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Casablanca goes millennial

DELICIOUS MOMENTS: A scene from `The Good German'.

The Good German (English)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire

This is a film that has been trashed mainly because Soderbergh has decided to put style over substance. That is an unpardonable crime when you are in the business of entertaining people.

Having said all that, one cannot help but indulge in some guilty pleasure as one watches this deliciously put-together film.

Soderbergh, who stunned the world with his "Sex, Lies and Videotape" and has since had a rather uneven career, with glossy blockbusters like the "Oceans" movies interspersed with quirky indies, tries yet another experiment. He decides to revisit the 40s and make a film with decidedly millennial overtones. The film is in black and white, but its moral hues are distinctly grey.

George Clooney cuts a dashing figure as war correspondent Jake, who comes to Berlin to cover the Potsdam peace conference. Berlin is also the place where he met and fell in love with the slinky Lena, played with sinuous grace by the consummate shape-shifter Cate Blanchett.

The triangle is completed with Jake's driver Tully — the ultimate wheeler-dealer — who is in a relationship with Lena. Tully is a sociopath, played with oily charm by our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire! It is a surreal experience to watch Spidey being wicked as sin.

So Tully ends up dead, and Lena is hiding many secrets, and Jake is rapidly uncovering various versions of the truth involving Nazi atrocities, betrayal, nuclear programmes, depraved scientists pretending to be humanitarians, and Russians and Americans talking peace but basically on a mission to grab as many scientists to fuel the long Cold War ahead.

Based on the novel by Joseph Kanon, the film is admittedly shallow and the characters not as well developed as they should be. The plot is all deliciously convoluted, and if the ending bears any resemblance to "Casablanca", it is purely intentional.

Mini Anthikad-Chhibber

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