Hello there, boys and girls. Back with another round of musings for your reading pleasure.
- I've been reading Kurt Vonnegut's classic, Slaughterhouse Five, over the last few days, and am now almost done with it. For some reason, I never read it through all of high school or college. I tell ya', after slowly making my way through a behemoth of a novel like The Adventures and Kavalier and Clay, it's great to read something so quickly-paced and big on brevity (yes, I'm into the whole brevity thing). Great book, duh. Read it if you haven't. So it goes.
- We finally have our own NBC Page in my office now! Yes - finally, someone to order around and yell at to restock the fridge whenever my ersonal Aquafina supply runs low (I like 10 bottles lined in two rows of 5 in the fridge at all times) and make me 574 copies of every document I print out. In ya' face. Seriously, it's nice to have someone else around my age in the office.
- Despite working with Apple and recently buying my first MacBook, I just can't bring myself to join the slobbering masses who are creaming themselves over the recently announced iPhone (or is it iFone? whatever ...). Yes, now I can Google myself while on the go. Whoop de do. It's a phone people, you use it to make calls (most to people you don't really want to talk to in the first place). Who cares if it can synch to your iPod? Isn't that WHY you have an iPod? To use it? Oh well, have fun shelling out hundreds of dollars for the latest shiny white toy for rich assholes.
- One of my new year's resolutions is to walk around more during the day while at work. I did so today and enjoyed it.
- So we're escalating the war in Iraq, finally bringing down those pesky insurgents and givin' 'em the what-for. But this is "changing the course," not to be confused with "staying the course." This is a whole new direction, a new start. Yep, keep telling yourself that, W, all the way until '08.
- Damn you, New Line.
- I may yet do a blog entry about the secret origins of some of my commonly used words and phrases. Darnit all ...
- And, on with the show ...
BLACK BOOK Review:
- To the uninitiated, it often comes off as weird when I say that one of my favorite movies is Robocop. I mean, it's a movie about a cybernetic policeman, how good could it be, right? Well, the movie kicks ass, and in large part that is due to the crazy sensibilities of director and Dutch homeland hero, Paul Verhoeven - if nothing else, certainly one of the most interesting forces in modern movies.
Verhoeven, basically, seems to have little to no internal sensor that tells him when something is too over the top, cheesy, or unintentionally funny. He has a unique European sensibility that seems to imbue every movie he makes with over-the-top, raw, and gratuitous levels of sex and violence, an almost perverse sense of black humor, and in spite all of that, a remarkable sense of dramatic weight and self-seriousness that no matter how absurd the situation, never winks at the audience or indulges in any sense of irony or self-awareness. In some cases, Verhoeven uses this unique aesthetic to elevate what would, in other hands, be B-movie trash into remarkably fun, witty, entertaining, and even great drama. You see this in Robocop, where the ultra-violent tale of a robotic cop blasting his way through urban decay somehow becomes, simultaneously, a kickass action movie and a near-genious commentary / satire on 1980's corporate greed and excess. To a lesser extent, this same elevation of B-movie material into violent, darkly humourous art occurs in Verhoeven flicks like Total Recall and Starship Troopers, though to me neither reaches the sheer awesomeness of Robocop. But in other cases, the obvious one being Showgirls, and to some degree Basic Instinct, Verhoeven's total lack of self-aware self-censorship results in glorious and total disaster. But there's no denying that even when he fails, the man does so in quite spectacular fashion.
So it was with great curiousity that I went to a free screening of Verhoeven's latest, Black Book (also known as Zwartboek). The movie was a World War II epic, in Dutch, a huge hit overseas in 2006, and already controversial in some circles for its graphic depiction of a Jewish woman's affair with a Nazi officer in 1940's Holland. All this from the genious / madman behind Robocop / Showgirls. So yeah, I was chomping at the bit to see this one, folks. And man, as far as being a unique kind of film curiosity, this one definitely did not disappoint.
How to describe Black Book? Honestly, I am almost at a loss. I guess I'd say this: imagine a sweeping, epic, classically-made World War II epic from the golden age of Hollywood. Now imagine a 1980's era, hardcore action movie filled with graphic violence, gratuitous nudity, and all kinds of moral ambiguity and characters painted in shades of grey. Now mash-up the two, and we have Black Book. Well, kind of ...
On one hand, I recognized many touches that were trademark Verhoeven in Black Book - highly sexualized female characters, lots of machine gun fights in which we see people riddled with bullet holes, deviant villains, and strong themes of revenge, corruption, and eye-for-an-eye morality. On the other hand, this was in many ways completely different from other Verhoeven movies I've seen. Plot-wise, it was an epic tale filled with twists and turns, betrayals and double crosses straight out of a vintage war movie. In terms of cinematography, this movie looked pretty spectacular - filled with vivid depicitons of the Dutch countryside, of the wartime-era city streets, and numerous other amazingly-realized settings. This movie spectacularly succeeds in transporting one back to the final days of WWII - not in a cheesy, stylized Hollywood fashion, but with a rarely seen air of authenticity helped by the fact that this film was made abroad and outside of the American studio system. I also liked the way this film handled language and subtitles - most of the movie is in Dutch, but the characters speak a number of different languages throughout accroding to what they might actually be speaking in a given situation. Throughout the movie we hear Dutch, English, Hebrew, and German, and the conversations flow naturally thoughout. As you may be starting to realize, this is far from your typical film ...
To outline the plot / premise: Black Book deals with Rachel Steinn, an attractive Jewish girl who goes into hiding in 1940's Holland, tucked away with a Christian family to avoid capture by the Gestapo. We first meet Rachel in 1956, where she lives in Israel on a Kibbutz, leading a quiet, happy life as a school teacher. But most of the film takes place in 1944, as Rachel arranges for transport out of Holland and into liberated territory, only for her ship to be intercepted by Nazis. Rachel escapes, and is taken in by a group of underground Dutch resistance fighters, who recruit her to their cause. After one of the fighters is kidnapped by the SS, Rachel dies her hair blonde and is sent on a spy mission - she is to infiltrate the local Nazi occupying regime by seducing its leading captain, thereby gaining access and information that will help free the prisoners being held in the compound.
This sounds like the setup for a conventional spy / wartime drama, but Verhoeven sets Black Book apart by creating a very dark, bleak, nihilistic picture of the war where nearly every character is morally corrupt. Things start to take a turn for the offbeat when Rachel's affections for her targeted Nazi officer go from merely an act to legitimate, as depicted in some pretty grpahic scenes. So yeah - this movie will probably generate (and already has generated) a good deal of controversy, because not only does Rachel - a spunky sexpot of a Jewish girl, agree without hesitation to sleep with a Nazi for the good of the resistance, but it turns out that this particular Nazi captain is portrayed as somewhat sympathetic. Sure, he's probably responsible for any number of atrocities, but his family was killed by British bombs, and he fights to arrange peaceful compromises with the resistance fighters rather than use violence as a first resort. Now you can start to see how this movie veers so far away from the black and white, good vs. evil style that is typical of most WWII movies. Nearly every character is some shade of shady.
By the way, the acting in this movie, even with its distinctly European flair, is universally great, and special mention has to be made of Carice Van Houten (no relation to Milhouse), in the lead role of Rachel, who is simply great here - I think she easily has what it takes to be an international star.
As much of an oddity as this movie was in some ways, don't get me wrong - I was totally entertained by it fro mstart to finish. In another director's hands this might have been a classically-told, traditional WWII-era saga that could have been a bit less crazy and over the top, but also probably would have been a lot less entertaining. This movie has many moments that are absurd when you stop to think about them, but it also has many great, memorable scenes that while they may be a far cry from what we've come to expect in a typical Hollywood period piece, their unrestrained, unsanitized rawness makes them all the more memorable. For example - one scene where Rachel, posing as a gentile and working a deskjob at German HQ in Holland, sings and entertains a gathering of Nazi troops in honor of Hitler's birthday, while being serenaded by the very same Nazi officer who ordered the execution of her entire family - a setup for a memorable scene if ever there was one. Subtle - no, but effective and memorable. On the other hand, the ending coda, similar in theme to the ending of Steven Spielberg's Munich, is in total contrast to that movie in its over-the-top heavy-handedness. But still, more often than not, Black Book draws you in and entertains despite being one of the most bleak movies I've seen.
So, if you've ever been curious how the director of Robocop and Basic Instinct would make a twisting, sweeping epic about a Jewish girl's journey into the heart of the Nazi regime in the final days of World War II (I know I was ...), well you've GOT to see this movie. Afterwards, you may not be sure exactly what to make of the gloriously unsubtle, memorably unconventional film you've just seen, but trust me, you'll probably be glad you saw it.
My Grade: A -
- Alright, I am outta here. For a relatively slow day, I feel like it's been a long one. Back later, PEACE.
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