THE GOOD GERMAN
*** (out of ****)
Starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, and Jack Thompson
Directed by Steven Soderbergh & written by Paul Attanasio, from the novel by Joseph Kanon
2006
105 min R
Cate Blanchett also appears in �The Good German,� Oscar nominee for Score, not, inexplicably, for Cinematography. If you were to believe my wife, �The Good German� is all about Oh-My-God-Shoes. Cate plays a post-war Berlin prostitute specializing in world-weary sighing, loaded gazes, and Shoes-That-Are-To-Die-For. Although I barely registered Cate�s footwear, except to notice that she wasn�t barefoot, The Wife apparently found them worthy of the kind of lust she usually reserves for unkempt long-haired Irishmen. So, if you were to ask her, �The Good German� had some intrigue and Clooney and murder and something to do with a war, but mostly � These Shoes Rule.
IMDb sez: �While in post-war Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference, an American military journalist is drawn into a murder investigation which involves his former mistress and his driver.�
If you were to condescend to ask me, I would say �The Good German� is a refreshingly visual film during this season of Oscar blabbing, and a refreshingly straight-ahead genre piece next to so much Oscar pretense. But the first question everyone asks about �The Good German� is: what did you think of the style? Not only is the film set in the 1940s but it�s been shot using the techniques and style of a Hollywood thriller of the �40s. Think �Casablanca.� Which means, not just black-and-white, but the acting, narrative, compositional, and editing conventions of the era. Even the credits and unconvincing rear-projection seem to come from yesteryear.
�The Good German� is not the first film of late to dust-off a style of a bygone era. The Coen Brothers� ultra-noir �The Man Who Wasn�t There� split Best Director at Cannes in 2001 with �Mulholland Dr.� Guy Maddin has made a career out of combining Eisenstein-esque silent theatrics with digital video and potty humor. Todd Haynes, with more mixed results, dusted-off the stuffy 1950s melodrama with �Far From Heaven.�
With �The Good German,� director Steven Soderbergh has chosen a genre less interesting than silents and film noir to recreate. �Casablanca� may be a classic, but not a stylish one. Like the mainstream films of its day, �The Good German� dabbles with the hard shadows of noir without ever truly succumbing to them. It�s still breathtaking, though, and I smiled when I realized he shot it in 4:3. Thomas Newman�s Oscar-nominated score does a brilliant job at being as overwrought and unnecessary as the orchestral scores of the day.
Critics of �The Good German� have hounded it with the question �why?� Why has Soderbergh done this? To which I say, well, why the hell not? Film Freak Central accurately points out that the movie proves that Guy Maddin does it better (to which I say, there�s no shame in losing to the best). Maybe I just have a very high tolerance for pointless, self-indulgent technical exercises. Maybe it�s because, as much as I like �Traffic� and �Solaris,� part of me is skeptical whenever Soderbergh tries to be meaningful. I trust him as a skilled craftsman in love with his tools � which is why I�ve enjoyed the �Ocean�s� movies � but when it comes to messages I question whether his heart is in them. �The Good German� is just such a wide-eyed technical experiment and I had fun with it.
And there�s a great scene of Clooney barely noticing that he�s getting stitches in his face. If anyone deserves to make the kind of movie Cary Grant used to make, it�s George Clooney. He�s so cool.
More Various & Sundry Oscar Nominees (�Half Nelson� and �The Pursuit of Happyness�) and �Strangers with Candy.�