Good - an examination of the choices we make in life...

Introduction

 
Just what are we willing to do or ignore in order to improve our lives?  Can we willingly subvert our own morals?  Do we allow our friends to be mistreated?  Do we allow censorship and hate crime in order to feel a bit better about ourselves?
 
John Halder (Viggo Mortensen) is a literature professor who faces such choices in 1930's Germany.  Halder is a struggling academic who knows that he won't get along without subverting his beliefs and joining the burgeoning ranks of the influential Nazi Party.  His home life is chaotic with a wife who is constantly distracted by an incessant need to create or play music, leaving Halder with no choice but to run the house and look after their two children.  He also has his bed-ridden mother living with him and constantly calling for attention, she suffers from tuberculosis.
 


Halder escapes from his mundane life by popping out for a beer and chat with his best friend and psychoanalyst Maurice (Jason Isaacs).  Maurice is the lively character that Halder wishes he was but doesn't quite have the courage to be.  The duo met whilst serving in the trenches during World War I and with a soldier's bond, have been friends for over 20 years.  Maurice is a Jew, which isn't easy for him during this time, but his status as a war veteran gives him certain privileges over his fellow Jew at this point in time.  Both Halder and Maurice believe that Hitler is a joke and that the Nazi Party won't last, even though Halder is appalled to find that his teaching affected with certain authors like Proust being withdrawn from his curriculum.
 
Then Halder's life begins to change, for the better it seems.  Halder meets a young student called Anne (Jodie Whittaker) who goes to Halder's lectures simply to listen to him, she is struggling to find the right course for her at University, more interested in people than ideas.  Despite Halder's morals, the two quickly become lovers.
 


One day Halder is summoned to the Reichs Chancellery for a meeting with Bouhler (Mark Strong), a Nazi official whose job is to ensure that literature adheres to the Nazi ideals.  Halder initially thinks he's done something wrong, but is surprised to find that Adolf Hitler is impressed with a fictional novel he wrote years ago describing how a man killed his ill wife out of love to ease her suffering.  Bouhler would like to use Halder's expertise to write a paper on euthanasia that would help to promote the Nazi's intentions to 'help' the long-suffering mentally ill.  Despite his misgivings, Halder feels that as only a paper is required, he can fulfil this request and take the money being offered with no real consequences.
 
This is not the only decision Halder is forced to make as his life seemingly improves under the Nazi regime, whilst Maurice finds things getting so bad that he needs the help of his old friend to get him out of the country.


 

Extras

 
Interviews - half an hour of interviews with Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, Mark Strong, Steven Mackintosh, Jodie Whittaker and Vicente Amorim.  Sadly this is rather botched as it's a complete half hour block and badly edited into sound bite sized segments.  Could and should have been much better.
 

Overall

 
In order for evil to flourish, it only takes good men to do nothing.
 
Based on a successful play by CP Taylor, Good is a story about seemingly harmless choices and the consequences of those choices.  It's a story set in 1930's Germany but could be set in any time period, and still valid during this time of War On Terror.  What choices are we making right now that seem innocuous but will have major consequences further down the line?  What exactly are our Governments asking permission to do in our names and are we really asking the right questions of their intent?
 


Good is not an overview of the Nazis, it tells the story from the viewpoint of one man and the choices he makes over the course of a decade; choices that will take him into the middle of his own worst nightmare.  It's all little things.  First it's a harmless paper based on his own novel.  Then it's an honorary rank in the SS.  Then it's inspecting asylums.  Halder doesn't see it all but the transformation is almost complete when he is mobilised in full black uniform as a reserve SS officer for a night of protest against the Jews after the death of a junior embassy official in Paris at the hand of a Jew.  Halder doesn't quite see it, but his wife Anne does, getting on her knees to praise him.
 
Good has a really strong and believable cast with Mortensen and Isaacs shining in the lead roles, the shift in their relationship changing subtly throughout the film with the tragic consequences that this inevitably brings.  Mortensen has the power of an everyman, just someone looking to do good and just get on in life, with a naiveté that doesn't allow him to see the bigger picture and just how influential his choices ultimately are.  Isaacs is initially full of a life that is slowly drained from him as a veteran and natural born German who finds that he slowly becomes less than human in the eyes of his fellow countrymen.  Isaacs is frustrated by Halder's unwillingness to help him but in a sop to the hopelessness of his situation, refrains from outright anger at his old friend.
 


The rest of the cast are equally good with Jodie Whittaker and Anastacia Hille both very good as the two women in Halder's life.  They are surpassed though by Mark Strong and Steven Mackintosh as ordinary men who live by the Nazi code, even though Mackintosh's character eventually realises that even the lives of Party men come under scrutiny when he discovers that he and his wife are unable to conform to the Nazi breeding program.  Sadly this only encourages him to take precautions rather than get him to rethink his attitudes.
 
Halder really does believe that he is making the right choices and will be able to steer the Nazi regime in the right direction from the inside, realising far far too late just what he has allowed to happen not only to him, but to the wider world.  The final scenes of the film are shocking and final shot is gut-wrenching as both you and see just where his decisions have led him.  And he could essentially be any member of the SS really, even though Halder never commits an act of violence or is racist in any way.  This is a side that is rarely seen in cinema and one that many people probably won't be comfortable with.  Casting a popular and superb actor like Mortensen in a role like this allows the viewer to be sucked into Halder's world and view things from his perspective so you don't realise quickly enough just what is happening to him.  You can also see the effect of the ubiquitous black uniform as Halder is transformed from academic to SS officer, despite his views not changing.  And then before you know it, you're comfortable in seeing him in uniform as you realise that he actually still is the same person, which makes the ending that much more shocking.



How did it happen?  A bit like this probably.
 
A really thought-provoking film that bar the Nazi iconography could actually be happening around us as I write this…