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After the end of WWII, world leaders are arriving in Berlin for the Potsdam Conference. Along with them is Jake Geismer (George Clooney), an American war correspondent who’s covering the event. Geismer lived in Berlin before the war, working for the AP bureau—and he’s surprised to return and find that his old girlfriend, Lena (Cate Blanchett), is now on the arm of Patrick Tully (Tobey Maguire), the young American soldier who’s been hired to drive Geismer around the city during his stay.
In post-WWII Berlin, it’s hard to tell who’s on which side—and Tully has been playing every side of the system as much as possible. He’s also trying to use his contacts to help Lena escape Germany before it’s too late. But it seems as though she’s got something that someone else desperately wants—like information about the whereabouts of her husband, who, Lena claims, was a simple mathematician who’s been dead for six months.
When Tully turns up with a bullet in his chest, the US military warns Geismer to ignore it—and Geismer decides that it’s up to him to figure out who wanted Tully dead and what it has to do with Lena.
The Good German is a stunning film. Stylistically, it’s absolutely brilliant. Director Steven Soderbergh shot the entire film just as it would have been shot in 1945—all black and white, with harsh incandescent lighting and boom microphones. All that allows it to blend seamlessly with stock footage of 1945 Berlin—and it makes you feel as though you’ve stepped back in time more than 60 years. Clooney and Blanchett were perfectly cast—and they seem to fit right into their 1945 surroundings. Both are classic performers who are perfectly capable of pulling off an old-fashioned performance without making it look like a bad parody. The same isn’t true of Maguire, but I’m willing to overlook that.
The problem with The Good German, however, comes in the story. It’s complex and hard to follow—and when it was over, I still wasn’t sure what, exactly, had happened. Fortunately, it wasn’t just me, either—because after the screening, I couldn’t find a single critic who even claimed to have been able to follow the whole story. That made the film tough to get through—and tough to resist the urge to curl up and take a nap.
It’s tempting to recommend seeing this movie solely for its cinematic merit. But unfortunately beauty really is only skin deep—and The Good German is a beautiful bore.
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