Review of The Good German (2006) by Uluc Y — 08 Aug 2008

''It's easy now to say Hitler was wrong about the Jews. Let me tell you something. Nobody said he was wrong at the time.''.

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.

George Clooney: Jake Geismer.

A new Steven Soderbergh film equals one of the faceted faces which Steven Soderbergh puts on. There is Steven The Entertainer, fun films(Out Of Sight, The Limey, Ocean's Eleven), there is Steven The Worthy, the maker of thought-inducing, issue-driven drama (Erin Brockovich, Traffic), and lastly there is Steven The Experimentalist, an artist who plays with mixing genre, content and form (Kafka, Schizopolis, Solaris, Bubble) without a flying regard for audience approval.

With his Good German, based on Joseph Kanon's door stop of a novel, all three Soderberghs turn up at once, and the result is a contorted tangled web of disaster. Rather than make a film about the good old 1940s, Soderbergh has attempted to make a film from the 40s, a lush thriller/melodrama à la Casablanca, The Third Man and Notorious, shot in Warner Bros. house style. At times, the movie veers into a studied Euro art show, all inky blacks and burnt-out whites, but mostly Soderbergh gets the approximation dead right. The spare, up-front credits sequence, the restrained camera moves, the dodgy back-projections, the claustrophobic, shot-on-a-back lot feel are all redone with a film buff's affection and care for the telling details. This is pastiche, not a parody (which is why a blatant closing nod to Casablanca really grinds the whole thing to a halt).

Adding pungency is Soderbergh's intention to make an old studio picture with modern sentimentality. Paul Attanasio's screenplay is saturated with delusions about American post-War motives, frank dialogue,''Don't Jew me on the price!'' barks Tobey Maguire's Corporal Tully, and a scene akin to Rick in Casablanca throwing Ilsa on a bed and taking her roughly from behind. But what Soderbergh doesn't improve upon is character depth and psychological complexities. He also fails to make the mystery/thriller aspects watchable and compelling. There's interesting noir meat here, but the storytelling is disconnected, vacant, and dormant, never making you care enough about Geismer's exploits.

The result is that while the recreation has strong moments (a footchase through an Allied parade), The Good German is strangely lifeless,remote and still born. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is its impressive collective starcast, who fail to generate any of said star power wattage. Sporting a bandaged ear like another movie shows us the originality on offer here - Gittes from Chinatown- Clooney turns in probably his least inspiring and charismatic performance to date, failing to convince there is a beating heart under the exterior.

Under a mask of make-up Cate Blanchett fares no better, invoking Dietrich and Garbo but delivering nothing approaching a rounded, believable vibrant character. In trying so hard to experiment with bygone styles, Soderbergh has failed to commit to the substance, the spark and the melodrama of the Golden Age. Perhaps the answer lies with a different director. Whatever happened to that guy who made the fabled Out Of Sight?

I want him back.

This should have been Soderbergh gold. Instead it results in being boring and immaterial, The Good German ends up being a disappointment.