Release Date:
31 Aug 2011 (USA)
(viewed SA 17 Mar 2012)
Director:
John Madden
(viewed SA 17 Mar 2012)
Director:
John Madden
Writers:
Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan (screenplay), Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum (film “Ha-Hov”)
Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan (screenplay), Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum (film “Ha-Hov”)
Cast:
Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Tom Wilkinson
Ciaran Hinds
Jessica Chastain
Marton Csokas
Sam Worthington
Jesper Christensen
IMDb link and rating:
6.9
6.9
Plot Synopsis:
(From IMDB) 1965, three Mossad agents cross into East Berlin to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal. Thirty years later, the secrets the agents share come back to haunt them.
Stephen:
9.0
This was the best film I have seen in recent memory. It
was gripping from start to finish, brilliantly conceived, and executed with
virtuosity in acting, directing, and editing.
The
story follows a trio of Israeli agents from their original mission in 1965
(where the young agents are played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam
Worthington) to the aftermath thirty years later (where they are played by
Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and CiarĂ¡n Hinds). We see the mission unfold at
the beginning—a plan to trap and retrieve a notorious Nazi “doctor” from East
Germany—but simultaneously sense that something is not quite right. And that’s
all I’ll say about that: anything more would sabotage the relatively simple but
ingenious plot.
There
are some moments in the film that will make your blood run cold—particularly,
those scenes in which Ms. Chastain’s character, Rachel Singer, is alone with
the Nazi monster, Dieter Vogel (a remorseless devil played unforgettably by
Jesper Christensen). In a couple of harrowing scenes, young Rachel goes
undercover posing as a patient of the evil doctor, who has changed his name
since the war and resurfaced as a gynecologist in East Berlin. She must endure
his examination, reclining prone on his table, legs spread in the air and feet
bare on cold metal, her nakedness covered by one of those sterile, ill-fitting
patient gowns that hospitals use, which served only to make stark Rachel’s
vulnerability by reminding her that her clothes are piled in a heap across the
room, beyond her reach. Meanwhile, the doctor selects from an array of
ghastly-looking instruments (evoking images of Jeremy Irons unveiling his tools
in Dead Ringers) and patiently brings his head down between her legs,
close enough, we presume, for his foul breath to invade Rachel’s most private
chambers.
The
effectiveness of these scenes is the achievement of the filmmakers and
Chastain’s acting: We, the audience, know Rachel is a trained agent—brave,
disciplined, and determined—and indeed, she adequately answers the doctor’s
questions during the examinations and even manages to surreptitiously snap a
few photos using a miniature spy camera. But we have no assurance whatsoever
that all will go as planned. Does the doctor see through her cover? Is Rachel
hunting the monster, or is she his prey? It is unnerving, and we wonder how
Rachel can endure it. (Perhaps she wonders that herself.) In these scenes we
feel, in merciless detail, every nuance of Rachel’s fear; we can almost smell
it, and the doctor, I’m sure, had the satisfaction of feeling her tremble.
The
larger point, of course, is that this invasion of Rachel’s body is a metaphor
for the utter dehumanization of an entire people, the literal and figurative
stripping of men, women, and children down to their emaciated flesh and broken
souls. We see, in this monster known as the “surgeon of Birkenau,” the
limitless brutality of the National Socialists—a scourge upon civilization made
all the more horrible by its sober, orderly, implacable administration.
Irrationality kills men, but irrationality masquerading as science, reason, and
logic murders mankind itself; the first stops a man’s heart from beating, which
kills him, but the second stops his mind from functioning also, which enslaves
him before he is killed. Unreason, posturing in Reason’s cloak, is a fiend
committing murder in a policeman’s uniform—a double crime. To confront a beast
in the form of a beast is to scream; to face a beast wearing the scientist’s
white lab coat is to be struck dumb—one does not understand what one sees. The
mind, disoriented and uncomprehending, freezes, and perhaps it is this, more
than a want of courage, that accounts for the seeming impossibility of
thousands of humans being herded to the death chambers at the points of only
three or four bayonets.
“So,
we were all insane? Is that the answer?” taunts the Nazi doctor in captivity,
and this is a shrewd question. I think most people today, being unwilling or
unable to confront the real underpinnings of the Nazis, are content to dismiss
it all as incomprehensible madness—and that is a grave danger. As long as
Hollywood and other outlets of popular culture condemn only the National
Socialists (the Nazis) while giving the Soviet Socialists (the communists) a
free pass, we may confidently say we have learned nothing from the 20th
century. (For a terrific video lecture on this topic, see “Socialism’s Legacy,” by Alan Charles Kors.)
The
Nazi’s evil did not begin and end with their pogrom against the Jews. The Nazis
rose to power as all socialists do: on a moral principle. You have heard this
principle principle before—in fact, you were brought up to believe it: that a
man must live his life for the sake of others. Get a population to accept
that a “greater good” than themselves exists and the rest will follow. Implicit
in every politician’s appeal for personal sacrifice is the license to forcibly
dispose of some individuals for the benefit of others.
The
systematic murder and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th
century was not insanity, but an illustration of the fact that ideas matter.
Atrocities roll in not on tanks but upon ideas; the tanks are a side issue: those
impressions of caterpillar tracks that they leave in the mud, within which the
blood of innocents pools, indicate that a certain moral imperative passed this
way. Nazis and communists did not achieve popularity by promising to kill Jews
and kulaks, but by promising to provide jobs and health care to their people.
If this sounds familiar, dear reader, I ask that you do not tell yourself, “No,
it couldn’t be so, it must not be so,” but accept the responsibility of
thinking before it is too late.
At
the end of the The Debt, the Israeli agent Stefan says, in justification
of his well-meant actions, “Truth is a luxury. Country, family, children come
first.” He did not seem to realize—and perhaps the filmmakers themselves did
not even understand—that this fine-sounding phrase “country above truth” is
precisely the formula that made the Nazis possible.
Lynne:
7.5
This
was a well done gritty spy/thriller. Jumping from the past to the present, the
movie executed the sins of the past revisiting the lives of the present
flawlessly. The carefully planned actions of the younger characters were as
fascinating to watch as the unfolding of their earlier decisions upon their
older selves were engaging to discover. It poked at the evil of Nazi human
experimentation coupled with the necessary methods for bringing the
perpetrators of that inhumanity to justice until actions appeared gray; It left
the viewer to tease out the black and white morality of justice.
Although
Ciaran Hinds’ face was wonderfully downturned as the older version of the
tortured agent, David, I think that he and Tom Wilkinson would have been more
convincing physically if they had switched their roles.
Knowing
Jessica Chastain only as one of the lights in The Help, I was surprised
and delighted to see her excellent dramatic work in this movie. She’s one to
watch. Sam Worthington, whom I had previously seen only in Avatar, was likewise,
good to see in a dramatic role.
Action
Items: Watch Man on a Ledge, Clash of the Titans. They were on my
list anyway, but I’ll move them up now.