Valkyrie

VALKYRIE is the saddest film I’ve seen in ages.

Had the conspirators depicted in VALKYRIE succeeded, Germany could have thrown off the shackles of Nazi oppression and redeemed itself. It could have saved countless lives in the camps and on the battlefields. It could have prevented millions from living and dying under the boot of the Communists.

But, of course, the conspirators failed. Modern Germans still wrestle with the legacy of Nazism. Memorial walls carry the names of the countless victims of Nazis and Communists alike. Eastern Europe still struggles to catch up with the West.

Amazingly, VALKYRIE infuses this elegy with sympathy and tension, keeping us engaged and hoping, though we know how things end. It does so through the canny use of all-star casting, leveraging the recognizability of players such as Carice Van Houton, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson to build instant rapport with and sympathy for a cast so large it might be easy to lose track of who’s who. It does so through the efforts of Tom Cruise, a man who has been criticized for his offscreen behavior but who remains among the most gifted and charismatic stars of his generation. It does so by leveraging our knowledge of the broad outlines of history against our ignorance of the details: we all know things went wrong, but wmost of us don't know how.

This film largely succeeds in portraying its time, its place, its people, though it missteps in failing to recreate the paranoia that the all-seeing Gestapo engendered at the time. Its period details feel right, as does its grasp of German culture. While VALKYRIE, with its serious subject matter and foregone conclusion, may not appeal to everyone, it meets it goals.

If only its subjects had met theirs.