The Good German

From the vintage Warner Brothers logo at the beginning of the film, it's obvious that The Good German is trying to be retro. Black and white, overbearing mood-directing score heavy on strings, a slight tendency to overacting that falls just short of camp, everything about it seems designed to take us back to films of a previous generation. Director Steven Soderbergh obviously wants this film to be a Humphrey Bogart film.

For those not old enough to know about Bogie, he often played a tough guy, but with a soft spot. As Sam Spade or Philip Marlow or Rick Blaine, he seemed to care only about the case or himself, but in the end, he was always doing the right thing even if it cost him everything. The Good German is a film about doing the right thing.

The story revolves around Jake Geismer, a war correspondent sent to Berlin soon after the fall of Nazi Germany to cover the Potsdam Conference to divide up Germany. Before the war he had been the AP bureau chief in Berlin, so he has contacts there. One of those contacts is Lena Brandt, who worked as a stringer for him before the war. He also carried on an affair with her. They meet again, but soon she becomes the heart of a mystery involving murder, rocket scientists and Lena's husband who has been reported killed in the war. The Russians are involved. American intelligence is involved. And Jake is trying to do what he can to help his former lover (and maybe win her love again.)

The plot twists around like The Maltese Falcon. The love story between Jake and Lena has overtones of Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca (including the final scene). Like I said, this film wants to be a Bogie movie. Unfortunately George Clooney isn't Humphrey Bogart. He just doesn't carry the tough/tender dichotomy that Bogie pulled off so well. Cate Blanchett does a good job creating a Marlene Dietrich type character that is the opposite of a Bogart character, with the toughness hidden under the vulnerability.

The film finally comes down to a few people who try to do what is right -- to tell the truth, even if it is inconvenient to the powers that are fighting over the intellectual resources of the defeated Germany. In a Bogie movie, doing what is right would have been all that mattered in the end. In this film we wonder if anyone really cares about what is right -- or if they all just seek their own right.

It is of interest that all but one of the American characters in the film have German names (e.g., Geismer, Schaeffer, Muller, Teitel). As we wonder who the eponymous good German is, we are not limited to those who have survived the bombings and war, we are asked to think about all those who are seeking that self-defined right action and consider if there is an overarching morality that defines what is right. In this is the center of the kinds of moral discussion that need to take place in a world where spin and deception so often control the narrative of the issues our culture needs to face.

Bogie would have known.