Survival and greed mix in a war-torn Holland

| Tuesday January 15, 2008 00:00

Black Book is Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's testimony to courage and revenge in late 1944 and early 1945 in Den Haag in the Netherlands. It is the first film that he has made in Holland since Soldier of Orange (1979), a story of the heroic Dutch Resistance. Verhoeven, now 70, has been caught up in Hollywood and the production of movies like Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1991) and Showgirls (1995).

Black Book begins in October 1956 in Israel and the prologue and epilogue occur there. A Holy Tours bus visits the Kibbutz Stein and on it are Ronnie (Halina Reijn) and her Canadian husband (Skip Goeree). She finds Rachel Stein (Carice Van Houten) teaching school and they recognise each other from the past. Rachel's memory shaken - she walks to the Dead Sea, and there events from 12 years ago unfold.

It is 1944 and we find Rachel, a successful Jewish singer, in hiding in rural Netherlands in a farmhouse with a fundamentalist Dutch family. Then she is listening to her records at a pier on a zee when a bomber destroys her sanctuary. She must hide in a greenhouse with her rescuer from a sailboat, Skipper Willi (Herman Boerman). A Dutch resistance operator, Van Gein (Peter Blok), finds them and warns them that the Germans are coming. He then offers to help take them to a sanctuary to the south.

They agree, but Rachel must retrieve her savings from Notary Smaal (Dolf de Vries) who appears to be helping Jews in hiding in Holland to escape. Van Gein transports Rachel and others to an open decked steel float where they become sitting ducks to be mowed down when discovered by the Nazis led by Gnther Franken (Waldemar Kobus). The dead are looted and stripped of all the jewels and cash hidden on them. Someone has betrayed them. Rachel, who dove into the water, is the only one to survive.

She is assisted by Dutch resistance members who hide her in a coffin, presumed dead if opened, to their headquarters. There Rachel joins the anti-Nazi movement led by Gerben Kuipers (Derek de Lint). She takes her new name, Ellis de Vries, and becomes a modern Mata Hara.

Events lead her into the SD or Gestapo headquarters in Den Haag where Rachel is to spy on them, plant a hidden microphone and if necessary bed the commandant, Ludwig Mntze (Sebastian Koch of 'Lives of Others').
One of the few remaining Dutch women working for the Gestapo is Ronnie, a fun loving and out for herself opportunist, a master in self-preservation.

Ronnie and Ellis have a chance to party with the Nazis and Rachel to even sing again. My, can she belt out that old song about 'Lola'. Gnther Franken plays the piano and leads the singing, much to Ellis's horror when she recognises him as the murderer of all her family when they were trying to escape on the float. 

A resistance medical doctor, Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), befriends Rachel, but he has his own hidden agenda behind his support of her. The upright General Kutner (Christian Berkel) is second in command. He believes his role is to maintain rules and protocol. Tension among the resistance movement mounts when the Nazi's capture Tim Kuipers (Ronald Armbrust), Gerben Kuipers' son.

Gerben wants his son back alive at any cost. This leads to a disastrous operation to free Tim and others from the vaults beneath the headquarters using a map and plans suggested by Notary Smaal. Events now occur that embody a sequence of surprises. When the Allied forces (Canadian and Briton) arrive, Rachel/Ellis says, when she finds that everyone is out to eliminate her, 'I never thought I'd be afraid to be liberated'.

This is a film that explores in depth the ambience and shadings of its many characters. Nothing is 'black and white' (or in the terms used in 1945, the Germans were bad and the Dutch were good). Because of this it has had a surprising reception in Holland and elsewhere in Europe. Verhoeven says he wanted to make a European film, not an American one again.

He achieves this objective admirably. The person who carries this film and helps to make it so powerful is Carice Van Houten, a young Dutch actress of 29 who is fluent in German, English, French and Dutch.. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk