The Good German: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Ein mittelmäßiger film.

Steven Soderbergh’s “The Good German” is at best a mildly entertaining curiosity, at worst an ambitious failure. The film is a misguided old soul so steeped in the past, it intentionally evokes the past, in this case the Warner Bros. noir films of the 1940s.

Set just after the war in 1945 Berlin, the film is less a movie than it is an experiment. It pilfers from a wealth of Warner's more infamous noir classics-- particularly “Casablanca," which it's modeled after--but also “The Third Man,” with countless other influences scattered throughout (Hitchcock and Wilder are major influences).

Attention to style is the movie’s main concern, not substance and certainly not character development. The story also is lacking, which is unfortunate since screenwriter Paul Attanasio adapted it from Joseph Kanon’s deeper, richer novel, which in the right hands could have made for a fine translation.

Still, since style is what Soderbergh wants, style is what audiences get. Shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Peter Andrews, who is a pseudonym for Soderbergh (as is the film’s editor, Mary Ann Bernard), the movie is beautifully familiar looking, with obvious care taken in achieving exactly the right look. The problem with this is that by working so diligently to nail that look, the movie comes off as a staged affectation. Everything else that should have mattered is ancillary.

The film follows Jake Geismer (George Clooney, wasted), a foreign correspondent for The New Republic who is back in Berlin to report on the Potsdam Conference. There, he meets two people who change his life--his shady driver, Tully (a shrill, sorely miscast Tobey Maguire), who enjoys rough sex and tough talk, as well as Jake's former lover Lena Brandt, a femme fatale with black lips, a black flip and a blacker mood.

Lena is played by Cate Blanchett as if she tucked Marlene Dietrich's remains into her soul--not to mention her throat. Her husky-voiced performance is pure mimicry, for sure, but at least it gives the movie an enjoyable jolt. With the actress' angular body framed by the shadows and light, Blanchett proves consistently watchable, slouching and fretting through the role as if she were mildly annoyed.

Perhaps she was, because what Soderbergh has in store for her character are a bushel of convoluted secrets that threaten to bring down what's left of the free world, but which never are satisfactorily explored. Like the good reporter he is, Jake goes through the motions of unearthing the answers to those mysteries, but in the shallow puddles of noir the movie courts, the result isn’t nearly as arresting as it could have been.

Grade: C