ArnoldReview: The Good German: ***1/2
dir: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire
based on a Joseph Kanon novel
cinematography: Peter Andrews
Critics have been unjustifiably hard on Steven Soderbergh’s stylized film on Post-WWII Berlin. Most criticism has noted a weak plot while remaining very positive on the look of the film. And without a doubt the film is beautiful. It is stylization at its best. And not Coen brother’s fashion surreal-retro-stylization, this is authentic. Soderbergh, who usually works as his own cinematographer and editor under pseudonyms, has made this film so perfectly stylized it could have easily been a 40’s Billy Wilder film (sans-multiple witticisms). The over-exposed, harsh black and white is beautiful, stark and ominous. Some of the best retro-cinematograhy in years.
The plot has been unfairly criticized. The adaptation is not what an audience would expect from a film about the sectioned post-WWII Berlin. While using the war, rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia, and the damage, and cost of Nazi led Germany; it remains set on smaller things, human relationships. The plot is more in the realm of Bergman or Fellini. It begins fast paced, seeming to foreshadow a film about treason, the coming US/Russian battles, but it becomes more engaging and surprising as it changes its focus onto issues of trust, how politics affect out everyday reality. It will surprise your expectations, and if the audience isn’t ready for that the film will feel flat as a war piece.
Clooney and Blanchett are great; Soderbergh’s direction is at its best. (You know those increasingly rare moments when you forget he directed ‘Erin Brockovich’ or ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ and its bastard children). Don’t expect ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and you’ll love this film for it’s synthesis of paced late-60’s Italian plots and the looks of 40’s-50’s American noirs. And if it feels sluggish at first, just remember Tobey Maguire will be dead in ten to twenty minutes.
