Bryan Singer

Despite the fact that I should know better, I couldn't quite resist Valkyrie.

Yes, yes.  I know.  It's got Tommy Boy Cruise in it, and he and his noxious self should be resisted at every possible moment.  But...we all know I'm a sucker for a movie about Nazis, so, while we were in the land of longhorns, we headed off to the movie theater to see it, assuming we would be regretting said move two hours later. 

Surprisingly, however, neither the husband, nor I, regretted seeing the movie, whilst paying full price to do so.  In fact {insert shocked gasp here} I'm going to recommend it to those of you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, who would probably go to such a movie if only Tommy Boy Cruise wasn't in it.  Because, like me, you're undoubtedly worried that he's hijacked the story of the July 20 plot to further his non-acting ambitions, right?  Well, have no worries, my devoted Cake Eater readers, because someone, and I assume this someone was rather hefty, sat on him.  He was not allowed to have any of those staring into the camera moments, where he tries to emote, but rather looks like he's trying to resolve a nasty case of constipation.  He actually did his job---and he did it well.  So...whomever the fatty was who sat on Tom Cruise and made him too tired to pull his usual schtick, bless you.  You saved the film from its (supposed) greatest asset.

He was actually a very plausible Claus von Stauffenberg.  I won't say he made the movie better by his presence.  I'm simply saying the opportunity was there for him to stink the place up and it didn't happen.  I was even impressed by him. Most people know that Stauffenberg lost one of his eyes, along with his right arm, and a few fingers in North Africa.  They made good use of his glass eye in one particular scene with Eddie Izzard, and as a result, the glass eye becomes part of the intrigue.  Apparently uncomfortable appearing before der Führer with a patch over his eye, or because it was protocol or whatever, he slips it in, to look more normal.  Somehow, and don't ask me how he did it, in a scene with one "fake" eye, and one real one, Tommy Boy actually managed to make it look like he had a glass eye.  You know how whenever you meet someone with a glass eye it always seems as if something's off?  You won't realize it until later, because by then it'll be perfectly obvious, but for that moment, when their eyes don't match in focus or direction, when it's disconcerting because we Westerners place so much value on eye-contact, but you can't put your finger on what is wrong with the scenario?  Well, he actually manages to pull that off.  It's fairly impressive because that is not a detail, generally speaking, to which Tommy Boy would pay attention. 

Tommy Boy was helped by a magnificent cast of the usual British suspects.  Kenneth Branagh, who has gotten quite fat of late, but who nonetheless helped set up the intrigue; Tom Wilkinson with a majestic combover played the fence quite nicely; and Bill Nighy who hides behind coke bottle bottom-glasses and makes them into a fantastic metaphor for his character's actions are the standouts.  In small, but pivotal roles, Tom Hollander makes a deliciously malevolent Nazi, and Eddie Izzard plays the nervous army bureaucrat to a T.  Carice van Houten, a Dutch actress, who I recently saw in the marvelous Black Book,  (which I HIGHLY recommend, if you can stand loads of nudity.) plays Stauffenberg's wife, Nina, and I was bummed she wasn't given more to do, because she really is a fabulous actress.  Also, Stauffenberg may have lost his life, but his wife truly paid the price for his actions.  If she hadn't been pregnant at the time of the coup, she may not have survived the war at all, unlike most of her family and Stauffenberg's.  It would have been interesting to see, even in small bits and pieces what she went through because of her husband.  I mean, the woman was sent to Ravensbruck, and her children were put in an orphanage and given another name.  It was miraculous that they were reunited.  Hers is a story in itself, and would be interesting to see one day, perhaps in another movie. 

Given what I know about the actual events of the July 20 plot---and, granted, my knowledge is not that of an overwhelming nature---I would say that they got the basics of it down quite nicely, and where there wasn't documentary evidence, the writers made logical choices to fill in the blanks.  If there was one flaw with the film it's that they seemingly gave everyone, through von Stauffenberg, the same moral imperative for killing Hitler (with the notable exception of Tom Wilkinson's General Fromm), which was that under Hitler, Germany had become a shadow of her former self, and was immoral in its treatment of the Jews and other oppressed peoples, etc.  The writers tried to hedge their bets here and there by the conspirators' repeated claims of seeking out an armistice with the Allies, to end the war, but the motivation for the coup is fuzzy around the edges for most of the film. The writers seem to be of the opinion that it doesn't really matter, but in fact it does, because it paints the characters in different colors than they were in real life.  In reality, while von Stauffenberg certainly had problems with the Nazis' treatment of the Jews et. al., it's not clear at all that everyone involved in the plot had the same morality guiding them, or handled the issue as a moral problem at all, but rather were looking for a power grab.  Notably missing is the fact that certain army officers involved---including the man who was to be the interim leader should the coup succeed, General Ludwig Beck---Prussians mostly, hated what Hitler had done to the armed forces, and while they were certainly forced to act by the invasion in Normandy, a battle they knew they could not win, had, for the most part, been enthusiastic about his militarization.  Mostly, the people involved in the plot to oust Hitler had their own motivations for killing him, but they were more pragmatic than the simple morality the film tries to portray.  It's yet again another movie trying to make Good Germans out of people who, in reality, weren't necessarily all that troubled by what the Nazis had done, and who, if they had the chance, probably would have done the same things as Hitler and his cronies, but in different ways, and to different peoples.  

The other minor quibble I have is that the film seems to take on the opinion that these conspirators were the best hope for Germany; for ending the war.  If they had succeeded, thousands of lives might have undoubtedly been saved, but it's not clear at all that these men were the best hope for Germany as a country.  Perhaps the writers didn't think that was necessary to include, but when the whole plot is based on the theory that this is Germany's only hope of surviving, that they're, to quote Tommy Boy from the advertising "taking down evil from the inside" shouldn't it be relevant that there are serious problems with the men who are the next great hope for Germany?  I've read various things about what they had planned to offer as an armistice, and from what I remember it would seems as if they thought it fairly reasonable to withdraw from the western countries, but were keen to keep the Lebensraum Hitler had gained in the east.  Is it possible that in 1944, the Allied commanders might have given them such a thing?  Yes, I suppose it might have been, particularly as a strong hedge against Stalin.  But Roosevelt had opened his mouth and uttered the words "unconditional surrender" once upon a war, and the Germans had taken it quite literally, as had the Allies, because they'd done everything to ensure that specific outcome.  Ah, but that's mere speculation on my part.  

As far as the film is concerned, however, it's Bryan Singer's best movie since The Usual Suspects.  Hands down. I've seen just about every thing he's put out in recent years (mainly because they're comic book movies and the husband is a devotee of X-Men.) and while I adore House, which is also his little project, everything he's done has for me, at least, been instantly forgettable. This movie is not like that.  It's good.  It stays with you and challenges you.  Go see it.  Really.  Tommy Boy doesn't stink up the joint and beyond that you can see some good performances in an interesting story.