The Good German

Summary

“Money allows you to be who you really are.”

In 2006, Steven Soderbergh had made Warner Bros. a tremendous amount of money with his Ocean’s Eleven franchise, which had just received its first sequel, Ocean’s Twelve in 2004. Soderbergh was in a great position to go to Warner for his next project. Leading man George Clooney was attached to the film and the script was based on a best selling spy novel by Joseph Kanon. Tobey McGuire would also star, fresh from the wildly successful Spider-Man 2, and Cate Blanchett would play the romantic lead. With all these elements, on paper The Good German must have sounded like a slam dunk. What Warner might not have counted on was that Soderbergh planned to shoot the entire picture using techniques from films from the Forties on studio backlots in glorious black and white. Basically, Soderbergh got $32 million from Warner to perform an experiment. When the resulting film was released, critics and audiences were largely nonplussed and the picture only did a modest $6 million at the box office. That makes the recent 4K release by Warner all the more surprising. Like most people, I had missed this picture theatrically, so I was happy to check it out.

Berlin, July 1945

“Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin are scheduled to meet outside the city, in Potsdam, to draw the post-war map. Only Japan continues to fight….”

War correspondent Jake Geismer (George Clooney) arrives on the same flight as a congressman to cover the conference between Russia and American leaders at Potsdam. Jake is dressed in military fatigues because of his assignment. He is met on the tarmac by the affable vehicle driver Tully (Tobey McGuire.) He escorts Jake back to the hotel, and gives him a gift of a bottle of whiskey, all while stealing the credentials out of Jake’s back pocket. Tully has made a good career of trading black market items and secrets to the Russians to fund his lifestyle and his sexual escapades. Tully wishes the war would never end so he could keep his work in the black market running. Lena (Kate Blanchett,) a prostitute Tully is in a relationship with, wants out of Berlin. Two men come looking for Emil Brandt in Lena’s place while Tully is there. They beat Tully and break his arm. Tully forcefully questions Lena about what the men wanted. He issues a hard punch to her belly, and she admits that Emil Brandt was her husband. Emil was a mathematician and she was informed he had died three years earlier. Tully goes to the Russians to try to get Lena a ride out of the country, dangling Emil Brandt as a reward to the Russian for helping him. At the bar that night, Jake Geismer arrives and sees Lena. They had known each other when he was a journalist there in peace time. The movie progresses from there and the key mystery of the film revolves around the death of Tully that occurs.

Some who saw the film quickly called it a failed Casablanca rip-off, and it is easy to understand that point of view. The finale of the picture in particular throws back to the final sequence of Casablanca. That honestly did bother me as much as it seemed to bother some reviewers. What got to me was that the blending of the styles of grittier R-rated spy thrillers of today with the filmmaking techniques of the Forties simply proved incompatible. The underlying script for the picture by Paul Attanasio is not a bad script. The source material seems to be pretty good. The issue is that the direction of the film, including the ways in which the actors onscreen try to harken back to acting of that golden era, feels stilted and awkward. The film fails to be able to blend the harsh language and sexual moments of the picture with the style of that time. The pictures of the Forties were all made under the Hays Code, so the harsher elements of those films were cleverly alluded to versus being shown onscreen. There is no real language in those films due to the same code. Trying to use the old techniques – including rear-projection and other techniques common to pictures of that era – but failing to adjust the script to leave out the more explicit elements simply did not work for me. I can’t blame the work of cinematographer Peter Andrews, which is a pseudonym for director Steven Soderbergh, for his diligent work on mastering the lighting and techniques of that era. He obviously gave the process his all, but the resulting film falls short.

In terms of acting, I am not sure where to rest the blame on how the performances come across. I genuinely like all of the actors involved. I feel like some fared better than others, but none came out of the picture smelling like a rose. George Clooney is a great leading man with the right looks to lead this picture. He is well cast and only seems to stumble when the camera is set on forcing him to mimic acting from the Forties. Cate Blanchett is a great actress who I love in the majority of her roles, but I have no idea why she was cast in the role of a dark-haired German. There are so many German actresses that would have fit the bill. Like her turn in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, she is mismanaged here. The worst offender in the picture is Tobey McGuire. While his boy-scout face may have been good casting for Tully’s outer facade, he is completely unconvincing as a black market double-dealing prostitute-beating soldier. I have enjoyed the actor in certain projects, such as The Ice Storm and Wonder Boys, but he is very badly miscast here.

Overall  – I wish that I could have liked The Good German more. I appreciate the experimental nature of what Soderbergh wanted to do, but the resulting film failed to work for me. That said, I also want to note my appreciation of Warner for deciding to give such a polarizing film a 4K release.

Video

The 4K presentation of The Good German will serve as the definitive video presentation of the film. The picture is an interesting visual experience. Presented in its original 1.37:1 in Black and White with HDR10 and Dolby Vision, there is not much room for improvement in terms of the presentation of the film. To my senses, the combination of stock footage and the newly filmed footage is occasionally jarring, but this was how films of the Forties operated as well. The new footage never quite gels with the old footage in a meaningful way despite the best intentions of Soderbergh. The new footage just looks so much cleaner in comparison. Everything is presented as well as possible with very good clarity and excellently resolved grain, but the level of satisfaction taken with the final product will vary. Regardless, fans of the film should be pleased to see it in 4K.

Audio

Like the video presentation, the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track capably replicates the original sound design of the film. Thomas Newman’s score harkens back to scores from the Forties, which adds to the artificial nature of the picture in my opinion. Moments of the score are quite nice and I believe he accomplished what he set out to do, but like the film itself, it just doesn’t fully work. Warner’s 5.1 track does well at handling the dialogue, action, and score. 

Supplements:

• Theatrical Trailer

Overall Scores:

Video: 4.25

Audio: 4.5

Special Features:.5

Overall – 3.25/5

Despite Steven Soderbergh’s best intentions to harken back to the Forties while spinning a gritty spy tale with his film The Good German, nothing quite comes together. George Clooney does what he can to keep the film on the rails, and the script by Paul Attanasio is not at fault. Miscasting of Cate Blanchett and Tobey McGuire hurts the picture a tremendous amount, and the blending of a gritty script with Forties-era theatrics simply did not work for me. The 4K UHD by Warner capably replicates the theatrical experience of the film, and I appreciate their willingness to release such a polarizing picture, even though the film was not one I would feel the need to revisit. This one is for the fans only, but those fans should be happy to have it on 4K UHD.

The film can be purchased at www.moviezyng.com.