I’ve been lax about writing here. The majority of my life last month was going to parties, get-togethers, concerts, performances, lots of dinners, etc. Glad it’s over.
This month began back to work and going to a few favorite hangouts; Magnolia House in Pasadena, Café Bistrot in Los Feliz and Formosa Café and Musso and Frank’s in Hollywood. All of those restaurants offer exceptional cuisine. But with the rain yesterday I ate at home and watched a movie I had not seen.
I’ve been a lifelong fan of period pieces and World War II films, I can’t explain my curiosity, other than it may stem from watching them as a child with my brother or most likely past life recall. Or perhaps it’s because I know how they will end and they offer the kind of intensity I love.
Yesterday on Prime, 15 years after its making, I watched Valkyrie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie) with Tom Cruise, a Hollywood Scientologist playing a one-eyed German officer responsible for the most famous plot to assassinate Hitler. (I hyperlinked the word for you to look up its meaning, if your into etymology, it's fascinating.)
Unfortunately, he does it with an American accent. Kitsch is a German word and that was a kitsch move. I remember a friend from Germany who felt that the involvement of Tom Cruise would sully the legacy of one of the few honorable German deeds amid a period of unspeakable evil.
Thankfully, he arrives as a historically respectful, morally careful film. Cruise is good: sober, never showy.
Cruise, with his spiffy uniform, big peaked cap and eyepatch, had me cringing in my seat at the dramatic moments. There is one gruesome scene in which, to express his contempt for the Führer, Cruise gives the Nazi salute - with his amputated stump!
Director Bryan Singer put together an old-fashioned second world war movie, but the convention of British actors playing Germans was absurd.
Every single Brit character actor in Spotlight got the call: Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McNally, Tom Hollander, David Bamber (as Hitler); the list goes on and on. I happen to think that the Brits carry the title on being the best actors with their Shakespearean training but it was a full 45 minutes before a bona fide German actor had any lines: Christian Berkel playing the explosives expert Colonel Mertz.
Cruise’s jaw-muscle-clenching intensity is effective as Claus von Stauffenberg when he's playing the high-minded brave Coronel who wants to wipe out Hitler for the sake of the country and its 'people.
The film sets to action planning the bomb attempt on Hitler's life and the following implementation of an Operation plot to mobilize the reserve army against Hitler's own SS troops. Tension builds as the men repeatedly risk their lives, internal conflicts arise and potential traitors emerge. Knowing that it all ends badly only adds to the pathos, but my real complaint aside from casting and the lack of accents is the script writer did not probe into the characters' psychology, as a result we are left with a bomb without enough of an explosion.
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