CINEMA: Good
In the last few years Viggo Mortenson has really shown his range as an actor and here he changes pace and direction yet again to play a good, honest man who becomes corrupted more by his own apathy and lack of direction than by moral weakness.
In this film he plays John Holder, a German university lecturer in literature who, just before World War 11, publishes a novel in which a man practises humane euthanasia. The book is in part inspired by John’s relationship with his mother (Gemma Jones), who is suffering from premature dementia. Although it is fiction the burgeoning Nazi party seizes on the book as condoning its own plans for creating an uber-race and before John realises what is happening he has become a spokesperson for the party.
As his political star rises he ditches his down-at-heel wife for the ambitious Anna (Jodie Whittaker) and finds himself increasingly isolated from his best friend Maurice who just happens to be a Jewish psychiatrist (played with great passion and energy by Jason Isaacs). It is only when he realises he cannot help Maurice escape the concentration camps (which partly exist because of a doctrine he has passively endorsed) that this ‘good’ man finally faces up to his own complicity.
Based on the 1980’s play by CP Taylor, the film seems rather dated and clunky – in fact, it now seems terribly heavy-handed with no subtlety or nuance. However, Mortenson, playing John with an English accent, once again gives a superbly measured performance, showing John’s bewilderment and almost bemusement at what is happening to him and around him. Had the material been stronger and more biting the film would have been good whereas it is, in fact, merely adequate.
Dee Pilgrim
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