And this is why European cinema needs more recognition.

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2008)

A powerful and daring picture, Black Book could have opened up some very old and painful wounds in its native Holland but instead was received with critical appraise, and is thoroughly celebrated as an appreciative look at the war torn times of WWII and the ends people would go to in order to stay alive.
After her family is slaughtered by Nazis, Jewish Rachel Stein (von Houten) joins the Dutch resistance hoping to have a hand in the downfall of the occupation. Seeing as she has nothing much left to live for she takes a life threatening task  infiltrate the Nazi base by befriending and seducing a commanding officer (Koch) and then leak information to the rebels on the outside. But, as these things tend to be like, it isn't that simple and soon enough lines are blurred, mistakes made and most of all Rachel falls for her Nazi boyfriend Muntz While their friendship and love blossoms on the inside, the rebels outside slowly grow assured that she has betrayed them and joined the Nazis and as she becomes a marked woman (due to one bastard officer who 'frames' her), both her and Muntz gradually move to a death sentence at the hands of their respective parties. The lines between good and bad are blurred irrevocably, and rather ingeniously in this film as the freedom fighters Rachel works for are made out to be savage bastards who will kill anyone if they meet even the slightest of loggerheads whom you grow to detest when in actual fact you'd think you'd be supporting them and sympathy for Muntz, for a German Nazi officer, rolls in, as it becomes clearer that he has lost faith in the war effort  or even had any to begin with  and he hopes to escape with Rachel to live out the rest of the war in peace in the countryside.
For Paul Verhoeven, the driving force behind such tripe as Total Recall and Starship Troopers, this is a fantastic and surprisingly mature step in a promising direction and carries echoes of such great war films as Wolfgang Peterson's epic Das Boot where the human spirit is studied and incorporated into German officials of the era in favour of typecast "Nazi = evil" representations. By creating a contrast in who's who in the war and who to root for, as well as making their characters so heavily tainted in grey there is no black and white way of looking at these people, Verhoeven has crafted a piece of cinema which is challenging yet merciful and surely a must-see for anyone who is sick of Hollywoodisations of the war.
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