The Good German (2006)
One of the more interesting things about this decade was watching Steven Soderbergh transform himself from indie director of inconsistent results to a bonafide mainstream hitmaker. With that came Hollywood clout. So he did something done very rarely Hollywood. Instead of nurturing and protecting the clout, he used it. Teaming up with George Clooney has proven to be a masterstroke for both of them, as Clooney’s star status has never been higher and Soderbergh’s hits with the man allow him a huge degree of freedom in selecting projects. Whether transforming an introspective intellectual monster of science fiction into a purely emotional beast or a bifuricated Spanish language biopic about process, no arena was too heady or off limits. And within that paradigm was borne The Good German.
On paper, this isn’t a particularly wierd project: an adaptation of a mainstream bestseller, set 60 years ago, with a marquee cast that attempts to recapture the filmmaking of days gone by. It’s LA Confidential with a lilttle bit of art school pretention. Of course, “on paper” doesn’t even begin to describe Soderbergh’s ideas or his methods.
The first, and most notable thing he does here is his eschewing of the emotional; the visceral. Of course, most critics dismissed that as shallow and unfeeling and while you can’t instantly disregard those concerns, it doesn’t have any respect for what Soderbergh tries to do. While he apes the syntax and structure of 1940’s cinema (the backlots, restricted focal lengths, black and white, etc) the same way Todd Haynes invokes Sirk with Far From Heaven, he does so with a story that specifically works with the distance one gets with such specific requirements. It’s a romance with two leads who have no chemistry (Blanchett and Clooney). But how can there be chemistry after so much destruction (personal, political, social). The idea of romantic love gets hammered down when you realize just how many women were treated as the spoils of war. So nasty and removed seems to be the way to go about it. To be fair, The Good German is infused with Soderbergh’s love of classic cinema. The glorious black and white, Thomas Newman’s epically melodramatic score (so wonderful in it’s bombast), the cut of the costumes. With the exception of a few choice words, it could be a film noir from the World War II era.
And then there’s the casting. The smaller roles are filled out vividly by Tony Curran (so good in Red Road) and Robin Weigert. Tobey Maguire’s blissfully nasty performance works surprisingly well despite his baby cheeks and modern buffoonery. Clooney gives us Clooney once again. And Cate Blanchett? Well, for The Good German, she and Soderbergh fit her unique screen presence into a world of blazing (and difficult) artifice, removing any hints of realism that she’s used to diving into and creating a wholly cinematic construction (meanwhile, giving the type of performance Valli or Dietrich wish they could give). It’s fascinating to watch an actress who likely wouldn’t have been a casting director’s first choice for femme fatale so thoroughly become the part, right down to the pastiche foreign accent.