Diplomacy: Will Paris Burn?

During WWII, Sweden’s official neutrality was not always pretty. Yet, despite the calculated concessions granted by their government, some Swedish diplomats became heroes for their courage and compassion. For his efforts rescuing tens of thousands of Jewish Hungarians, Raoul Wallenberg vanished to the world while in the custody of the Red Army. However, Raoul Nordling was awarded the Croix de Guerre for convincing Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz not to raze the city of Paris as he withdrew his forces. Some historians question that narrative, but Cyril Gely chose to print the legend in the stage play he and Volker Schlöndorff have now adapted for the screen. A very French drama plays out between the Swedish diplomat and the German officer in Schlöndorff’s Diplomacy (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Choltitz was one of the few old school Prussian officers not fatally embroiled in the Valkyrie Plot against Hitler. Although he often had profound misgivings, he always followed his orders, at least thus far. With the Allies rapidly approaching, Choltitiz is supposed to blow up key points of infrastructure, leaving the city in smoking wreckage. All the charges are set, but Swedish Consul Nordling has furtively slipped into Choltitz’s converted headquarters in a luxury hotel, using a secret passageway designed for Royal assignations. Before morning breaks, Nordling will try to convince and cajole Choltitz to disregard his orders, allowing Paris’s great cultural and architectural treasures to survive the war.

Essentially, Diplomacy is a one-set two-hander (with a few subordinate offers and a shanghaied engineer walking through from time to time), but the stakes could not be higher. It is a great chess match premise, but even though the narrative is completely stacked in Nordling’s favor it is Choltitz who emerges as the far more compelling dramatic figure.

As played by the ever reliable André Dussollier, Nordling is the suave diplomat arguing on the side of the angels. In contrast, Choltitz is a pricklier individual. Although he remains an inspirational figure for his rank-and-file, he is clearly troubled by the atrocities he duly participated in. Redemption always makes good movie fodder, but there are pressing reasons for Choltitz to acquiesce to madness dictated from above, which he will eventually reveal to Nordling.

Dussollier plays the diplomat with instantly credible intelligence and sophistication. Nonetheless, Niels Arestrup does all the heavy lifting and should earn the majority of critical laurels for his work as Choltitz. While he is a rough bull of a man, he conveys the multitude of internal conflicts roiling inside him.

The maybe-not-quite-as-leftwing-as-he-used-to-be-Merkel-supporting Schlöndorff opens up the film up as best he can, but certain amount of staginess is unavoidable—and perhaps even desirable for such a claustrophobic one-on-one. He maintains a good deal of tension, treating both the concerns of history and his main characters quite fairly. It is a good, solid film that makes one wonder why his thematically related Calm at Sea has yet to land an American distributor. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, Diplomacy opens this Wednesday (10/15) at New York’s Film Forum.

WFF Montreal ’12: Calm at Sea

It is just about unifying Europe—or at least a handful of refined National Socialist officers would like to believe.  Of course, it is hard for them to kid themselves when Berlin is ordering mass reprisal executions.  Based in part of the diaries of the old line German war hero-novelist Ernst Jünger’s diaries, Volker Schlöndorff dramatizes a notorious episode of Vichy-era French history in Calm at Sea, which screens as part of the 2012 World Film Festival of Montreal.

On the orders of the Communist French resistance faction, two high-ranking German officers are to be assassinated.  They realize the occupying Germans will likely retaliate.  In fact, that is part of the point.  It will help radicalize the general populace.  Unfortunately, one of the shoddy guns supplied to the triggermen jams, leaving a target alive.  While the actual gunmen escape, the occupying power intends to set an example.  If the partisans in question are not turned over to the authorities, one hundred “hostages” will be executed.

The figure of one hundred was the result of a bit of diplomatic negotiating on the part of Jünger and his superior officer, cutting down the literal death list from one hundred fifty.  These are not randomly selected names—they are political prisoners, roughly divided between Gaullists and Communists, like the seventeen year-old Guy Môquet, who would become a martyr figure for French leftists.

Surely, that should not be a spoiler to anyone.  Indeed, Sea becomes something like the Môquet passion play in its slow, overwrought third act.  That is a bit of a shame, because the second act offers a surprisingly insightful and intriguing perspective on some pretty familiar cinematic terrain.  In addition to clearly suggesting the mass executions were exactly what the Communist leadership had in mind (except more so), several of their imprisoned partisan openly question whether allying themselves with the National Socialists during the Hitler-Stalin alliance was possibly a mistake in retrospect.  You think maybe?  Likewise, Jünger pointedly asks if mass executions will prove to be counter-effective as they try to win French hearts and mind.  Hmm, perhaps.  Yet, the disdainful Jünger’s reluctance to stick his neck out is in turn challenged by the sophisticated French woman he is pursuing—the only sort of conquest that interests him.

A French-German television co-production, Sea is still relatively cinematic and boasts a big screen cast.  As the reluctant Nazi Jünger (officially rehabilitated in the 1950’s), Ulrich Matthes is smart, cool, and riveting in every second of his screen time.  Veteran French character actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin (the hardware merchant in The Well-Digger’s Daughter) also elevates the otherwise disappointing endgame, appearing as an anti-Vichy Catholic priest, who compassionately ministers to the doomed men, by not ministering, per se.  Indeed, his work is welcome and notable as a sympathetic depiction of a man of the cloth.  Unfortunately, the prison ensemble is stuck portraying symbols rather than characters.

At its best, Sea is a fascinating film, critically exploring the murky psyches of conflicted Germans like Jünger and the collaborating gendarmerie France is still apologizing for.  However, it can also be as blatantly manipulative as a made-for-TV movie, which in fact, it is.  Though not nearly as powerful as Schlöndorff’s underappreciated Polish Solidarity docudrama Strike, Calm at Sea is an interesting little film with somewhat more on the merit side.  Worth considering, it screens Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (8/28-8/30) during this year’s World Film Festival in Montreal.