Zee Good German

I think I would have my cultural ethnicity stripped from me if I didn't watch this film. Has one of my favorite actresses, Cate Blanchett and George Clooney. It's a Steven Soderbergh film. He's one of those filmmakers that I like every other one of his films. He makes a commercial piece of tripe like the Oceans 11, 12 & 13 and Erin Brokovich's ... blech ... so he can make good films like The Good German, Sex Lies & Videotape and Bubble.

Zee Good German reminded me not so much of Casablanca, which I think is what he was going for, but The Big Lift, one of my favorite Montgomery Clift films (they really need to make a biopic of him). It's in black & white and uses post WWII footage, which is blended really well. Tobey McGuire plays one of the worst people I've ever seen on film .. actually cheered when he got killed (sorry, spoiler, but that's really not the point). Is there an accent that Cate Blanchett CAN'T do? Seriously, they make such a big deal about Meryl Streep doing accents .. Blanchett's are better.

But back to the movie. It really goes into how political the end of the European was was. Who would get prosecuted for war crimes, who would get "hired" by whom to help develop space programs and weapons. It was the Russians and the Americans ... hello cold war. It also showed how everyone was a victim or a victimizer in post war Germany. It was sad to see, especially as the daughter of a post WWII German. I've gotten into spitting matches with people who think that all Germans sat idly by while carnage occured ... poppycock. Germans were trying to survive themselves! Most Germans didn't know what the heck was going on and then some in the world wanted to punish each and every German for the atrocities of a few. Ok, blood boiling ... simmer down. Phew.