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.

As You Like It

I was all set to fall in love with Kenneth Branagh’s direct-to-video AS YOU LIKE IT, set in a trading colony in Meiji Japan. I’ve been a fan of Branagh’s work since I saw HENRY V in college, and I’ve had a thing for Japanese culture since I read James Clavell’s _Shogun_ in the 7th grade. Thus, when I fired up this version of AS YOU LIKE IT while staying in a hotel outside of Yokohama (coincidentally, the site of the Meiji trading colony), it seemed like the perfect combination of material and viewer.

Alas, not even Brian Blessed, Alfred Molina, and Kevin Kline could save this slow, plodding, and unsatisfying film. The film’s Anglo-Japanese setting doesn’t really work, its pacing could have used some help in the editing room, and I had a sense of the film’s self awareness that this was, indeed, Shakespeareit was giving us. As written, AS YOU LIKE IT is great fun, but this production seems to miss the point.

I’m not sure what’s happening with Branagh. His star shined so brightly, but it has been guttering these last several years. Where’s the confident, exciting filmmaker of HENRY V, DEAD AGAIN, and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? I haven’t seen his remake of SLEUTH yet, but Time magazine’s impression does not look promising. What did he lose along the way?

Well, whatever he lost, he didn’t find it while making this latest AS YOU LIKE IT. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

I tend to look askance at "issue moves." They have this way of putting the issue before the movie, seeking more to educate than entertain. This isn't to imply that movies shouldn't educate - rather, it's a reaction against the hamhandedness that normally accompanies such education.

Thus did I approach RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, a film that's about either the Australian government's earlier policy of reeducating part-Aboriginies and separating them from their heritage or three Aboriginal girls on an awesome journey of escape and endurance.

The film begins as the former, with Kenneth Branagh the genuine but cruelly wrong government official in charge of the relocation and reeducation program. "If only these people knew what we were trying to do for them," he laments. It's hamhanded and, in a separation scene, overtly manipulative to the point of agitprop.

Once it becomes the latter, however, it turns into a better, more effective film. The three girls are heartbreakingly tough and vulnerable, the villains generally well nuanced, and the whole thing thoroughly gripping entertainment.

Ultimately, I think RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is just ok. With a little less agitprop and a little more adventure, the film could have both entertained and scored its points much more effectively.

Conspiracy

In January of 1942, General Reynhard Heynrich convened the Wannsee Conference to force various factions within Hitler's government & military to buy in to the Final Solution. CONSPIRACY is drawn from the minutes of that Conference, is of both historical, psychological, and artistic interest as a reasonably accurate depiction of the Conference as a study in management, group dynamics, and power of peer pressure.

Kenneth Branagh stars as General Heynrich, the "Blonde Beast" who was the #2 man at the SS. By turns charming, threatening, officious, and chummy, he uses every tool at hand to ensure the compliance of the men around the table. Stanley Tucci plays Heynrich's right-hand man, Adolf Eichmann, as a cold, hyperorganized, and imposing figure. Only a lieutenant-colonel at the time, Eichmann's competence and obvious closeness to his boss lend him an authority far beyond his rank. There are a number of excellent performances in this movie, but these two guys deserve their above-the-title billing. They're absolutely fascinating, and absolutely terrifying, and the movie does an oustanding job of showing us how, together, they maneuver and manipulate the balky group of men around the table into assistance with one of history's greatest crimes.

As history, as case study, or as art, CONSPIRACY is time well spent.