fludd.org - Movie Review

The first thing that we would tell to ourself is that Black Book doesn't innovate that much the way of making movies on the Second World War. In fact, the first thing to say is that the movie does combine a few elements related to realistic espionage movies. Still, what makes this film a must-see? It's complex storyline is certainly one of the reasons. Above all, the most interesting thing from this flick is its way to give us something that is still quite different from what we see from most American movies on the Second World War.

Unlike Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan or any other movies, Black Book doesn't keep the focus on soldiers. Thus, gone are the usual (and pathetic) clichÃ©s that you saw in a movie like John Woo's lame Windtalkers or the fairly good South Korean movie Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War. Don't expect to see any immigrants who will show their patriotism toward the USA (or Holland, in this case) or any soldier who will ask his companion to tell to his wife he loves her while dying, for instance. What should be understood, is that Dutch movie director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct; Total Recall) gives us characters that are not psychologically made up in advance. Hence, that explains their unpredictable nature.

The reason why we\'re granted the occasion to see so much depth from the characters is obvious. Indeed, Black Book's storyline follows members of a resistance movement and a few German military officers. At the first look, the movie's extremely fast-paced storyline looks extremely simple to understand (which is the case).

However, one of the greatest assets of Black Book is the fact that scriptwriters Gerard Soeteman and Paul Verhoeven built the story in a way that it can only be well understood if the audience clearly know the psychological features of key characters. Before we go further, the movie follows only a few characters, so this explains why their portrait is well rendered by scriptwriters.

Besides, by dealing with the controversy that surrounds the Dutch resistance movement and also the Nazis, Verhoeven deals with stuff that we\'re not used to see. Unlike what we would like to believe, nothing is seen as being black or white in this movie. The movie Black Book is not a way to exacerbate Dutch patriotism or to show all German military officers as hateful monsters. In short, there's no display of heroism in this movie.

With that said, many Christian members of the Dutch resistance half-heartedly accepted to enrol Jewish Dutch while, at the same time, displaying their racism toward Jewish people. Another example is that on the sides of the Nazi officers, there are some traitors (who will inevitably be executed after the war). However, despite being very p

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