BLACK BOOK (Zwartboek)

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: A-
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Written By: Gerard Soeteman, story by Gerard
Soeteman
Cast: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman,
Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus, Derek de Lint, Christian Berkel,
Dolf de Vries, Peter Blok, Michiel Huisman, Ronald Armbrust
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 2/22/07
Opens: April 4, 2007

Interviewed upon their release from Auschwitz in 1945, one
prisoner after another insisted that there was not a single guard
who showed the slightest bit of mercy at the camp. Sociologists
might tell us that this phenomenon would be true of lower-level
bureaucrats given almost unlimited powers–for example,
Lynndie England, who held at least one Arab inmate on a dog
leash at the infamous Abu Ghraib holding quarters in Baghdad.

As apparatchiks ascend the ladder, however, and educated
people are given their stripes, more complex personalities are
found, such as Rachel, otherwise knows as Ellis (Carice van
Houten. She becomes a member of the Dutch Resistance in
Paul Verhoeven's intensely melodramatic, intricately plotted
movie "Black Book," determined to avenge the deaths of family
members and of fellow Jews on a boat allegedly being sent
from Holland to a liberated zone in1944, all but her executed by
a squadron of Nazis. Assigned to seduce a high-ranking
German agent, the head of the Dutch SD (Gestapo), to use him
to free Dutch hostages, she falls in love with him and seeks to
save his life when the war ends. For his part, the Nazi official,
Ludwig Muntze (Sebastian Koch), falls for Ellis and, even while
suspecting that she is Jewish, finds that his love for her has
overcome his loyalty to Der Fuhrer. Complex characters
indeed.

Paul Verhoeven's "Soldier of Orange" in 1979 clocked in at 165
minutes, twenty minutes longer than this new film. That one is
about six wealthy university student whose lives are changed
when their Dutch homeland is occupied by Nazis,
foreshadowing his current offering, contrasting with "Showgirls,"
which seems to have disappeared from Mr. Verhoeven's press
resumes. If "Showgirls" is about human beings reincarnated as
plastic toys, then "Black Book" shows that human beings are
such three-dimensional, changeable characters that they often
stagger the imagination. The black book of the title is an actual
notebook listing names of Jews and amounts of money stolen
from them by Germans when the Jews are killed, but to reveal
more would be to give away too much of this richly detailed,
delightfully complex and fast-moving plot

Framed by scenes on Israel Kibbutz Stein in 1956, Rachel
(Carice van Houten) runs into tourist Ronnie (Halina Reijn),
whom she had known as a high-spirited woman in Holland in far
different circumstances in 1944–which leads to a flashback to
that year. Like Anne Frank, Rachel has been given refuge by a
Dutch Christian family, though not hidden in an attic. However
at dinnertime, she must listen to such sermonizing by her
benefactor as "If the Jews had listened to Jesus, we wouldn't be
in the state we're in now." When a plane bombs the house, she
is hustled onto a boat bound for liberated quarters by a
resistance fighter (or is he?) Van Gein (Peter Blok), and is the
sole survivor when the boat is ambushed. She is directed by the
Resistance to seduce the Dutch SD chief Ludwig Muntze
(Sebastian Koch) as a way to get hostages freed, falls in love
with him, whereupon a an intricate, express-train (or is a roller-
coaster?) series of action-adventure scenes follow that keep the
audience wondering just which Resistance fighters are Dutch
heroes, which are working for the Germans; and which
Germans are sympathetic to the Dutch and which are really
S.O.B. out-and-out Nazi scum.

Twist follows upon twist, ambush upon ambush, and if action
does not mess enough with your head, you can delight in the
amazing performance of the twenty-nine year old Carice van
Houten, looking the perfect forties hottie; dancing, singing,
vomiting, now trembling with fear, now vamping with erotic
delight. It doesn't hurt that the person she has terrific chemistry
with is Sebastian Koch, who turned up the heat in the
remarkable "The Lives of Others," easily (for my Euros) the best
foreign pic of 2006), one of the few Gestapo agents of the past
sixty-two years depicted as a complex character, not a stick
villain.

Black Book," with all its melodramatic flourishes, is among the
most rewarding and exciting of the scores of films on Nazi
themes that have come our way since the 1940s.

Not Rated. 145 minutes 2007 by Harvey Karten
Member: NY Film Critics Online.