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Last week, I had the pleasure of being allowed in to the first public screening of Bryan Singer’s new World War Two picture, Valkyrie. Rumors about this film have been flying around the net for years, and I was dying to see the final result. Could it possibly be as excellent a film as The Usual Suspects or X2? Would it draw too heavily from Downfall and Schindler’s List? Most importantly, could Tom Cruise pull it off? By the end of the movie, though, I was really only left with one overriding thought. “drat,” I said to myself. “That must have been a hard film to pull off.” I would imagine that most Germans struggle with the darkness of their national past quite a bit more than we Americans, and as such have taken to look for righteous men among the cavalcade of villainy that was Nazi Germany. This particular story, as Mr. Singer told us in his post-screening discussion, is widely known among modern Germans. Colonel von Stauffenberg, Tom Cruise’s character, is one of the few bright spots in that era of their history. Even though his attempt to kill Hitler ultimately failed, many felt that his vision and determination provided a way forward for any sort of national pride after the horror that was the Holocaust was mercifully ended by the Allies. Having grown up in the US, though, I have been automatically trained to equate anyone in a Nazi uniform with unquestionable evil. Between lessons in history class, hearing from relatives who fought in the war, and the cathartic experience of watching Nazis get dumped off cliffs in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, it has become very hard to root for anyone wearing a swastika, regardless of how many monologues they might make about how evil Hitler is and how much they want to stop the Reich. I mean, they got this far in Hitler’s army, right? Once they put on that uniform, I’ve always felt that they’ve become complicit in evil, and probably deserve to be thrown out of a moving aircraft by Indiana Jones. Valkyrie is incredibly graceful in addressing this problem. While it took me a while before I began to sympathize with Cruise and his insurgent pals, by the end of the first act I was completely sold. There is a scene about twenty minutes into the film where Stauffenberg returns to Berlin following his injuries in Tunisia, and he sees his family again for the first time in (presumably) several months. As his wife holds his crippled hand, he watches his youngest daughter put on his Nazi officer’s cap and proudly offer him a salute. This moment could have been incredibly over –the-top and completely taken me out of the experience, but the subtlety of the camerawork and of the look of muted horror on Cruise’s face totally sold me on Stauffenberg’s heart and intentions. From here on out, I was completely on his side. Another big problem I felt that I was going to have with this film going in was the issue of language, dialect, and accent. Obviously, as a mainstream American production, they couldn’t shoot in German and subtitle everything. Having everyone in a German accent would be infuriating, yet wouldn’t having half the cast speak English in a British accent be worse, especially with Cruise running around sounding as American as can be? Surprisingly, the film starts out with Stauffenberg speaking German. (And while I am no scholar of the language, I can say that Tom Cruise’s German sounds authentic). In the middle of the subtitled-monologue, it switches to English and from then on no attempt is made at German or a German accent by anyone. This also is jarring at first, especially when a general shows up and begins speaking in a British accent about allied troop movement, but as the film progresses it becomes completely transparent. Kudos again to Mr. Singer for making the right decision here. One of Valkyrie’s strongest points is how hard it strives for authenticity. After years of bloated, CGI-based war films, nearly everything that went into this production was real – real airplanes, real explosions, and real location-based production in and around Germany. It was shocking to me how great everything looked because of the care and time that went into this. The sound editing and mixing was also terrific, blending crisp diagetic sound with the visceral photographic style. The planes and guns looked and sounded great, and the ambush sequence in the desert near the beginning of the film was stunning. It was short, and it lacked the epic feel of something like, say, Pearl Harbor, but this was purely to its benefit – it felt much more real than anything I’ve seen in a war movie in a long time. Singer really hit a groove with the buildup and execution of the assassination attempt. Here he was flexing directorial muscles I haven’t seen him use since The Usual Suspects, and I forgot how great he was at creating tension. Instead of getting hung up on the fact that the audience already knows the end of the film, (spoiler alert: Hitler lives!) Singer uses this to his advantage. At no point during the entire buildup and playout do we really know anything more than the conspirators, and we are left up to our own devices as to how the thing actually failed. When the coup seems to be working and we see Goebbels place a suicide capsule in his mouth in anticipation for what might happen if things don’t turn around for the Reich, I could almost see a light at the end of the tunnel for Stauffenberg and his rebels. This film does a great job at the screenplay level of having things turn on several complex ideas and opinions, as opposed to having one single, annoying reason why the attempt failed. This isn’t to say that Valkyrie is a flawless film. Very little background is given on Stauffenberg, and many shortcuts are taken in bringing heroes together and getting them all on the same page without any problems. (I would have loved an answer to the question, “How does one broach the subject of high treason with another officer you think might be sympathetic?”) I also felt that Tom Cruise Keanu’d his way through some of the less dramatic scenes; though overall I felt he did a more than capable job. It’s also just a flat-out hard film to get into, given the subject matter and the fact that you are dealing with a story where every single character is a Nazi. That said, I absolutely recommend Valkyrie. It is beautifully constructed, entertaining, and it provides a very accurate portrayal of one of the most fascinating conspiracies in recent history. I also think it further cements Bryan Singer’s place among the top directors in Hollywood today.
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Dec 10, 2008 02:51
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 15:47 |
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