MovieChat Forums > The Good German (2007) Discussion > Very stylised

Very stylised

posted 15 years ago by billpeter
5 replies | jump to latest

Like an Alfred Hitchcck film directed by Roman Polanski.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

[–] blackhawk12151 14 years ago

Yeah, but the difference is Hitchcock would have thrown this script in the trash and fired whatever studio messenger brought it to him after he read the first page.

[–] jennbeez1 14 years ago

Was the script at fault or the execution? I've been trying to figure it out. I could not connect with the characters and I came to this movie prepared to like it. By the end of it, I was happy to have it over with no matter what happened to the characters. Cate Blanchett's BIG reveal that she sold out 12 jews fell totally flat with me and I'm so normally against the whole notion of letting people die to advance some cause or other. Oh right. Her cause was survival. Same reason she became a hooker.

yawn.

I just didn't care and the movie couldn't make me.

[–] chrisasiama 14 years ago

This film was an interesting experiment but I think it failed.

The cinematography didn't really work and they failed to capture the film noir look and mood. Where was the chiaroscuro? It simply looked like I was watching a colour film in B+W on my tv. The story was ok but it was muddled and lacked a decent pace. By the time the film ends we don't care enough about the plot or characters to really feel the impact of the final revelation.

[–] david-910-387884 12 years ago

The last line in almost every scene is an enigmatic non-sequitur, which starts to get quite annoying.

[–] www.wedd 14 years ago

I found it, more on my second look than my first, to be very a delirious and beautiful movie. The stylisation and atmosphere is just amazing (sorry for sounding like a pretentious critic), more like a studio-bound B-movie, propped up with stock footage (those The Good German was able to use modern techniques to integrate it more smoothly) like Sam Fuller's Verboten! (what I've seen of it), than one of the classic Hollywood films like Casablanca that it was so widely held up against on release. The plot you can take or leave, it's not hugely original (feels like the defecting Nazi scientist thing has been done a hundred times before), and not majorly rewarding to follow, either. As I say, I mainly dig this for the dreamy atmosphere (shades of Lars von Trier's Europa, too).