Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411300021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The film is about an hour and 46 minutes long, but all the best stuff is contained within the first 10 minutes. That's when a narrator describes what happened after the allies' invasion at Normandy failed. Dwight D. Eisenhower came home to ``a humiliating retirement'' and the United States ``withdrew'' from the war, although the Russians kept fighting - for 20 more years!
As a patriotic American, I resented the film's proposition that the Soviet Union would fight valiantly on while the United States turned tail and ran. But this film isn't worth resenting, only forgetting.
It's 1964 when the story begins, and Kennedy is completing his first term as president. Not John F. Kennedy - his father, Joe, who would have been 76 by this time. In real life, Joseph Kennedy Sr. made some impolitic remarks sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis before the war, thus the irony of making him president in the movie.
The Cold War is two decades old, but it's between the United States and Germany - or, as Western Europe is now called, Germania. That old Germaniac Adolf Hitler is about to turn 75 and to celebrate, hopes to sign a peace accord with America. But an American journalist, visiting the country as part of the detente movement, teamed with a ``good'' Nazi who is a police detective, stumble upon a terrible secret which could jeopardize the treaty. But only if they can reveal it in time!
And what is the terrible secret? That the ``Jewish Resettlement Program'' of the Nazis was really an extermination program. Yes, the script asks us to accept the idea that the monstrous atrocity of the Holocaust could have been kept secret for 20 years, that nobody would have missed 6 million Jews. In fact, news of the death camps began leaking out during the war, and many in the West had strong suspicions about what was really happening behind the barbed wire.
There was even pressure on FDR to bomb railroad tracks leading to the death camps as a way of shutting them down.
The script by Stanley Weiser and Ron Hutchinson, from a novel by Robert Harris, tries to finesse this central implausibility by saying the Nazis cunningly forged postcards (!) from German Jews to relatives in America and other countries, keeping up the illusion they were alive. In addition, Nazis claim the resettlement camps to which Jews have been sent are too close to the war zone to be accessible.
Incorporating the Holocaust as an element in a thriller risks demeaning the tragedy. Sometimes, it has been done skillfully and successfully, as in films like ``The Boys from Brazil'' and ``Marathon Man.'' But here it comes off as glib opportunism.
The ``good'' Nazi is played by Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who was the bad guy in ``Blade Runner,'' and the American journalist is Miranda Richardson, memorable for her roles in ``Damage'' and ``The Crying Game.'' Jean Marsh, Ms. ``Upstairs/Downstairs'' herself, has one scene in the film, playing a bitterly anti-Semitic actress who matter-of-factly spills all the beans to Richardson, another unlikely turn of events.
Hauer and Richardson race against time as the film ends, trying to get evidence of the Holocaust to the American delegation before the treaty is signed. As a set piece, this recalls similar cliffhangers that ended films like ``The Man Who Knew Too Much'' and ``The Manchurian Candidate,'' except the suspense is lame and the resolution a fizzle.
What is impressive about the film are the visual effects meant to suggest what a rebuilt Berlin would have looked like if Nazi architect Albert Speer had also survived the war. These visual illusions are striking, but unfortunately the plot and characters remain stubbornly illusory as well.
And we never do get answers to some of the more tantalizing questions posed by the premise - among them, what would America have done all these years without Volkswagens, BMW's and Mercedes Benzes? Now there's a movie for you, and probably a better one than ``Fatherland.''
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB