Synopsis
In October 1958, a Christian group touring Israel stop at a kibbutz on the Dead Sea. Ronnie (Halina Reijn) recognizes the singing voice of a teacher, a girl she knew as “Ellis”(Carice van Houten) during the war. The encounter takes Ellis – whose real name is Rachel – back to Holland of September 1944. Hidden from the Nazis by a farmer outside of The Hague, Rachel loses her safehouse when a German bomber unloads its ordinance on the farm.

A Dutch cop who works with the Resistance offers Rachel safe passage to Belgium. She reunites with her family on the voyage, but a German patrol intercepts them and shoots everyone on board. Rachel survives again, and is smuggled to safety by posing as a corpse in a hearse. She goes to work at a produce factory owned by a member of the Dutch resistance. Eventually, she’s offered a different type of work, smuggling arms for the resistance.

Evading security on a train, she meets Müntze (Sebastian Koch), a stamp collector who also heads the Gestapo. Müntze is attracted to Rachel, and she agrees to seduce him, incurring the jealousy of her resistance fighter lover (Thom Hoffman). Rachel discovers a plot between the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators – recorded in a black book – to murder and rob Jewish refugees. This forces her to choose loyalty to her country first, or her faith.

Production history 
While researching their 1977 film Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange), director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman found material on the Dutch resistance they were fascinated by, but couldn’t work into their script. Verhoeven ultimately left for Hollywood to direct RoboCop, Basic Instinct and Showgirls, among others.

After the failure of Hollow Man, Verhoeven wanted to get back to the realism of his political thrillers in Holland. The problem with the Dutch resistance project was that Soeteman had chosen to center his script on a young sailor, quickly killing off the Jewish girl he saves, Rachel. By reversing their fates and focusing the narrative on Rachel, Verhoeven & Soeteman finished a script for Zwartboek (Black Book) in 2001.

The collaborators had also finished an adaptation of Boris Akunin’s 2004 murder mystery novel The Winter Queen, but were unable to secure financing for it. An array of Dutch, German, English and Belgian financiers were more interested in the moral ambiguity of Zwartboek. With a budget of €17 million – almost $25 million, the highest for a Dutch language film ever – a 42 day shoot commenced in August 2005.

Released in The Netherlands in September 2006 and the U.S. in April 2007, critics were almost unanimous with praise. Everyone from The L.A. Times to The Village Voice to The Hollywood Reporter and Film Threat gave Black Book high marks. Maybe because I was expecting the audacious, morally ambiguous adult thriller the critics were raving lunatic about – as opposed to what the movie actually is – I sent this DVD back extremely disappointed.

Opinion 
While some directors are artists, and others do paint-by-numbers, Paul Verhoeven does paint-by-sledgehammer. His bat shit movies have always entertained me – particularly Starship Troopers, one of the greatest comedies of all time – but Black Book is neither fish nor fowl. It doesn’t have the intelligence or sophistication to be a World War II thriller for adults, and it doesn’t feature anywhere near enough gratuitous sex or violence for the kids. It’s just median grade trash.

29-year-old Carice van Houten gives a gutsy, career making performance as the morally conflicted Mata Hari, but emotionally, I could have cared less about the story. This material may be facts based, but piling it all into one character was just too silly a conceit for me. At the same time, Verhoeven is restrained when it comes to any sex or gore. The film features barely any CGI, but doesn’t build tension or really bother cutting beneath surface titillation either.

Eric D. Snider writes, “There are many things I like about the film – it’s certainly the most accomplished and mature work that Verhoeven has done, and the lead performance is remarkably brave – but when all is said and done, it’s a cheap, gratuitous film about sex and the Holocaust. I found myself shaking my head and chuckling a lot.”

“Paul Verhoeven tries to go respectable with the WWII drama Black Book, and the question that persists is: Who wants a respectable Paul Verhoeven,?” writes Nick Schager at Lessons of Darkness. He gives the film a C+.

Tom Huddleston at Not Coming Soon To A Theater Near You writes, “Plot takes precedence over character here, and a few of the later twists are a mite unconvincing, as is the central romance between Rachel and Müntze. But this is pure narrative cinema, rattling along at a breakneck pace, the flaws unnoticed until after the credits roll.”

© Joe Valdez