This movie, based on C.P. Taylor's play of the same name, deserves far stronger a rating than it received.
Historic movies work best when they capture something of the ambiance of the period---in fact it can be argued they don't work when they fail to capture that ambiance. And it's a difficult thing to do. The sets, lighting, costumes, camera angles, characters, background, sound all contribute to the mood of the movie, and desirably reflect the mood of the time period of the movie.
What worked for me more than most movies of similar genre in "Good" was the captured undercurrent of uncertainty, worry, potential doom of Germany in the late '30s and early '40s as the National Socialist Party rose to full power.
Mortensen's (Halder) protagonist character's life has, like so many people's lives, a dysfunctional 'normalcy' : a sick mother living upstairs, a neurotic obsessional piano-playing wife who cannot deal with reality and simple daily activities, two young children, a job as professor of literature at the university, a close friend psychotherapist who's a former war comrade and drinking buddy with whom he can conversationally share freely.
A large piece of the plot involves the Reichstag having found a section in a novel Halder had written years before which portrayed euthanasia by the husband for his chronically ill wife..."killing for humanitarian reasons"....and the subsequent enlistment by the Reichstag of Halder's services to act as intellectual imprimatur for such human ''deletions''. . . .
Halder is first an academic, an intellectual and not someone given to violence, or warfare. He gives the impression of one who---even though he participated in WWI---did not ever kill another and is absolutely horrified at the idea of having to do it. Halder's attempts to create for himself a "normalcy" in the middle of all that is happening around him: to deal with his mother, his faltering sexless marriage, newly imposed censorship at the university, placating the worries of his friend who's Jewish, seem quite rational and normal responses to life's tribulations.
Yet nothing about life then can be described 'normal.'
And in this we find the power of the movie and its characters....their attempts to act, think, as previously no longer apply. Yet they have no idea what or how to substitute to reclaim that 'normalcy' and so they are all trapped. Trapped both physically in having to play out their newfound roles, trapped psychologically in having to somehow move their minds to accept the new reality: a reality irrational, and inhumane.
They can't do it.
It's in their attempts to create new lives that we feel most kinship with them.
When his friend Maurice says "We put a lunatic into office....what can we expect?" it's really not that different than today's scenario in America, or Australia, or Brazil---or any of the nations which now has rulers out solely for themselves. The new 'normal' doesn't jive with the old normal.
This is a play, movie about friendship, about love requited and unrequited. About deep-seated feelings that bind us to one another. Even though his wife is neurotically unavailable, it is clear that she cares about her husband. Even though his relationship with a new love blossoms, she cares less about him and more about his apparent success in the Third Reich. His love for his sick and haranguing mother doesn't waver though his ability to care for her does, his care and concern for his good friend Maurice drives his final desperation.
I love the psychological touch of Halder hearing music, by the Jewish composer Mahler, and falling into fantasy fugues of seeing people performing.
The entirety of the play, and movie is about this final epiphany of moving from fantasy to reality with its catastrophic shock. Like a good short story in which the protagonist finally confronts his worst imagined fears only to realize they are even worse than ever could be imagined, "Good" takes the viewer along for the terrifying psychical ride of its protagonist.
Lovely script touches such as the confided concern by the one Sschutzstaffel that he and his wife can't have childen....that a dinner party is interrupted by a call to create mayhem with apologies before leaving....or that sexuality is treated overall quite naturally, as if life even in utter martial dystopia still has that biological 'normalcy.'
Jason Isaacs was convincingly real in his friend role, Mortensen equally so.
Both are marvelous actors deserving of praise for this one. The other actors were also notable, especially Gemma Jones as his aged mother.
I note that others failed to appreciate the marvelous subtlety of the screenplay and its characters. I can only assume they are Tarantino fans who expect more blood, gore, and dramatic action from a film about Nazis.
Too bad. They missed a wonderful cinema experience.
I give it 9 stars...and it could easily have been better with a few more added scenes to flesh out some of the time development. In this case more would have been better.
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