Caper Film; Nazism Plays Footnote

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2008)

"Valkyrie" is a caper film in which Nazi Germany plays the traditional role of the caper's exotic background setting. Caper films demand local color; in "Topkapi," the exotic background was Istanbul. Here it's Hitler's bunker and a swastika-bedecked Berlin. The film's primary emphasis is the primary emphasis of all caper films: a super competent, very good-looking lead, in scenes of nail-biting suspense, must carry out a daring stunt. In this case, the daring stunt just happens to be the assassination of Adolf Hitler. And that's really the importance that Hitler is given here  he's comparable to the jewels in a jewel heist film, rather than a human being whose evil challenges the very definition of the word "human." Placing the "Nazi" in "Nazi Germany" into the background of a big-budget, superstar, Hollywood treatment raises questions. As I, in the audience, focused, as the director, script and star were leading me to focus, on the details of the caper, rather than on the massive evil of Nazi Germany, I wondered: is this movie, intentionally or unintentionally, about making Nazism insignificant? There are no scenes, none, in which Tom Cruise's Stauffenberg interrogates Nazism and its relevance to Germany or German identity. Nobody else does, either. There are no scenes that even hint at the horrors that Nazis were perpetrating. There is no hint that the Generals' plot to assassinate Hitler would have been beside the point for millions: the plot occurred late in 1944, after millions of Jews, Rom, Slavs, and other innocent civilians had already met their death under Nazism's methodical brutality. The Allied invasion of Normandy Beach had already taken place. Heroic American soldiers and their Allies would soon take care of Hitler, as the German people never managed to do.
There is another major difference between this film and other big budget, Hollywood, WW II dramas that a veteran film-goer notices right away. The heroes have all the attributes so often assigned to film Nazis: they are ubermenschen. Their high, black leather boots shine. Their heels click. Their medals gleam. Their clean guns nest neatly against their impeccable uniforms. Their ranks are masterfully efficient and model a discipline that Leni Riefenstahl would love to film.
In other films, audiences view all those admirable cinematic qualities attributed to Nazis with some regret. "Why can't the good guys be such supermen?" Certainly Jews, Nazism's primary victims, are usually filmed as being underfed, dirty, cowering victims. American GIs are often scruffy and inarticulate. In "Valkyrie," you get the ubermensch, and you get virtue in that envious, photogenic package.
Once the viewer realizes how relatively trivial Nazism is in this movie, and how superficially Nazi-like the good guys are, one has to ask, "Does this film exist to exculpate  Germans? Germany? National Socialism?" My guess is that no one involved in the making of this film had any of those goals. My guess is that other viewers besides me will be asking themselves similar questions while undergoing the odd experience of watching this caper film with the most vexed of pedigrees.
On a lighter note: the cast is a "Who's Who" of respected British and German stars who have not reached superstar status. You will recognize these players, but it will take you a moment to remember from where you recognize them. I had to suspend my immersion in the film for about five minutes after Der Fuhrer's first appearance. I *knew* I knew that guy  but from where  aha. Under history's most infamous mustache lurked the Reverend Mr. Collins, the bumbling, comical, thwarted suitor of the most popular TV costume drama of all time, A&E's "Pride and Prejudice." If the filmmakers gambled that no Jane Austen fans would attend "Valkyrie," they gambled wrong. Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Kenneth Branaugh, Tom Hollanderreally, for anglophile film fans, this was like some kind of skewed reunion.
German film fans get to see old friends, too. Thomas Kretschmann and Christian Berkel, so memorable in supporting Nazi roles in "Downfall," "The Pianist," and "Black Book," are memorable here in other supporting roles. We should forgive the Germans just so that brilliant German actors get to play something other than Nazis.