the resistance doesn't exactly shine in their moment of victory. Their retaliation and vengeance smacked of the very tactics and practices of their enemy.

Clearly, this film demonstrates the point that has been made many times. The Nazis lost the war primarily because of their genocidal activities. Regardless of the obvious wrong of their super race theory, the simple logistics of carrying out the attempt to eliminate the Jews cost them manpower, resources and assets, all of which detracted from their occupation efforts. This film posses a strong story line about the resistance, the characters involved, their issues and beliefs. On the other side, we see the perversity, criminality and duplicity of the failing German administration.

All in all this is a good film. The script is solid and the story is compelling. The acting is more than competent and the scenes are set brilliantly. If there is a failing, it is in execution of this script. I felt at times that Verhoeven went over the top. Our "plucky" heroine is subjected to every kind of degradation possible short of death. This led me to a kind of "oh for crying out loud, enough already" attitude when, near the end of the film, she is doused with the refuse from the latrines in the prison camp.

In this effort to set up the arc of the story, Verhoeven opens with Rachael in a Kibbutz in Israel. When he closes she is walking back into the barbed wire compound of her kibbutz as the troops protecting the encampment are rallying to an upcoming attack. This leaves us with the strong message that nothing has changed in her life and maybe that is the intended assumption. We want avoid thinking of the capabilities of the dark side of man and we almost always refuse to learn from our history.