Black Book

Director Paul Verhoeven , the author of such memorable movie moments as Sharon Stones crotch in Basic Instinct, the three tittied whore in Total Recall, and wall to wall dismemberment in Starship Troopers, remains hardcore in his latest movie.

Black Book is the story of a Jewish Woman who goes blonde (upstairs and downstairs) to survive the Nazis at the tail end of WWII in Holland. Going into the film, I expected Paul Verhoeven to deliver a mass market experience about heroism and adventure with lots of sex and violence. And that is exactly what he delivers and more.

At this point in time, I didn't think there was anything new that could be said about WWII and the Nazi's but I was wrong. Verhoeven aims to debunk the myth that the Dutch were the shining heros of WWII for resisting the Nazis. Much of the film takes place after the defeat of Germany and we get to see the allies behaving badly, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Women implicated in collaborating with the Nazi's are publicly humiliated by having their heads shaved, sewage poured over them and beaten, by the Dutch and the Allies behaving pretty much the way Nazis did. Like Roman Polanski's The Pianist, the only "good" Nazi in the film is executed by the Allies as a result of petty bureaucracy, even though he has vital information.

Strangely enough, Black Book reminded me of another Verhoeven film- Starship Troopers. Ostensibly, a sci-fi creature feature with a military flavour, it seemed to glorify fascism though a second viewing clarified the film as a sly satire (the reason I was unsure was that it seemed unbelievable that a big budget film like this would be allowed to be a satire).

To me, the military heroes of Starship Troopers were depicted, in the way the Nazis saw themselves, a perfect race, fighting for a noble war against an enemy that weren't human. Black Book makes the point that there is a Nazi lurking in all of us.