Stories
set in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party appeal to dramatists for
obvious reasons. In hindsight, the Nazi menace seems so blatant, yet something
in what Adolf Hitler espoused persuaded a significant number of Germans, which
makes any look back at the era into a study of mob mentality, and—if
handled right—an insight into where we could be headed. In Good, Vicente Amorim directs John
Wrathall's adaptation of C.P. Taylor's play about a meek literature professor
(here played by Viggo Mortensen) who reluctantly joins the Nazi party in order
to advance his career and placate his family. The Nazis are interested in a
novel Mortensen wrote—partly inspired by the burden of dealing with his
mother's dementia—that seems to argue for the concept of mercy killing.
They ask him to draft a paper that will offer a moral justification for human
extermination, which he does, little realizing that his new friends are
planning to use his logic to excuse the Holocaust.
The
problem with exploring this particular time and place in fiction is that in
some ways the material's too juicy to handle without leaving a splattery,
unsubtle mess. Certainly Good doesn't go in for a lot of nuance. It's an
old-fashioned hoke-fest, in which the otherness of Germany is connoted by
having everyone speak with a British accent—including the American-born
Mortensen—and in which Mortensen's wife Jodie Whittaker ironically admires
the Nazi pageantry, chirping, "Anything that makes people happy can't be bad,
can it?" Good is ostensibly about how
Mortensen comes to enjoy the benefits of being one of the Nazis' pet
intellectuals, and how he has to decide whether to jeopardize his standing by
helping his best friend, Jewish psychiatrist Jason Isaacs. But any close
inspection of one Aryan's dilemma gets overwhelmed by the usual
prelude-to-the-Holocaust dramatic beats, with caution giving way to denial
before resolving in sickening revelation. And all of this refers primarily to
itself, as though people still needed convincing that the Nazis were bad dudes.
Early in the film, after a government-sponsored book-burning, Mortensen grunts,
"What do a load of old books have to do with life?" He means the question
sarcastically, but honestly, what he's asking deserves an answer. It definitely
wouldn't have done anyone involved with Good any harm to ask what
relevance heavy-handed history plays have to do with the world of today.