Black Book

In 1977, a Dutch filmmaker named Paul Verhoeven garnered international acclaim for SOLDIER OF ORANGE, a brilliant film about WWII's Dutch Resistance. Like Rutger Hauer, the star of SOLDIER OF ORANGE, he moved to Hollywood. And like Hauer, he started strong in American science fiction, then tailed off into near oblivion. Unlike Hauer, who has accepted an American career of supporting roles as a reliable villain, Verhoeven finally moved back to Holland and returned to the setting of his greatest triumph: WWII's Dutch Resistance. And a wise decision it turned out to be. BLACK BOOK (or ZWARTBOEK) is a gripping, moving, surprising film that stands as its director's best work in decades.

BLACK BOOK stars Carice van Houten as Rachel, the perfect woman. She's smart, courageous, quick-witted, decisive, sexy, and man, can she sing! As the film begins in 1944, she's hiding out on a farm in the occupied Netherlands - a place where the farmer forces her, as a Jew, to recite from the New Testament before allowing her a meal of gruel. When circumstances force her off the farm and into the arms of a Resistance cell in The Hague, she adapts and survives. When duty requires her to seduce a mid-grade SS officer, she adapts and, well, that's when things get tricky. The officer, played by Sebastian Koch of THE LIVES OF OTHERS, isn't such a bad guy once you get to know him. Before she knows it, and rather to the amusement of her happily amoral friend Ronnie, our heroine is -gulp- involved. (Side note, there's a moment in the film that leads us to reevaluate Ronnie and realize that she's in an equally interesting movie of her own. I'd love to see Verhoeven do an _Ender's Shadow_ type of movie about her.) Moving at breakneck pace, the movie brings us to a thrilling climax involving the rescue of Resistance prisoners, a fancy-dress, and the possible redemption of the SS officer. And then it keeps going, and it keeps getting better and better, as twist piles upon twist until we're left, breathless, as the credits roll.

I attribute much of the film's success to van Houten, who delivers an extraordinary, virtuoso performance that leaves me utterly mystified regarding her lack of a Best Actress nomination. She's in nearly every scene, and she plays the layers of deception behind her eyes with masterful skill, letting us and us alone see the real woman underneath. When she experiences emotional crises, they feel earned because she's demonstrated how strong she is, how much it takes to get to her. Combine this performance with that of the reliable and likeable Koch, and you get two hours that fairly race by.

Apparently, BLACK BOOK got a mixed critical reception. Not from me. I loved every minute of it. BLACK BOOK is a winner. Now c'mon, Rutger. Catch a flight to The Hague. There must be a few more good Dutch scripts laying around.

The Lives of Others

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a drab, claustrophobic, paranoiac movie. It's the kind of movie in which hope seems like a luxury and humanity is something to be hidden. In other words, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is East German to the core.

Here's the setup: a coldhearted Stasi officer volunteers to conduct surveillance on an East Berlin playwright whom he loathes at first sight. The playwright seems too smug, too politically connected, too comfortable in the arms of his beautiful paramour - there must be something wrong with the man, and the officer is certain he will find it. In fact, the officer finds much more than he bargained for, and the result is both heartening and devastating.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is not a beautiful film. It looks cold, as if the whole thing were shot under bad flourescent lights. Its people do not have the benefit of postproduction digital airbrushing - they appear before us, stretchmarks and all, pale and sometimes very scared. Its food looks horrid; its homes, hotels, and bars dreary; and its parties tinged with desperation. In fact, it looks like the East Germany I imagined from childhood stories of relatives who smuggled foodstuffs and coffee through to unfortunate friends who found themselves on the wrong side of a line drawn at Potsdam. Not only does the movie recall the physical expressions of the East German experience, it recalls the psychological ones, as well. No matter how large one's country is, it's too small if one may not leave. And how does one live if even the unthinking remarks of one's own child can result in a knock on the door? In these aspects, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is unrelenting and more than a bit depressing.

But that unrelenting gaze and that depression earns the payoff of the film, when the smallest twitch of a facial muscle means the difference between despair and redemption. Like weeds pushing through pavement, humanity kept finding ways in East Germany, and it finds ways here, too. Those ways sometimes backfire, and they often end in tears: this, too, is East German. But they're there, and they make 137 minutes spent watching the lives of others well worthwhile.