Although I'm not one of the director's biggest fans, I have to give Stephen Soderbergh credit- he is certainly one of the most versatile directors working today. He's made a Gen-X indie drama, an existential comedy, three blockbuster heist films, a feel good legal comedy, a social morality play, a microbudget slice of life masterpiece, and a self indulgent piece of crap - and that's just the movies I've seen. I didn't like all of them and downright hated one, but Soderbergh always has new trick up his sleeve.
The Good German
is a movie that is ultimately undone by its own ambitions. It tries to be two things at once and succeeds to a limited degree, but I felt that this could be a really great movie if the director took only one approach and did all the way, instead of oscillating between the two. On one level, the movie is a homage to 40's cinema- shot in the academy ratio with a period camera on period film stock (this doesn't extend to the sound, however, which is stereo). On another level, it's a "real" movie with a real story that we are supposed get involved. But the two approaches conflict with each other. We have fun with the some of the 40's movie cliches, but when the real drama comes, it's hard to care about the characters, which are limited to archetypes.
Soderbergh can't completely evoke the films of the 40's, either. The biggest problem is, I think, the fact that we are in a postmodern age. In this film, George Clooney plays a part that would almost certainly have been played by Humphrey Bogart. But there are no actors left (except maybe Clint Eastwood) that have the iconic status of a Bogart. Clooney is a good actor, but he can't be an icon. The changes in acting method have altered since the 40's, too. We expect actors to create characters instead of essentially inhabiting a persona. It's funny when Sodebergh parodies 40's stylistic techniques, but he can't create characters we care about.
The story, which is a sort of combination of Casablanca and The Third Man (with lots of visual allusions to both films, as well as Bicycle Thieves), is hard to care about, too. Set in Germany immediately after the countries surrender, most of the film is a search for guy named Emile Brandt (I won't reveal what happens when they find him, or who plays him). Emile is the ex-husband of Lena (Cate Blanchett in the Marlene Dietrich part) who is an old flame of American soldier Jake (Clooney). Although I think understood the many twists and machinations of the plot, I'm not sure I can repeat them, and I'm not sure that's really the point. One critic referred to this movie as an anti-Casablanca, and that's probably true. Whereas Curtiz's film is about making sacrifices made to so that others might have better lives, this is about hurting others so you can live. But there is a moment at the very end of the film that is intended to be a surprise that I had expected the whole time, and that scenes allusion to Casablanca was more painfully obvious than clever.
I am recommending the film, mostly because the visual fun of Soderbergh's homages. The black and white photography never stops being gorgeous, even after the somewhat shallow characters become tiresome. This is an ambitious film that fails on a human level, but gets by on its technical merits.
The Good German (2006)