Moral Maze

The first five days of the Berlin Film Festival showcased at least three films likely to stimulate debate.

Feb 15 2007

Have you heard the one about the Good(ish) German, the not-so-awful Jew and the sort of well-meaning racist? It's not a joke, it's an entire film festival. This year's Berlinale is a moral minefield: several key filmmakers are playing hard and fast with right and wrong. It's the year of muddying the ethical waters, whether examining Nazi complicity in 'The Good German', Jewish self-preservation during the Holocaust in 'The Counterfeiters' or the thawing of apartheid in 'Goodbye Bafana'.

Steven Soderbergh's 'The Good German' (opening here in three weeks) inhabits similar territory to 'The Third Man' or 'Black Book': it's set in immediate post-war Europe, where questionable acts of wartime desperation are exposed to the less forgiving light of peace. Adapted from Joseph Kanon's novel, it unfolds in a ravaged Berlin. Jake Geisner (George Clooney) is a war correspondent whose mysterious German ex, Lena (Cate Blanchett), is hiding the truth about her wartime behaviour. As a thriller, it's as flat as Holland; but as an exercise in slavishly recreating the look of a studio-shot noir, it's a fun experiment blessed with excellent photography.

Showing up Soderbergh is German director Stefan Ruzowitzky's very impressive 'The Counterfeiters' ('Die Fälscher'), a film whose main character – neither hero nor villain – is Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a German Jewish counterfeiter of considerable skill in mid-1930s Berlin. Once sent to a concentration camp, his criminal skill is his saving grace when the Nazis decide to flood the Allies with forged currency. Sorowitsch's motto, 'One must adapt or die', encompasses a stark willingness to collude with his captors – an attitude counter to fellow prisoners' sabotage plans. 'The Counterfeiters' is a film of considerable ethical complexity. Markovics's performance is beguiling in its sly silence.

Bille August's 'Goodbye Bafana' is yet another well-meaning foreign production about recent African struggles (see 'Hotel Rwanda' and 'The Last King of Scotland'). Like Philip Noyce's forthcoming 'Catch a Fire', 'Goodbye...' pitches a white apartheid official against an ANC activist – only this time the activist is Nelson Mandela (Dennis Haysbert), the white man James Gregory (Joseph Fiennes), a prison guard who grew close to Mandela during his 27 years in prison and whose memoirs inform the film. Those seeking a film about Mandela must wait a little longer: although solid and fair, if far too staid, this is Gregory's story, not Madiba's. We get an apartheid government stooge to represent the conscience of white South Africa, leaving Mandela to linger on the sidelines.

Away from politics and these headline-grabbers, there was much else to discover. Julie Delpy's romcom '2 Days in Paris' – the French actress' third film as director – sees Delpy playing a French photographer living in New York who takes her boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) home to Paris. Given the surfeit of jokes about not washing, eating rabbits and having a laissez-faire attitude to sex, you'd think the film was written by an American. As broad relationship comedy, it's fairly amusing, aping 'Before Sunset' in its speedy chit-chat, even if its gags mirror 'Meet the Parents'. It went down well with the festival audience.

Unfolding over 1984 and 1985, Andre Téchiné's impressive 'Les Temoins' stars Emmanuelle Béart as a writer whose macho cop-partner Mehdi (Sami Bouajila) strikes up a secret relationship with Manu (Johan Libéreau), a boy from the Ariege, just as AIDS hits the Parisian gay community. It's as eventful as an opera, yet also very involving and light in its telling, only becoming unwieldly late on. The performances are excellent.
Of the many documentaries here, 'A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory' is a captivating and unflattering swipe at Warhol and his buddies, as told by the niece of Danny Williams, a Warhol acolyte and lover who disappeared in the late '60s. Talking heads from John Cale to Paul Morrissey wildly disagree about The Truth. Most remember very little. Some still look as high as a kite.

• 
•