Review of Black Book (2006) by Squalid J — 20 Aug 2009

Paul Verhoeven doesn't get even half the credit he deserves. There are very few film-makers out there who could craft a WWII movie as tense, thrilling, as deliberately trashy and yet as thought-provoking, philosophical and moving as Zwartboek (that's Dutch for...something). It's a major step forward for war movies in general, and a minor work of genius. The cast is amazing all-round and, as Jewish singer Rachel Stein, Carice van Houten delivers a fantastic performance on which the whole movie hangs. And there's boobs.

There are two major and in some ways contradictory themes at work in Black Book*. The main one in terms of driving the plot forward is that of the plans made by some people for when the war finally ends. Virtually all of the usually terrible events thrust on Rachel Stein are the result of plans made by others, on both sides, in order that they might come out of the war okay. The other of the film's great themes is best expressed by Rachel herself in the question: "Does it never end?" To me, the whole point of the movie is that, even once the war is over, the suffering and the injustice of it all often isn't.

Ultimately, it's also a great movie about survival, against all the odds. As such, it's not as bleak and hopeless a movie as I might make it sound. But even with that, the fact of ongoing struggle and war is implied heavily by the ending. The inference is that the dark side of our existence will stay just as long as we do.

And there's boobs.

* Aside of course from damagingly co-dependent relationships, social ineptitude, poetic rudeness, cigarettes & alcohol, dead-end lives, and...oh wait, sorry, that's Black Books. See, this is why we have footnotes - so we can deliver the stupid, obvious jokes in just out-of-the-way enough manner as to render them relatively inoffensive. That, at least, is the theory.