Black Book

Maybe it's too early to say it, but I shouldn't be surprised if two of my top ten movies for 2007 turn out to be WWII dramas. Clint Eastwood's grim, compassionate Letters from Iwo Jima is released here Feb 23rd, and supplies a Japanese perspective on the same crucial battle featured in Flags of Our Fathers. I think it's his best film since Unforgiven, and maybe his best film period.

But this week we get Black Book, a very different kind of war movie from Paul Verhoeven - the man who gave us Robocop, Showgirls, and Basic Instinct. Where the Eastwood film is somber and rueful, Black Book is every bit as exciting, racy, and outrageous as his last great war picture, Starship Troopers.

Growing up in Holland during WWII, Verhoeven was on the sharp end of bombing raids from both German and Allied forces, and even underwent mock execution by a German soldier. In interviews he has said that none of this effected him that much - like the young boy in John Boorman's Hope and Glory, he found the war to be an exciting time, with spectacular fireworks displays and occasional unscheduled days off from school.

Black Book certainly doesn't suffer from the hallowed perception of 'The Greatest Generation' you find in Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, or even The Thin Red Line. Nobody here comes out smelling of roses. Almost everyone acts out of naked self-interest. What Black Book has in common with Letters from Iwo Jima is the idea that in wartime the question 'friend or foe?' is more complicated than it may appear. You can be sold out by your own people and saved by your enemies.

Dutch star Carice van Houten is sensational as Rachel Stein, an alluring Jewish singer who joins the resistance as Ellis de Vries in 1944 after her safe haven is blown. Her comrades prevail on her to dye her hair blonde and seduce the local Gestapo chief, Muntze (Sebastian Koch). He's impressed but not fooled. Even so, they become an item, and he gives her a job as his secretary. Then a daring raid to free captured resistance fighters is betrayed. The SS arrest Muntze, and the Resistance is led to believe that Ellis is the traitor.

Muntze is largely a sympathetic figure, while the resistance harbours anti-Semites and leaks like a sieve. But this isn't just a simple role reversal, like Starship Troopers; there is no moral high ground here. Everyone is sullied by desire, duplicity and desperation, including the Allied forces, the liberated Dutch citizens, and even the daring, resourceful Rachel/Ellis herself, who admits 'Every survivor is guilty in some way'. (Verhoeven has said this film is a corrective to his 1977 resistance drama, Soldier of Orange, which was, he says, 'too heroic'.)

If British audiences of a certain vintage will inevitably be reminded of the BBC series 'Allo 'Allo, or the myriad WWII films it parodied, Verhoeven's assured handling of a gripping scenario ensures this isn't a problem. Making his first film in Holland for more than 20 years, in part because Hollywood won't let him make the kind of movies he wants to, Verhoeven keeps the material on the boil for nearly two and a half hours. Strongly recommended.

Tom Charity
Tom.charity@lovefilm.com