Good [Blu-ray]

Spoiler alert: This review tells some details about the plot that are not in the trailer or the brief synopsis."Good" is based on a play by the same name by C.P. Taylor. Its main character, Halder, is a totally unsympathetic character because he's an ardent Nazi, while the movie's Halder is a reluctant Nazi, a much more interesting and nuanced character. In the play, it's credible that Halder would be admitted to the SS and would get important assignments. In the movie, the story arc is implausible because the SS was not open to reluctant Nazis; it was reserved for the hard core. In Nazi Germany, Halder would have become a tool for the Nazi propaganda machine. He would have been paid well to write propaganda with an intellectual veneer and given plum assignments in academia, but he never would have been given any assignments outside of a university. That's my only complaint about the movie.Everything else about this chilling morality tale is superb, including the much-maligned title. It instantly brought to mind the quote about good men doing nothing, which is mistakenly attributed to Edmund Burke. It also points to the central moral conflict of the movie, how a good person accepts and participates in evil.In 1933 Germany, Halder is a good man by any measure. He opposes Nazism, he selflessly cares for his sick mother, he is a loving father, and he indulges a loving but seemingly unstable wife. He appears to be a gifted literature professor. Then Nazis burn books at his university and tell him to stop teaching Proust and other giants of literature who are on the Nazi hit list. He suggests resistance, but it would clearly cost him his job. So he fails to be a hero. How many people would pass this test? A sick mother, two kids, and a wife who apparently doesn't work are depending on him. How many people would give up their livelihoods in such a situation? But then we get the first sign of how he rationalizes evil. He tells an adoring student that maybe they should throw away all these old books and start anew. He says this in a tone of voice that could be heard as ironic, making fun of the authorities who have trampled on his values, but this begins a pattern of rationalization.In a later scene he talks to his best friend, who happens to be Jewish. He says Hitler's a joke who won't last. Once again rationalizing a passive acceptance.He tells his wife that it might be necessary to join the Nazi party to keep his career moving forward. Her reply is supportive but ambiguous. She says she's sure he'll make the right decision. We later learn that he doesn't join up at this point.Then he has an affair with a student. Not so good. He makes an effort to break it off, but he's in too deep. This failing is more damning, since he is not coerced.A few years later Halder is dragooned into providing intellectual cover for the Nazi program of murdering incurably ill people. By now he knows that questioning Nazi dogma would get him in jail, and possibly executed. Clearly terrified about the possible consequences, he once again fails to be a hero and reluctantly agrees to write the essay requested of him. In a supreme irony, we see how the sort of rationalization that soothes Halder's conscience turns into powerful groupthink, with monstrous results. Halder's Nazi master tells him that his insight will keep "humanity" (as in being humane) at the center of the program of mass murder program.From there he is recruited into the SS, which he clearly doesn't want to get involved in but doesn't dare refuse.His Jewish friend is alarmed about the situation of Jews in Germany, and Halder blithely tells him to just emigrate, another way to minimize and deny the growing evil. Halder tells his friend that if he's going to have any positive influence on the Nazi party, he has to do it from the inside.How easy it is for those who live in the relative comfort and safety of the U.S. to condemn Halder's behavior and rationalizations, and view the title as a bitterly ironic comment on a moral failure. But how many of us who think of ourselves as good would sacrifice ourselves to resistance, like Sophie Scholl does in a more famous movie about Nazi Germany? How many of us would hope things get better, hope we can do some good from the inside, rationalize why we shouldn't be a hero? I know I'm not cut out to be a hero. I can't help but relate to Halder and sympathize with the horror of his situation.The movie skips from 1938 to 1942. There are subtle hints that between 1938 and 1942 Halder goes from reluectant Nazi to a believer. Certainly he has become a more important figure in the SS during this time. I wish the movie filled us in on how much he changed, and how. Obviously that would make a longer movie, but it's now 95 minutes, so it could grow some without a problem. Regardless, Halder's concern for his friend remains a force for good, maybe the only one left. It's another feature of the story that I can realate to: Someone can ignore or even participate in amorphous evil, but a clear threat to an individual brings out courage.I think the screenplay provides the part of a lifetime for the lead actor. Viggo Mortensen plays Halder subtly, hiding his internal conflicts behind a faint, tight smile. It's the kind of acting I like. Halder's friend, Maurice, played by Jason Isaacs, is written as a voluble character, and Isaacs makes the most of it. Jodie Whittaker plays Halder's wife. I don't think the character is developed enough to challenge her much.The action and danger in the movie are intense. Not in the sense of car crashes and gunfights, but in the danger of Halder's situation and the terrible choices he has to make. What makes this movie totally transcend an action movie is the intensity of the moral issues. How does one make moral choices when trapped in a totally immoral system? How much courage is demanded of a person to be "good"? These questions, and the horror of Halder's situation, are wrenching and gripping. This is searing, chilling, intense storytelling at its best.I've watched several indie movies on Prime this year. "Good" is the one I think about the most, several months after watching it.

I am writing this review as our Country is literally plagued by a virus we don't yet understand, and now I'm left trying to make sense of this movie. Its called "Good." We are introduced to a man, Halder (Viggo Mortenson), who seems timid and caught up in his own academia - almost absent-minded, thoughtful and good looking, with a wife, children and mother with dementia. Germany was transforming into something everyone recognized as becoming more militaristic, more fascist, however not yet having an affect on the locals as far as restrictions or edicts - to some it was exciting. Yet there was resistance brewing -- the resistance from the Jews in the news and in certain locations but not everywhere. This was concerning to Halder who gave it passing thoughts, but his home life was chaotic, his wife flighty, his mother almost mad and his children helpful but left to their own devices, and he seemed to be overwhelmed by it. It was a home without structure....unlike his university life as a professor of literature. His breakthrough novel was one of fiction about "compassionate euthanasia." This brought him to the attention of the Nazi leadership. They thought they found in him an intellectual who understood their bottom line. They wanted him to be their consultant in editing the humanity of the world as they knew it, so to speak. He was a reluctant participant entering into the Nazi party, coming from a free thinking, romantic system of ideals most academics have...however these new Nazi interests provided him with the necessary ego strokes to keep him interested..... those that he never received from his uninterested students, his fellow faculty members and his family who assumed he would always be there to care for them. All who know him believe this man, Halder, was a man of conscience,of morality, of duty....... and all seemed to be as it should be....but then in walks a blonde female student, who little by little peels away the life layers of the Professor. He leaves his wife, his children, moves his mother out of his wife's house to live by herself, and takes up with his admiring student, Anna, who has seduced her way fully into his life. He is further pulled more into his newly stroked ego by the Nazi party who praises his every move (including his wise sexual choice of a "rheinmaiden" wife Anna) giving him latitude to move freely and live a bit more lavishly than he did before as a professor. Its interesting to note, that the further he gets away from the life he lived as a University Professor, and given a high SS rank by the Nazi's that he still prefers to be called Professor. This movie's poignant moment is when his Jewish friend of 20 years (WW1 buddies), Maurice, asks Halder to help him get out of the Country because he fears something bad will happen to him, Mortenson's character balks and almost does it for him....but then backs off not revisiting it again. It isn't until Handel is having dinner with another SS officer that the Solution to the Question becomes the inevitable for Maurice. He then decides to help his friend get out...gets his ticket and tries to deliver it to him. He is not home - he leaves Maurice a note on his front door to just come to his house asap. And that evening, Halder tells his wife, Anna, that she will need to give this railway ticket to Maurice when he comes by tonight. She doesn't like it because he may be throwing away his career to save Maurices life. But she says yes. He leaves to go round up Jews in his neighborhood that night, but really using that opportunity to search buildings for Maurice. He doesn't find him. A few days later he finds out that his wife actually called the SS to have Maurice removed when he came to their home to find Halder as instructed by the note. Overwhelmed with guilt Halder goes to the concentration camp Maurice is assigned...only to find out they will never be able to locate him among the 30,000 people at the camp. Or even if he is still alive. He realizes that he should have helped Maurice years ago when he asked. Now too late. It ends there....with him just standing dumbfounded and overwhelmed in the chaos of the dazed Jews in stripped clothing, fainting or dying from lack of food, lack of sleep, being mistreated and the screams of the women and children in the background like the screams familiar to those on the rollercoaster of an amusement park. He betrayed everyone in the end...his 1st wife, his children, his mother, his best friend, so that he could be more....and he was only betrayed by the woman he thought he loved - did he now after what she did? Stuck in a party he never believed was right. Maybe it should have been called "Sellout" because there was nothing Good about this man in the end - he had no beliefs no values he betrayed his first wife, his kids, his mother, who loved him as he was and in the end he ended up with a spiteful wife and job in the Nazi party in the killing fields - a good nazi? Nah not even good at that.

This film is a creative attempt to demonstrate how so many "good" Germans were sucked into a narcotic-like dependence on the Nazi Party in pre-WWII Germany. The review immediately preceding this one misses the point of the film entirely. They say that the protagonist was a weakling and not the kind of person who would have been a member of the Nazi Party or the SS. In fact, he was exactly the kind of person who populated the ranks of the Nazi Party: Morally ambivalent weaklings and cowards with a chronic lack of self-esteem. Like most bullies and wolf packs, many members of the Nazi party only found their "strength" in numbers. Many where sadistic sociopaths while others were civil servants or academics wallowing in their mediocrity, depending on National Socialism, like a drug addict, to lift themselves above their shortcomings. Vigo Mortenson does an excellent job and the acting, with a few exceptions, is uniformly good. The one problem I have with this movie, that is really just a pet peeve of mine when it comes to movies about Nazi Germany, is that all the actors speak with an English accent, including Vigo Mortenson who doesn't have an English accent to begin with. But I also have a problem with movies, like the Oddessa File, where the actors speak in English, but with bad German accents. I prefer movies about this period that are done in German, with subtitles, but I know that's a lot to ask of filmmakers who want to have their film distributed.

This is the most powerful, thought provoking and moving pieces that I have viewed in a long while. It asks the question that so many of us have posed namely how could Nazi Germany ever have flourished - surely the vast majority of the German population was made up of thoughful,kind, people - all of whom could have been described as being, essentially, good?The main character, John Halder, is played by Viggo Mortenson. Halder is a decent sort, an academic whose mother is desperately ill. He takes her in to his home to care for her, putting himself, his wife and marriage under terrible pressure. To vent some of this pressure he writes a novel. In this novel a husband, faced with a sick wife who is beyond all medical help, assists her, out of compassion, to commit suicide. The novel, of limited interest at the time of publication, is seized upon by the Nazi Party as a fine instrument of propaganda to promote its own long term goal of genetic cleansing. Halder is coopted into assisting and in time even into joining the Nazi Party. He does so in the naif belief that he can keep Nazi ideology at arm's length and remain unpolluted by it, perhaps even helping to calm and modify Nazi policies.After all, he tells himself, he is doing nothing. Instead of this he ,in despite of himself ,is forced to extend and deepen the nature of his cooperation becoming an integral and essential part of the widening Nazi horror. One small extra step of cooperation is taken, time after time, with Halder, on every occaision telling himself that he is doing nothing.The film is well scripted and brilliantly staged and shot.The background music has been skillfully chosen and is well played,not drowning out the dialogue as in certain films. The supporting cast is replete with first rate actors -Jason Isaacs, Jodie Whittaker, Gemma Jones - all of whom play their parts to perfection. The mystery at the rotten heart of Nazi Germany may remain unanswered but the film does at least suggest a partial explanation to the question of how could all - indeed any of this- have happened- namely: in order for evil to succeed it is only necessary for one thing to occur and that is for good men to do nothing.

I bought this movie primarily because I am a big Viggo Mortensen fan, and the film delighted me and also surprised me in many ways.It is like watching a play rather than a movie, as so much of the content is in the dialogue and in the relationship between the character Viggo plays and his friend played by Jason Isaacs - who is absolutely excellent. It is chilling to see how someone who is intrinsically 'good' can be coerced and threatened, by a regime such as the rising National Socialist part in Germany, into taking actions which he cannot really justify or understand. It is a fascinating study of the struggle between a man's conscience and his fear for the safety of himself and his family.It made me think about what fear does to a person, and to a nation when they are in the grip of dictatorship, and how incredibly brave people can be when they do take a stand and often sacrifice their lives. It's beautifully acted, and paced but not for anyone who is looking for a war film or an action film.

Well acted, well written, beautifully shot and gives an interesting historical perspective. An interesting example of the dangers and consequences of naivety in our recent past, and goes a small way to understanding how such a tyrannical state was able to emerge in 1930's Germany, in that many Germans simply didn't comprehend what the Nazi Party were doing around them, and never believed they would go as far as they did.

Dvd arrived on time in perfect condition.Story of an ordinary man who is sucked into supporting and becoming a Nazi, a metaphore the entire country. Very convincing and shocking. Host of well known British actors, notably Jason Isaacs who also produced it. Viggo Mortensen is brilliant doing a British accent in the lead role.

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