The thrills of Disneyland’s Space Mountain come not from the speed or huge dives on which many rollercoasters depend, but from being a rollercoaster in the dark.  I suspect that the rollercoaster itself is fairly tame.  But because you never know what is coming next, the sudden shift in direction give you quite a charge.  If you like Space Mountain, Black Book may be your kind of movie.

First off, I have to say that Black Book is a great ride.  The timing of the plot twists (and there are many) is always a bit before you expect them.  The tension builds a little at a time, and suddenly you’re jerked in a different direction.  The twists are not all that fanciful or hard to accept; it’s just that you aren’t quite ready for them.

Because the plot is so involved (and can’t really be covered without includling spoilers), I’ll give the briefest of summaries.  In 1944, Rachel Stein, a Jew, is in hiding on a Dutch farm.  Soon she is discovered and barely escapes death.  She adopts the name Ellis de Vries and finds her way to a Dutch Resistance cell and begins working with them.  Her work brings her into contact with the head of the Nazi intelligence unit, Ludwig Müntze.  She goes to work for him and has an affair with him.  There are plots and counterplots and betrayals—lots of betrayals.  Ellis seems to always be in the middle of it all.

There are a few times that we are invited to get a different perspective on the Nazi occupation and, I think, to compare it to current events.  At one point, the German General speaks of the battle they are waging against the terrorists (the word the Germans always use for the Resistance fighters).  He goes on to praise Germany for its battle to establish a free Europe.  It doesn’t take much of a leap to read into that the film’s take on America’s war on terrorism.

Another interesting perspective is the role anti-Semitism plays in the film.  Certainly the Holocaust was based in anti-Semitism, but we shouldn’t think that the Nazis had a corner on that view of Jews.  Anti-Semitism was able to be exploited by the Nazis because it was so widely held.  It was thoroughly enmeshed in European culture.  (To be fair, America had plenty of anti-Semitism to go around as well, but we aren’t in this movie.) 

We see that ingrained anti-Semitism early on, when the Dutch family Rachel is staying with expects her to memorize a verse from the Gospels every day.  Perhaps it’s just to help her pass for Gentile more easily, but then the farmer says, “If the Jews had listened to Jesus, they wouldn’t be in such a mess now.”  Later, when things go wrong, her Resistance cell quickly assumes that as a Jew she would betray them for the money.

Deep in the heart of all this is a great struggle to do what is right.  Müntze is trying to do good within a terribly evil system.  Ellis wants to bring freedom to her country.  She is willing to do some very bad things for a greater good.  Sometimes it becomes hard to tell just how far one can go to bring about a good thing without losing one’s soul in the process.  But then, that struggle to do what is right is often a road full of twists and loops.  And often we travel it without being able to see where we are headed.