Going Through Movies #4
Black Book
dir. Paul Verhoeven, 2006
Seen June 7, 2007
I thought this was gonna be a holocaust movie, then a back-and-forth power of the wills spy game, and finally I figured out that it really was a "woman in jeopardy" type flick where a woman takes punishment from all angles for multiple hours of plot (Inland Empire, Kill Bill, Lars Von Trier movies). In the jeopardized woman role, Carice von Houten earns all the starmaking talk she's been getting, but I hope she doesn't rush into Hollywood movies too fast because they'd never have such a casual relationship with sex and violence that movies need if only out of respect for the dehumanization war causes in those unfortunate enough to suffer through (those living in America during this war don't count). Dehumanization is the subject at hand with Black book and one of the films strengths is it's refusal to reduce even the Nazi's to simple one dimensional killing machines. Its weakness is that the previeous sentence doesn't apply to every character. As the reveleations pile up in the last half hour or so, I was pretty confused because I never really got a handle on all of the minor individual resistance fighters and nazis who turn out to have actually been this or that. Maybe I'll be luckier on a second viewing. On another note, I kinda wish the movie had gone with the "nazi killers are dorks" thing.
dir. Paul Verhoeven, 2006
Seen June 7, 2007
I thought this was gonna be a holocaust movie, then a back-and-forth power of the wills spy game, and finally I figured out that it really was a "woman in jeopardy" type flick where a woman takes punishment from all angles for multiple hours of plot (Inland Empire, Kill Bill, Lars Von Trier movies). In the jeopardized woman role, Carice von Houten earns all the starmaking talk she's been getting, but I hope she doesn't rush into Hollywood movies too fast because they'd never have such a casual relationship with sex and violence that movies need if only out of respect for the dehumanization war causes in those unfortunate enough to suffer through (those living in America during this war don't count). Dehumanization is the subject at hand with Black book and one of the films strengths is it's refusal to reduce even the Nazi's to simple one dimensional killing machines. Its weakness is that the previeous sentence doesn't apply to every character. As the reveleations pile up in the last half hour or so, I was pretty confused because I never really got a handle on all of the minor individual resistance fighters and nazis who turn out to have actually been this or that. Maybe I'll be luckier on a second viewing. On another note, I kinda wish the movie had gone with the "nazi killers are dorks" thing.
posted by Jesse @ 9:54 PM
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