And the result is gripping. This is a film that had me on the edge of the seat. In a sense it could hardly have been otherwise, as the historical events are pretty bloody cinematic in the first place. But the whole thing is well executed. Yes, Tom Cruise is pretty wooden, but there’s a magnificent cast of mainly British character actors, with Bill Nighy standing out in particular, but we also get Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard in a straight role, Danny Webb, Ian McNiece, Tom Hollander and more. As a Hollywood war film with loads of suspense the film certainly succeeds.
And yet... does the film not whitewash Von Stauffenberg, Beck and the other members of the plot? Historians seem to disagree on Von Stauffenberg’s views- was he an anti-Semite but one who felt that the Holocsust was going too far? He was certainly no liberal, or democrat; he believed in German dominance over Poland; and he wanted a Germany with its 1914 borders plus Germany and the Sudetenland. This is, perhaps, the best we could have expected given where the Overton window was in Nazi Germany, but it’s a shame these shades of grey were washed over and the plotters were portrayed simply as heroes. They deserve respect and remembrance for what they did, but they fought for Nazi Germany. I think I shall let Roger Bartlett from The Great Escape have the last word here:
“Look, sir, you talk about the High Command and the Luftwaffe, and then you talk about the Gestapo and the SS. To me, they're the same! We're fighting the bloody lot! There's only one way to put it, sir: they are the common enemies of everyone who believes in freedom. If the High Command didn't approve of Hitler, then why didn't they throw him out?”
The July 1944 plot was too little, too late.
I think in terms of films about the 20 July plot, this one (at least for now) is certainly the one to recommend. I know Cruise gets a lot of flak but I actually thought he did a good job playing the Colonel.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever seen the films “The Plot to Kill Hitler” (1990, Brad Davis) and “Stauffenberg” (2004, Sebastian Koch)? As the titles imply, they also focus on Valkyrie and Stauffenberg himself. I’m not saying they don’t have their own problems, if you’ve seen them you’ll know of what I speak. Just that they make an interesting comparison to this film as they focus on the same story, especially as the Davis version actually tries to explore Stauffenberg in a more complex and perhaps realistic light, such as that he may have still held mixed views on Hitler the man (still feeling a hesitant sort of respect for him but clearly and knowingly appalled at the way he is leading Germany to ruin) but ultimately made the attempt on his life.
Rewatching this again, I had the same sense that the film glorified Stauffenberg's cause and it also turned me off of the movie. Interestingly enough, when I rewatched Downfall (2004), Traudl Junge's statements at the end of the film struck me as being a bit revisionist; she states, that when she had denounced Hitler and couldn’t forgive herself for not seeing him as the monster he was, she was recollecting how at her younger past she thought she was innocent from the Nazi regime, but later found out about Sophie Scholl who rebelled against the state even though they're around the same age, and realized that her youth wasn't an excuse. She was just Hitler's secretary, and had no part in any Nazi atrocities. The truth is probably somewhere between you and me. It took guts for her to mention Scholl, who clearly was on the other end of the spectrum from her. However, Junge was probably a more typical young lady. That is, if you believe the typical young lady is very naive about their evil bosses. However, while Junge may have saw the light and never became like people like Otto Remer who became a Neo Nazi and Holocaust denier, or Rochus Misch, Hitler's bodyguard, who was loyal to Hitler to the end, she have may have been trying to paint herself in a better light out of her own guilt. The simple fact is all branches of Germany armed forces, knew for certain that of the mass murder of Jews or what the Nazi leadership was doing. Of course, just because "EVERYBODY KNEW" doesn't mean that they were all guilty of EVERYTHING. Some Germans were clearly evil. Some (there are real life examples, like Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, fictionalised as "Colonel von Luger" in the film The Great Escape) were the opposite, and just wanted to fight honorably, and even respected their enemies and might have been opposed to the brutality done by their comrades. Others were probably varying degrees of indifferent. Most of all, especially even for the average German solider, good and bad sides, govorment and politics aside, it could be argued that the AVERAGE German were just men doing a job, and their personal politcs were irrelevant. But the simple fact is, as you point out, every step foward was still a step for Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThere is a definitive take on the Valkyrie plot yet to be filmed, IMO, but I think this one is very entertaining even if it tends to lionize the man at the center of it maybe a bit too much.
Agreed, more or less. In hindsight, the film DOES glorify Von Stauffenberg and the others, who were as complicit as anyone and merely wanted a less extreme kind of nationalist dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteTo me, there are degrees of guilt, but anyone who contributed in any way to the Nazi cause beyond the strict limits of coercion, self-preservation and the need to somehow provide for one's family, carries some degree of guilt. And that covers tens of millions.