Well, I finally got round to watching Paul Verhoeven's Elle last month, and I'm pleased to say it's every inch the masterpiece critics declared it to be. In fact, I was so impressed I was going to write a thorough (i.e. long-winded), intellectually piercing critique for WordJam analysing its thematic nuances and artistic flourishes - but I didn't. Instead, being the obstinate bastard that I am, I thought it would be much more interesting to revisit Black Book: Verhoeven's big European homecoming after twenty years in Hollywood making deliciously subversive blockbusters about fascist cyborgs, murderous lesbians and giant bugs. It was only natural that Verhoeven's time in Tinseltown would rub off on the production, and what we find here is a curious hybrid between art-house and mainstream cinema. In this regard, Black Book is an important work in the Verhoeven canon, bridging the gap between his early Dutch films and his American output. Context aside, however, whether or not it actually works as a film in its own right is another matter.
So without further ado, and as is customary with these reviews, let's kick-off with a plot synopsis. I've tried to keep this as short as possible, but an involved narrative such as Black Book's needs a little extra room to breath. If, on the other hand, you're an impatient bugger who's already seen the film, just scroll down to the disturbingly sexy image of Carice van Houten (no relation to Milhouse, thankfully) singing in front of a swastika. I won't be offended if you do, even if it did take me the best part of seven fucking hours stop-starting the DVD to note down every major story point. (That's commitment, folks. Commitment.) But, anyway - here goes nothing...
We open in Israel in 1956, where former singer Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) is working as a schoolteacher in a Kibbutz. A chance encounter with Ronnie (Halina Reijn), an old friend from her native Holland, leads us back to late 1944 where Rachel is hiding from the Nazis with a Christian fundamentalist Dutch family. When her safe house is destroyed in an air raid she encounters Van Gein (Peter Blok), a police officer who offers safe passage for Jewish refugees through the Biesbosch Canal into unoccupied territory. Rachel visits Mr Smaal (Dolf de Vries), a family lawyer who provides her with some of her father's money to help make the trip. Arriving at the boat, Rachel is temporarily reunited with her family before they're killed in an ambush by the SS. Rachel escapes by jumping overboard and later observes Obersturmführer Franken (Waldemar Kobus) ordering money and jewellery to be salvaged from the bodies of the dead. After being picked up by a cell of Dutch Resistance fighters under the supervision of Gerben Kuipers (Derek de Lint) and doctor Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), Rachel adopts the name Ellis de Vries and assists them in their missions.
Several months later, a handful of Resistance members, including Kuiper's son Tim (Ronald Armbrust), are arrested by the SD. As part of the rescue operation, Ellis agrees to infiltrate their headquarters by posing as a personal secretary and seduce SD commander Hauptsturmführer Müntze (Sebastian Koch). Ellis immediately charms Müntze, who she discovers is disillusioned with the German war effort, and finds herself invited to a drinks party where she befriends Ronnie, a fellow secretary, delights the assembled staff by singing the Marlene Dietrich standard "Ich Bin die Fesche Lola" and recognises Franken as the officer who led the murder of her family and the other refugees. Later that evening, Ellis joins Müntze in his quarters. During their first moment of intimacy, Müntze realises Ellis isn't a natural blonde and surmises she might be Jewish. When Ellis tells him the truth, Müntze says it makes no difference to him and they make love.
The following morning, Ellis encounters Smaal at Party headquarters, who says he's attempting to negotiate a peace deal between Müntze and the Resistance. In order to pre-empt any punitive action against her colleagues, Ellis agrees to hide a microphone in Franken's office. Back at their hideout, the Resistance overhears a conversation between Franken and Van Gein, who has been tipping off Franken about Jewish refugees attempting to make the journey across the Biesbosch and illegally keeping their victims' stolen valuables for themselves. A distraught Ellis proposes they kidnap Van Gein and get him to reveal his source for the proposed shipments, but Kuipers forbids it, fearing that his son and the other captured Resistance members will be executed in retaliation. Unknown to Kuipers, Akkermans agrees to Ellis' plan and they head out to apprehend Van Gein, who they set upon in a seemingly deserted canal side street. Unfortunately, the operation is unsuccessful and Van Gein is shot dead before he can kill Ellis.
Upon her return to SD headquarters, Müntze questions Ellis about Van Gein's death and she explains the dead man's deal with Franken. Müntze informs his superior officer Obergruppenführer Kautner of Franken's activities, but Franken has already cleared out the stolen goods from his safe. When Franken double-crosses Müntze by revealing his peace talks with the Resistance, Müntze angrily responds that with the Soviets already marching into Berlin the war is over. Kautner has Müntze arrested for sabotaging the German war effort and sentenced to death. In the meantime, the Resistance are planning a raid on SD headquarters during Hitler's birthday celebrations to get their people back and need Ellis to help them gain access to the building. She refuses to assist them unless they rescue Müntze, too. Kuipers reluctantly agrees, and Akkermans leads the assault on the building's lower levels. Franken appears to have advance knowledge of the operation, and only Akkermans escapes alive. When the dust clears, Franken has Ellis arrested and transmits a message to the Resistance stating that Ellis betrayed them. A bitter and heartbroken Kuipers swears he'll get his revenge on Ellis for Tim's death, no matter what it takes.
As the Führer's birthday celebrations wind down, Ronnie, aware of both Ellis' spying activities and her own precarious position as a collaborator, calls in a favour from a young German officer to help Ellis and Müntze escape. He drives them to a lake, where they secrete themselves in a barge and hear a BBC World Service broadcast announcing Germany's surrender. Müntze says they're now free to love each other, but Ellis insists they return to the Hague to find out who betrayed her. Elsewhere, Franken is making plans to escape the Allies. Commandeering a boat, he sets sail towards Scandinavia with his ill-gotten treasure. Akkermans, who has stowed away on board, suddenly appears and shoots him.
As crowds gather to meet the Canadian and British forces, Ellis and Müntze head to see Smaal, who they suspect provided Van Gein with his human cargo. Smaal refuses to confirm or deny his involvement, shows them a black book detailing the financial arrangements with his Jewish clients and promises to reveal all once the Allies escort him and his wife into safe custody. While they wait, an unseen assassin appears at the door and kills them both. Müntze pursues the gunman through the streets, but is apprehended as a war criminal. As a collaborator, Ellis is also taken into custody, where she endures humiliating torment at the hands of Dutch partisans. A British battalion arrives to close down the makeshift prison and Akkermans, now working as an honorary Colonel, escorts Ellis to safety. When Ellis enquires about Müntze, Akkermans tells her his pre-existing death sentence was carried out by Kautner in accordance with Allied rules of capitulation. Inconsolable with grief, Akkermans injects her with what appears to be a tranquiliser but turns out to be insulin. Promising her she'll soon be with Müntze, he crosses to the window of his apartment where the crowd outside are chanting to see the hero of the Resistance. Remembering a theatrical anecdote from her days as a chanteuse, Ellis force-feeds herself a bar of chocolate and makes her way onto the street. Securing refuge with the Canadian liberation forces, she visits Kuipers and shows him the black book she acquired from Smaal, implicating Akkermans as a bogus surgeon turned Nazi informer, responsible for the deaths of Ellis' family, Tim, and any number of Jewish refugees and Resistance fighters.
With the assistance of intelligence operatives, Ellis and Kuipers track down Akkermans, who is attempting to flee the Netherlands in a funeral hearse with the stolen valuables he retrieved from Franken's boat. Hijacking his escape, Ellis and Kuipers drive Akkermans out to the Biesbosch Canal, where they suffocate him in his coffin. They sit for a while by the river bank in contemplation, reflecting on what should happen to the recovered money and jewels. Ellis says it belongs to the dead and Kuipers nods in agreement. We fade back to Israel in 1956, where Rachel's husband and children find her sat by a river bank. They embrace each other warmly and head back to the Kibbutz as the distant thunder of shellfire crackles in the early evening sky.
[Cracks knuckles] Right...
When films open with the disclaimer that they're "inspired by real events" I get very suspicious. Let's not kid ourselves, folks: it's a get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing filmmakers considerable leverage with the truth. Of course, when we use that word we're not simply referring to factuality or historical accuracy so much as emotional truth. It's well-documented that Nazi collaborators tricked Jewish refugees into escaping across the Biesbosch only for them to be hunted down by the SS, and it's true there were Jews who sought protection from civilians or otherwise disguised themselves to avoid internment, but the relationship between Rachel/Ellis and Müntze is extremely hard to swallow. This is unfortunate for two reasons: 1) because it underpins the central plot, and 2) their romance forms the emotional core of Black Book.
It seems plausible Müntze would be fairly accommodating in keeping Ellis' identity secret given how the death of his family has led him to grow tired of the war effort and, presumably, Nazi ideology, but the script conveniently glosses over how, prior to this, he would've been responsible for any number of atrocities during occupation. Given his status as a high-ranking Nazi officer, surely Ellis would be aware of this and find herself questioning the nature of their growing attachment towards each other? There is an interesting moment of ambiguity during a drinks reception at Party headquarters where he sings the Nazi anthem "Die Fahne Hoch" a little too enthusiastically for Ellis' comfort, but this is quickly forgotten about in the next scene when Ellis reveals herself as a Jew and he snaps back into doe-eyed innocence again, spending the rest of the film trying to convince us he's as meek and mild-mannered as the woodland creatures in Bambi. Ellis, it seems, needs no such convincing and blithely accepts that the man she's been shagging - if only for professional purposes at first - is one of the good guys because... he tells her he is. End of discussion. There's an old adage that sex, like politics, is not about what you say but what you do, and if all Müntze has to do to for Ellis to fall in love with him is pout moodily and give her a sob story then she must have very low standards.
Another more unfortunate casualty of the Ellis-Müntze relationship is the way it short-changes Akkermans' role in the drama. The 'good doctor' is set up in the earlier part of the film as both a major character and possible suitor to Ellis, only to be relegated to peripheral status until he's finally unmasked as the villain of the piece. This switch is presented as a canny use of misdirection, especially in light of the pube-dying scene - arguably one of the most gratuitous moments in any of Verhoeven's films - where Ellis allows Akkermans to seduce her; the problem is, by teasing the prospect of a love triangle and then swiftly abandoning it we're left with the sour taste of manipulative plot points masquerading as character beats. The only reason Verhoeven ramps up the sexual tension between Ellis and Akkermans is to provide her with an even greater reason (more so than the murder of her family!) to be pissed off at his treachery. If the film had played around a little bit more with the moral grey areas of Müntze's character and the way this impacts on his relationship with Ellis, perhaps the Ellis-Akkermans connection would've been given more room to breath. Alas, Black Book isn't interested in exploring such nuances. At times, it's hard to shake the suspicion that Ellis, Müntze and Akkermans know they're the central characters in a tawdry melodrama and, as such, do everything they can to keep the plot going because anything outside of story requirements would prevent it from wrapping itself up in a nice, neat little bow.
If you're able divorce character from narrative, Black Book is a skilfully executed, taut little thriller - albeit one that's very much in service to other war movies and genre forms. Ellis' blonde bouffant subtly evokes the Hitchcockian motif of how notions of female identity and idealisation are circumscribed within the strictures of patriarchal society (a theme shared by a number of other Verhoeven movies, from the underrated Keetje Tippel to the unfairly maligned Showgirls), while the shipments of insulin Akkermans acquires for redistribution on the black market recalls the illicit commerce of Harry Lime in The Third Man. Another perhaps less obvious comparison is Verhoeven's 1977 film Soldier of Orange, which features a number of almost identical set-pieces to ones we find in Black Book (most notably the canal side shoot-out and a waltz sequence between the hero and antagonist). Elsewhere, the romance between a Jewish woman and a Nazi officer intentionally seems to mirror that of Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter. Aside from a few stylistic set-pieces that draw influence from La Grande Illusion, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare and even To Be or Not to Be, the film's most explicit point of reference is when Ronnie likens Ellis' role as a Resistance spy to that of Greta Garbo in Mata Hari, which is nice touch despite the "Garbo was killed" dialogue-cap. The wholly unnecessary bit of drip-feeding into the dramatic tension of this scene leads us to one of the main problems faced by Black Book's hybridisation of conventional Hollywood filmmaking and the more sophisticated European model: namely, spelling things out to the audience instead of relying on our ability to figure them out for ourselves.
On the whole, Verhoeven's American work demonstrates an unusual level of trust in the viewer to pick out complex themes or plot points. Starship Troopers, for example, briefly mentions in one of its hilarious infomercials that the Federation violated the bugs' galactic territory and therefore triggered the eerily prescient 9/11-style attack on our home turf. The fact this is never commented upon, shown in flashback or dominates the narrative for the rest of the film is remarkable - especially since it puts the Federation's unambiguous fascism into context and, in doing so, undermines it. That isn't slapdash filmmaking: it's the work of a director and screenwriter (in this case Ed Neumeier) subverting standard popcorn fodder by using the aesthetics and conventions of mainstream cinema against itself. We're asked to pay attention, and its entirely our own fault if we go away having missed the point. Considering its European sensibilities, it's strange that Black Book should signpost itself so much. There are times when its plot mechanics are invisible (Rachel being smuggled into the Hague in a funeral hearse leaps to mind - the metaphor of her 'death' and subsequent 'rebirth' obscures how this scene foreshadows Akkerman's later escape attempt), but there are too many instances where we're pretty much told "Ooh! This'll be important later! Keep watching!". Ellis' anecdote about the illusionist who would overdose on insulin and bring himself round with bars of chocolate is one such moment; it sits very oddly in the dialogue, willing us to accept it as conversation instead of a crowbarred excuse to tidy up a ropey part of the plot later on.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we get moments that come from nowhere and feel absolutely no need to explain themselves. You may have noticed in my synopsis how I mention Ronnie calling in a favour from a young German officer to help Ellis and Müntze escape from Party headquarters (if you didn't, it serves you right for being an impatient bugger): I've no way of knowing if it is a favour or not, much less who he actually is, because the character doesn't appear anywhere else in the film and promptly disappears again once he's driven Ellis and Müntze to safety. I suspect this is meant to be a bit of visual sleight-of-hand, leading us to believe that Ronnie isn't quite as helpless as she appears a couple of scenes earlier when she confesses her fears to Ellis about what awaits her after the war as a Nazi collaborator, but it's clearly Verhoeven cutting screenwriter Gerard Soeteman some slack for not being able to think of a better way to bust our heroes out of a tight spot.
It's a shame Black Book relies so heavily on plot expediency because there are some very sophisticated themes here that elevate it above its action-thriller pedigree. From Renée Soutendijk substituting for both Delilah and Salomé in The Fourth Man to Peter Weller walking on water at the end of Robocop, Verhoeven's films are shot through with religious allegory - and Ellis' role in Black Book is no exception. Whilst in hiding with the Christian fundamentalist family, the father forces her to memorise passages from the New Testament espousing Jesus' divinity (which, in a lovely touch, Rachel sings to herself as though it was scripture from the Torah) and callously tells her over dinner that "[she] wouldn't be in such trouble if the Jews had listened to Jesus". Her symbolic death as Rachel and subsequent 'rebirth' as Ellis establishes her as a figura Christi, someone for whom temptation and suffering are the necessary path towards salvation. And boy, does Ellis suffer! Verhoeven pushes this so far at times (most notably in the scene when she gets splattered by a huge vat of shit at the makeshift prison) that her "Why have you forsaken me?" moment upon learning of Müntze's death becomes unintentionally comical, but it's entirely fitting in a war marked by depravity that the western model for spiritual and moral enlightenment should be tested to such a degree. It also feeds into Verhoeven's oft-repeated theme of the fluidity of identity, which informs practically all his films and marks him as something of an auteur. Whether it's Rutger Hauer's thrill-seeking sculptor discovering what it means to truly love someone in Turkish Delight, Hans van Tongeren's arrogant racing driver adjusting to life as a paraplegic in Spetters, Arnie in Total Recall choosing to believe that his perfect life is a sham, or the dangerous game Isabelle Huppert plays in Elle by pursuing someone who cares less about other people's feelings than she does, no other director in mainstream cinema (with the possible exceptions of David Cronenberg or Bernard Rose) has explored the compromise between the person we think we are and the one we become with quite such acuity as Verhoeven. In this respect, despite its manipulative narrative, Black Book is an interesting sidestep in a career spent trying to understand what makes people tick, even if it doesn't quite come off with the self-assurance of previous efforts.
It would be remiss of me at this point not to mention some of the performances, as they're really the crux of how well Black Book communicates its cack-handed intentions. I must say, Carice van Houten is never less than astonishing as Ellis, achieving that rare feat of managing to sell the character's resilience and vulnerability when the script itself isn't working hard enough for us to buy it. It's ridiculous to suggest that someone who's forged a career for themselves in cabaret and as a recording artist would be unaware of their sexual appeal, yet van Houten somehow gives this credibility in both her ill-fated romance with a young Dutch sailor at the start of the film and when she meets Müntze for the first time on the train to Rotterdam. As the film goes on, she burns herself so fiercely into our emotions that when we see her performing "Ja, Das Ist Meine Melodie" for Hitler's birthday celebrations we almost forget the occasion and swoon at the joyfulness of it all. Even in the scene where she gets rescued by Akkermans after the Dutch partisans tear open her clothes and pour their -erm- 'collected effluent' over her, she still gets us all misty-eyed with her heart-breaking delivery of the pointless "I want to get out of here" line. This wasn't just a breakout role, but a defining one; without it, she wouldn't have got the gig in Valkyrie, which introduced her to an international audience, and recently followed it up by playing Leni Riefenstahl in Race. Typecasting it may be, but at least it gives her a wider portfolio in English-language film and television beyond Game of Thrones. I'd fucking hate it if she ended up playing a glorified elf for the rest of her career.
As for Sebastian Koch... Well, he's in Black Book: whether or not he knows that is a different story. He seems relatively engaged in his scenes with van Houten (given this was fairly early into their real-life relationship you can see the chemistry between them), but the rest of the time he comes across like a middle-aged bank manager at a historical re-enactment society who can't quite get into the spirit of things. Perhaps he was treating the role as a bit of light relief after his emotionally taxing turn in Florian Henckel von Donnersmark's The Lives of Others, but excuses aside it still makes for a remarkably vapid performance. By contrast, Waldemar Kobus does a fine job of taking Franken's stock villain status and running with it, managing to bridge the gap between depraved sadist and quiet sophisticate in the space of a single scene. However, despite Kobus' valiant attempts at giving the character the depth and texture he clearly lacks on the page, make-up still saw fit to give Franken a prominent facial scar because of the mistaken notion the audience needs to see he's the bad guy. Never mind the fact that he gleefully leads the massacre of a boatload of Jewish refugees in the film's opening thirty minutes: without that scar we might overlook what a bastard he is. Again, Hollywood invades the production with a scant regard to the audience's intelligence. There's a part of me that wonders if he was told to pull his foreskin back into place in his nude scene with Ellis after staggering into the staff toilet with it still retracted following a night of passion with Ronnie (y'know - just in case people thought Nazis had the snip), but that's just cynicism.
If Koch and Kobus had the choice to play against the banality of their dialogue, however, spare a thought for poor Johnny de Mol in his utterly thankless, minor supporting role as Theo. I can understand why an up and coming young actor would accept any part he was given if it meant working with the finest, most successful filmmaker your country's ever produced, but surely you have to draw the line when it comes at the cost of dignity and self-respect. It's bad enough he has to whimper and whinge his way through practically ever scene that he's in (ostensibly as the Resistance's conscience, although if I were Ellis or Kuipers I'd give the little sod a fucking good slap) but when the script asks him to deliver lines like "Blasphemer! You're cursing!" and "I killed a person! I am BAD!" it's painfully obvious de Mol didn't stand a chance. I understand his performance bagged him the 2007 Golden Onion award for worst actor; that's as cruel as giving a man with no knob the keys to the Playboy Mansion. By contrast, Derek de Lint, Thom Hoffman and the ridiculously sexy Halina Reijn perform minor miracles by transforming their strictly expository dialogue into naturalistic, characterful speech that makes their respective characters a damn sight more interesting than they actually are. Special praise, though, must go to Dolf de Vries as Smaal, whose quiet dignity and softly-spoken malevolence remind me of John Hillerman's deliciously pompous yet understated civil servant in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. de Vries expertly plays his scenes as a man who knows he's got blood on his teeth yet maintains a veneer of respectability to safeguard his clients' best interests, no matter how immoral they are or deeply they sink him into their depravity.
Black Book should've been Verhoeven's masterpiece, but the film's ambition never quite meets its match in the execution and the end result is a torrid melodrama founded on cliché and sensationalism. Having said that, I can't bring myself to write this film off as a failure. Although its pretensions towards significance are hampered at every turn by a manipulative narrative that isn't quite as clever as it wants to be, there's tremendous fun to be had here. Melodrama may operate on predation, but sometimes the broadest strokes and most garish of colour schemes can dazzle through sheer nerve and misplaced confidence. In Black Book's case, the film cracks along at such a pace and streamlines its narrative to such a degree that it's never less than involving - even if it does embody the Hollywood aesthetic first established by Mack Sennett, and later taken to its ludicrous extreme by George Lucas, that if you slow the action down and give the audience the opportunity to question what they're watching, even for a minute, you're sunk. If Black Book teaches us anything, it's how the homogenising effect of mainstream cinema sits uncomfortably with other filmmaking modes and can easily consume them unless a healthy medium is achieved that allows them to co-exist. Verhoeven found it in Elle, but it took a good ten years after Black Book to take command of that cultural reprogramming and use it to his own purposes again. Such is the nature of Hollywood.
