Depends What You Mean By "Good"

What the hell is this movie about? I've just finished my second viewing of Stephen Soderbergh's The Good German, and I'm trying to decide whether it all slots together or not. I'll warn for those interested that I'm about to stomp publicly all thru the plotline, so no secret will be left unturned (except all the ones I'm too dense to have figured out--so maybe you're all safe after all).

Set just after the cessation of European hostilities in the Second World War, the movie begins with journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) emerging from an airplane in Berlin on the eve of the Potsdam Conference which will decide the details of Germany's surrender and the postwar fate of Poland. Tobey McGuire plays Tully, Geismer's driver and a corrupt tool of an American soldier who is taking advantage of the thriving black market in postwar Berlin. Cate Blanchett plays Lena Brandt, the wife of a shadowy absentee German of increasing interest to both the Americans and the Russians in the divided city. Lena Brandt was Geismer's mistress when he was last in Berlin, and is currently Tully's mistress, though neither man is aware of this at first. It may or may not be a coincidence that Geismer would be assigned a driver on his return to Berlin who is currently sleeping with his former mistress who happens to be the wife of a person significant to postwar Germany. This just seems a bunch of connective tissue that doesn't bring us anywhere, shit thrown at us to muddy the waters, and, for me anyway, not necessarily to good effect. If the significance of a detail can only be sussed out with a spreadsheet--or a rambling, narrative blog post--then it's maybe a step too complicated for me. We'll see. (Maybe I need to stick with, say, Titanic: 1. big boat hits iceberg; 2. big boat sinks; 3. everyone dies. I can follow that.)

Tully's mistress turns out to be more interesting than he knows (or than Jake Geismer knew), a fact made plain when he is beat up coming into her apartment by men who are looking for Emil Brandt, Lena's husband. Tully knows nothing of Emil Brandt--he doesn't even know Lena's last name, let alone her marital status--and Lena insists when he angrily tracks her down (and punches her in the gut) that her husband is dead. Undeterred, the always-enterprising Tully decides that if the Americans are seriously hunting for Mr. Brandt, then he, Tully, might be able to profit from selling the missing mystery man on the black market to the Russians. Though he does not have Emil Brandt, and doesn't even know whether the guy exists, he goes to the Russian sector to make a deal, hoping that the advance on his contract to produce the mystery man will be enough to get himself and Lena out of the country, presumably before the shit hits the fan. The Russian General agrees to Tully's offer of 200,000 dm for Mr. Brandt, and agrees to advance half that sum as a downpayment. "Come back in two hours. And bring Mrs. Brandt," he says. Tully goes off to round up the reluctant Lena.

In the next scene Tully is found floating in the river in the Russian sector, dead. Later Lena claims that SHE murdered Tully, and our last encounter with him has him beating up George Clooney and putting Lena by force into a Jeep to take her to the Russians. So did she do it? She has a mysterious and icy demeanor, an aspect of someone who has seen and done too much, so we can believe it. But Tully was found floating in the river with a zillion deutschmarks on him; so did she kill him after the Russians met and released her? If she shot him to avoid being taken to the Russians--there seems little reason to trust that they'd just talk to her and let her go again, especially if they were willing to pay a small fortune for her husband--he wouldn't have the 100,000 dm on him. I'm stuck on this detail. And further complicating things, there's a little forensic detail courtesy of Jake Geismer where he shows that the money on Tully came from the American sector (not, as one would have expected, from the Russians who are supposed to have given it to him), but the light about the significance of this detail has not come on for me yet. The basic idea is that he went back in two hours as he was instructed, and that he brought Mrs. Brandt with him; otherwise, how would he have that money? But why is it not Russian money? (Feel free to jump in here and tell me what must be plainly clear to anyone else.)

The US and Russia are both looking for Lena's husband, ostensibly because he's part of the German rocket program which they want to import to their own countries. He's officially dead--the Russian general claims to have seen his death certificate--but Lena is keeping him alive in a subway tunnel. But what he and she want vis-a-vis their marriage and the husband's safety is not made clear. Clearly they're trying to keep the husband from being scooped up by some group or another, but specifically why is left rather murky. Surely the four parties occupying sectors of Berlin would not equally desirable hosts. The Americans and the Russians both claim to want brains for their rocket programs, but the Allies are also wanting to bring prominent Nazis to justice. Lena's husband was an SS officer, yet the American bigwig implies, when plying Clooney for help in getting Emil Brandt into American custody, that wearing the uniform did not necessarily a Nazi make. Is that really what he thinks? Is Emile's rocketry expertise really what the Americans are after?

And what of Emil? What does he want? In one of his few vocalizations, he is insistent that every German citizen must stand up and tell the truth, and must atone for the country's atrocities, that everyone must own up to what they have had a hand in, as this is the only way back to civilization for the country, the culture, the citizens. Lena calls her husband "a good German," and his new mission statement sounds noble enough. But he had a hand in designing the secret concentration camp where rockets were built, a camp where the inmates were calculatedly worked to death--indeed, he helped to determine just how much work each person would be good for before they had to be replaced with another prisoner. So his goodness is is an open question. Why doesn't he atone for his crimes by turning himself in to the occupying authority for questioning and possible criminal prosecution? What he is trying to do, beyond survival and maybe getting out of Berlin, is not clear. That he is on the run and in hiding IS clear. Lieutenant Schaeffer, the brutal blond American who escorts Jake Geismer from the riverbank in the Russian sector, tries to kill Emil Brandt at the end (and is presumably the guy who beats up Tully in his quest to find Emil Brandt). Why does he want him dead? Doesn't he want him for the American rocket effort? Or to bring him to justice? Why would he undermine Brandt's desire to atone for German sins? Or is that not really Emil's desire? And is the guy who actually kills Emil working with Lt. Schaeffer?

Maybe it's Lena who is the "good" German. She's a Jew whose whole family died in the camps, and who stayed alive by ratting out other Jews to save her own skin, surely something of value to the Nazis, and the kind of state-sponsored racial vigilanteism that would have marked a person as a good citizen under Nazi rule. From the beginning of the movie Lena wants out of Germany, and is trying to enlist the help of anyone she comes across to buy or steal or forge the necessary paperwork. Yet no mention is made of her trying to get her husband out of the country; au contraire, she pointedly says at one point that she wants to get out without her husband. What's up with that? Does she not love him (she seems to love him, or at least not to dislike him)? Well and good, but then why put yourself at such risk to help him? Is it that he is truly good at heart and she feels irredeemably soiled by her experiences? Nah. So what's really going on with Lena Brandt? Everyone remarks that people did terrible things during and after the Nazi regime just to survive. But while selling out other Jews might work to put Jake Geismer off of her, it doesn't explain why the American Attorney General has a file on her, or what terrible things are in her file that would give them ample cause to imprison her for life (as he claims). Ratting out other Jews could hardly be of moment to the Americans, no? Yet that's her Big Confession to Jake in the final scene. Really?

Aesthetically I loved the movie, but I'm partial to black and white. I read that Stephen Soderbergh used vintage equipment and techniques to match the look and feel of the existing newsreel footage, which is interspersed with the new footage, and of the classic film noirs which were made at the time. Thomas Newman has another interesting score (I especially loved his work in Road to Perdition), harking back to the movies of the 40s. Several of the scenes seemed a bit amateur-ish in their acting. Tobey McGuire's character seems, to me, not quite believable, and Lena Brandt's roommate always seemed to me like an actress trying to sell her lines. At first I thought that George Clooney was too pretty and pat for the role, but I liked him better the second time thru.

At this point I'm left with a few too many questions to turn both my thumbs up. Maybe this will all come to me in a rush when I realize that I've hugely overlooked some very salient detail that pulls the whole business together like the magic twist of the Rubik's Cube. And if that happened, I think the movie would rate a strong B+; but until I can pull some coherence from the fog of my 4:am brain, I have to give it a C+.