The Good German
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh likes to play with movies. With Ocean’s Eleven and its wildly experimental follow-up, the director pinned down virtually every vital element of the heist genre and stirred the grand concoction into slyly self-aware entertainment. In The Good German, Soderbergh uses darker material, and no less homage, but it is not as successful. Although not himself a mad scientist, Soderbergh’s method is always scientific. As a basic experiment with film form, the movie unfolds with droll commitment to the conventions of noir, with giddy boosts from evocative black-and-white photography and an overbearing orchestral score. The story borrows lazily from The Third Man and Casablanca, but that seems like a prerequisite for this exercise.
Opening in the bombed-out Berlin of 1945, The Good German initially follows Corporal Tully (an enthusiastic and increasingly annoying Tobey Maguire), stationed in the country primarily to fulfill minor responsibilities. His latest is driving American war correspondent Capt. Jake Geismer (George Clooney) around, in town to cover the supposedly amiable Potsdam Peace Conference—a strange meeting of Allied leaders with divided interests, aimed at rebuilding a postwar Europe. Archival footage shows Stalin and Truman exchanging smiles at a roundtable, while an imminent Cold War looms large just below the surface. Geismer recognizes the potential trouble brewing, and as he rides alongside Tully, observing the happy-go-lucky youth smile amid the wreckage, it becomes obvious that Clooney will inevitably get the hero role.
For now, however, we’re with Tully: Watching him screw a German woman doggy-style and engage in generic party pastimes, while his squeaky voiceover unabashedly confesses that “the war was the best thing that ever happened to me.” The obscured object of his desire turns out to be an elegant local named Lena (Cate Blanchett, sporting the best fake accent this side of Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond), whose enigmatic scientist husband has gone missing, rousing the ire of international authorities. Ever the opportunist, Tully hopes to sell information about the missing man’s whereabouts—and ends up with a bullet in his back.
Finally, it’s time for some Clooney action. In the wake of the murder, Geismer becomes obsessed with unraveling the deep secret about Lena’s (seemingly) former flame, especially since the journalist has his own romantic history with her. Cue the frantic dialogue as a mystery starts to brew.
Just when the pieces are in place for a rollicking plot, Soderbergh slows down so you can admire his technical finesse. Shooting with ancient lenses and using swipe-cuts to transition between scenes in ways rarely seen since Hollywood’s Golden Era, he demonstrates his skill at the expense of solid content. The story jolts to a disturbing crawl, intermittently picking up pace for the token contrived twists and turns. Eventually, Clooney and Blanchett end up on a rainy runway, essentially reenacting the closing moments of Casablanca, and another trick falls out of Soderbergh’s bag—namely, star power. The suggestion that Clooney is the new Bogie isn’t itself overly presumptuous, but the debonair performer earns that status through original roles, rather than trite self-referential homage. Soderbergh, the terrific filmmaker who brought us sex, lies, and videotape, would do better ripping off himself.
