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Good

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Good (2008)

December. 31,2008
|
6.1
|
R
| Drama
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When John Halder's latest novel is enlisted by powerful political figures in the Nazi party to push their agenda, his career and social standing instantly advance. But after learning of the Reich's horrific plans for the future and the devastating effects they will have on people close to him, John must decide whether or not to take a stand and risk losing everything.

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Jeanskynebu
2008/12/31

the audience applauded

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Hadrina
2009/01/01

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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Maleeha Vincent
2009/01/02

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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Isbel
2009/01/03

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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Prismark10
2009/01/04

John Halder (Viggo Mortensen) shields himself in academia from the life going on outside in Nazi Germany. His good friend Maurice (Jason Isaacs) is a Jewish psychiatrist. Both fought together in world war one.John is married with children, his mother has dementia. Yet John has an affair with young student who flatters him, he leaves his wife for her. When the Nazi's express an interest in a novel he once wrote advocating euthanasia he finds himself elevated in subtle ways. Before long John is donning a Nazi uniform, he is promoted while at the same time he seeks help for Maurice to flee Germany.Good is an adaptation of a stage play by C P Snow. It looks at the idea how ordinary people became drawn to Nazi ideology even just by standing on the sidelines and doing nothing. The film though is rather dreary and stodgy. It lacks heart.

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rps-2
2009/01/05

Perhaps a little "artsy-dartsy", yes. But this is still a very compelling film that shows the many shades of grey that existed between the black and the white of most war movies. It's the story of a typical German --- a young professor --- who gets swept up in events as he goes along to get along. He sees Nazism as a temporary aberration and even believes he can have a positive influence on it but gets swept up in the movement without really believing in it. Life could be good in Germany before the war if you were not Jewish and were a Nazi or at least appeared to be one. Thus are Professor John Holden and his Jewish friend and fellow world war veteran Maurice caught in the vortex. There are a few extraneous lines in the plot: Holden's senile mother, his failed marriage and the reason for it. They don't seem to serve any purpose other than to add some flesh to a fairly skinny plot. But nevertheless it is both a powerful, well performed drama and a very different glimpse into the everyday life of Nazi Germany before the war.

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sol1218
2009/01/06

***SPOILERS*** Excellent if a bit talky movie about life in pre WWII Nazi Germany with German Literature professor John Halder, Viggo Mortensen, being swept up with the violence of the Nazi movement in order to improve his position in life and at the same time losing his humanity for his fellow human beings in the process. Called over to the German Chancellory for an interview on his book about euthanasia or mercy killing John is both shocked and impressed to find out that the Fuhrer Adolph Hitler himself was greatly moved by it and wants him to become a high ranking official in the Nazi Party which in fact John isn't a member of.As John is moving up in the world or Nazi Germany his personal life is quickly falling apart. John start's to have an affair with one of his students Anna, Jodie Whittaker, that ends up destroying his marriage. There's also John's best friend psychologist and WWI army buddy Maurice Gluckstein, Jason Isaacs, who just happens to be Jewish. It's John refusing to distance himself from Maurice that causes him all kinds of problems with his Nazi superiors. As for John's mom, Gemma Jones, her losing her mind and becoming suicidal is the reason that he got interested in the subject of mercy killing in the first place! That in order to put her out of her misery, with the help of the German or Nazi Government, before she ends up doing it herself!It's when minor German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath was gunned down by deported, by the Nazis, German Jew Hershel Grynszpan in Paris that John finally came to his senses in what was to become known as the notorious "Kristallnach" or "Night of Broken Glass". That's when in revenge to Vom Rath's murder tens of thousands of German hooligans with the German police looking the other way went on a 24 hour rampage ending up killing some 100 Jews in both Germany & Austria. What was so ironic about all this is that Vom Rath was in fact at the time being investigated by the Nazi Gestapo for his anti Nazi feelings among which was their brutal treatment of the Jews in Germany! ***SPOILERS*** With Maurice arrested and sent, with 30,000 other German Jews, to the nearest concentration camp John was now determined to track him down and , if he's still alive, save his friend's life. That all ends in disaster some four years later when John finds Maurice near death with his mind completely gone as he and hundreds of other concentration camp inmates are being rounded up and sent to their deaths because their no longer any use to the Nazi war effort. Ironically the concentration camp commander in charge of the round up as mass killing was non other then the notorious Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann played by Steven Elder.The film showed how difficult it was for an average German to remained a normal human being in Nazi Germany without being effected with its raciest and political ideology. A situation which even turned a good kind and decent man like John Halder into a robot like following orders from his superiors by the books zombie!

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Xabier Jense
2009/01/07

I was quite disappointed by the role played by Viggo Mortensen; he could not make me believe that he was resisting anyhow the fate which was getting hold on him. Of course I have no experience with such problems as being intellectually and morally paralyzed by the political repression of societies like the Third Reich, but at least I expected an actor as Mortensen -who played an thrilling role in A History of Violence- to be able to show something more of a battle a conscience has to fight with the reality of his time like Brandauer demonstrated in Mephisto. But of course it's possible that his role was to be plain obedient and thus weak like many Germans must have been, because discipline was not only moral obligation to the state but also a political one to the nation. Only, even than he didn't convince me.

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