Black Book - A Movie Review

The ironies of war abound in this movie. Black Book, or Zwartboek the movie's Dutch name, is a movie by the Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven about the wanning days of World War II in Europe.

The opening scene of the movie takes place in Israel in 1956 when a Canadian tour bus makes a short rest stop at a kibbutz where one of the tourists, a woman named Ronnie (played by Halina Reijn) unexpectedly encounters an old friend who she hasn't seen since the end of World War II in Holland. The movie then flashes back to Holland in 1944 as Rachel (played by Carice van Houten), the woman at the kibbutz who had just had the short encounter with the Canadian tourist, thinks back to her life with this woman during the wanning days of World War II in Holland.

In September 1944 a bomb from an Allied bomber misses its target and destroys the home where Rachel, a young Jewish woman who is an aspiring singer, has been in hiding with a Dutch family. The family is killed but Rachel survives and is forced to find a new place to live. She visits the lawyer, who has been handling the affairs of her family (as well as those of other Jewish families hiding from the Germans), who arranges passage on a boat that will smuggle her and other Jews across the Biesbosch to the Allied controlled south Holland. On the boat she is reunited with her family and all seems well until the boat is suddenly attacked by a German patrol boat and everyone on board, except Rachel, are killed.

Picked up and taken to temporary safety by a resistance group led by a man named Gerben Kuipers (played by Derek de Lint) where she is offered the opportunity of joining them in their fight against the Germans. Rachel joins the resistance and in the process changes her name to Ellis de Vries and dyes her hair both of which enable her to disguise her Jewish roots and operate in public while on assignment with the resistance.

This is not a movie with the good guys on one side fighting the bad guys on the other. Instead, characters on both sides are mostly varying shades of gray. Early on in the movie we see that Kuipers' resistance group is made up of nationalists loyal to the Queen, as well as communists and socialists, all of whom have temporarily put aside their political differences to fight a common enemy but make no pretense of continuing to cooperate after the war. This is vividly demonstrated when the majority nationalists stand and toast the Queen (who was in Canada during the war) while the socialists and communists remain silently seated with their glasses untouched.

On the German side there were divisions as well. Pragmatists seeking to manage their conquered territory, Nazi die hards seeking to enforce their ideology regardless of its affect on the winning of the war as well as internal rivalries as officers use any means to increase their power and chances for promotion.

Both sides recognize that the war will be over soon and that the Allies will be the victors, a fact that adds to the tension as people on both sides begin to prepare for life after the war. Collaborators and profiteers on both sides seek to cover their past and secure their gains. Those with various political agendas begin planning how to take advantage of the change to advance their positions and halt those of their enemies.

When the war ends and the Germans surrender in Holland there is a period of anarchy as there is no recognized civil authority. German military commanders attempt to maintain civil order until the Allies arrive to assume control while the people in the streets take advantage of vacuum to settle scores from the war with both Germans and those neighbors who they feel harmed them. The arrival of the Allies doesn't immediately solve the problem either as it not only takes time to re-establish order but to also sort out friend from foe on both sides. This is dramatically displayed when the newly arrived Canadian officer in charge of affairs in the area for the Allies finds himself having to reluctantly authorize the execution of a German officer (who is actually one of the good guys in the movie) in accordance with the decision of a German military court marshal that was handed down before the surrender but execution delayed by the chaos that followed the surrender.

While graphic and frequent, the sex and violence in this movie are about right and are not over done given the plot and theme. With great acting, good story and fast paced this is a very good movie. However, it is thought provoking and definitely lacks the feel good feeling of a good vs evil action film or the love conquers all feeling of a romance movie.