The Unknown Soldier

Michael Verhoeven (The Nasty Girl) returns to U.S. screens with a searingly thorough doc that would’ve done his earlier film’s heroine proud. The occasion is a touring exhibition of photographs and home movies showing atrocities committed on the Eastern Front by average German soldiers, and the hand-wringing (and neo-Nazi protests) that attended its presentation. Various historians add illumination, but the film is best when Verhoeven takes his camera into the unruly crowds. There, the line between wishful denial and nationalist pathology evaporates with terrifying ease.