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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 05/15/2007 : 23:42:42
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Just back from a catch-up screening of this amazing film. Too shell-shocked to be coherent just now, but will report back properly tomorrow!
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bife 
"Winners never quit ... fwfr ... "
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Posted - 05/16/2007 : 00:29:50
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Interested in your report on this one bafta - being a Dutch film, we, partucularly Linda, will be waiting for it eagerly to reach Singapore, but that might take some time  |
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TitanPa
"Here four more"
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Posted - 05/16/2007 : 04:32:14
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| I liked it better when it was Little. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 05/16/2007 : 09:20:57
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| I enjoyed it and found it moving, although it is perhaps not quite as good as it could have been or thinks it is. There are so many Second World War films that it is good to see one about a relatively unexplored area (i.e. occupation of the Netherlands). This was the first thing I had seen Koch in (the second being The Lives of Others) and I was quite impressed by him. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 05/16/2007 : 09:42:03
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Netherlander Paul Verhoeven's current project is set among Russian terrorists in the early 1800s; with Black Book he's proven that his years serving Hollywood studio masters have not dimmed his European sensibilities. Black Book is a labour, if not exactly of love, then one of passion, dedication, and a moral responsibility to present truth without compromise or sugar-coat. He's chosen a complex war tale of betrayal, counter-betrayal and its impact on innocence; the journey of the film's heroine to achieve the peace of redemption avoids any sniff of sentimentality with the unavoidable brutal truth of the final shot.
Hollywood has honed Verhoeven's mastery of no-nonsense in-yer-face action; it served him well in RoboCop and Total Recall and it's used to remarkable effect in this World War II tale of occupied Holland. We're constantly reminded of the small pains and tortures engendered by war; any larger battle scenes are implied. What Verhoeven's added to construct a film that's destined to become a classic, is the personalization of a story with the kind of resonance we probably haven't seen since Casablanca.
The story is told in a flashback memory after we've been introduced to Rachel, a Kibbutz elementary teacher played - amid a support cast of superb actors - by the formidable screen presence of Carice van Houten. Whether her character suffers silently, whoops with joy, or rages with crazed anger, she implies a complete life with every moment. Looking like a combination of the baby-faced Teri Garr and sultry Jean Harlow with the added bonus of being able to put over a song like Marlene Dietrich, she epitomizes the arresting duality that Verhoeven has planned for every aspect of the film. Verhoeven's filming style pays homage to the concise storytelling by such classic directors as Michael Curtiz and Howard Hawks combined with expectations of immediacy demanded by modern audiences. The result is disturbingly familiar - it's as though we are dropped "behind the enemy lines" of a black and white film of the 1930s or 40s into a fully dimensioned world of nuance and colour, emotionally as well as technically.
So we meet Rachel some decade or so after the end of the war when a former colleague visits the Kibbutz as a tourist with her Canadian clergyman husband. In a brief scene we're lured immediately into the history shared by the two women. It's that time when they worked together as secretaries to the German command which occupies most of a story concerned with the convoluted ways that people survive, however demeaning, in order to remain true to themselves. Very few of the characters are what they seem, which is one of the devices which keeps us embedded in the story. By choosing to follow a Jewish woman on her own, pitting her wits against the machinations of the desperate and self-deluded people who rule her corner of the world, Verhoeven leaves no human stone unturned in his search for the many ways we become brutalized in thought and deed; nor does he forget that ripeness of the spirit which leads to triumphs large and small.
Even if you think you've seen all the WWII tales you can bear, seek this out. You won't be disappointed.
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Black Book
