Valkyrie

The mainstream war film is a difficult thing to get right. No matter how you make it, it’s going to have problems; mainly these problems derive from upsetting your audience. War films are particularly susceptible to criticism, whether this is from those people who want more explosions and special effects, or from historians who consider the uniforms to be inaccurate and their only criticism is that the buttons or the decorative badges on the officers uniforms are incorrect or placed on the wrong side or the character actually has lieutenant badges on instead of a colonel’s badges.

Personally, I feel that neither of these things particularly matter, but the film should be challenging and slightly slow-burning; while at the same time it should consider the psychological and political notions of what the war means to those directly affected by and around the actions that take place. War is devastating. War is a horrific ordeal whereby people are killed for the sake of something that they don’t entirely understand. War is confusing. Very few war films have this perspective and Valkyrie not is among the elite few. This is not to say that Valkyrie ignores all the basic principles and opinions of a mainstream war film. Sure, it says that war is bad and Nazism was crumbling beneath its own feet. Although, for the mainstream audience member, this has not been said enough and will never become tiresome. I don’t mean to cause any friction between myself and the average audience member, by this, but rather that I feel the mainstream war film itself will never grow old and it will never cease its already bourgeois perspective on the nature of war.

By its very principles, genre has to develop. Steve Neale taught us that. The only problem with Hollywood and their view on genre is that it doesn’t have to, as long as it’s bringing home eight or nine figure profit margin then who really cares. However, the point is that Neale is right and genre does have to develop, or you run the risk of it becoming stagnant and boring. Valkyrie is one that hasn’t done so and essentially it’s quite a run-of-the-mill film. However (and without contradicting myself) this is not my general opinion of the film. There are sections that are interesting and well made, there are sections that are thought provoking and there are sections that make it stand out from other films like it.

I did enjoy the way it had been constructed, the lighting and balance of light and dark was superb and the way in which the camera reacted to it, was on a par with Scorcese or De Palma on a good day. The camera movements were fluid and worked with a sense or eeriness, giving the film a genuine tension and stylistic edge, without becoming too flamboyant. I’ve always admired this about Bryan Singer and I genuinely believe that he is one of the most accomplished directors working in Hollywood today. Although you may not agree with that opinion, you have to admit that when he’s in the driving seat, he certainly knows what he’s doing. Certainly the most enjoyable part of the film, and certainly the most well directed scene of the film, was the attempted assassination scene. This scene carried itself with such grace, poise and genuine tension, that D.W. Griffith and Alfred Hitchcock would have been envious.

My only major criticism of the film was that it was in the English language. I can’t help pontificating myself by saying that if you’re going to make a film about Germans, with a German perspective of a German army, which shows the downfall of a German political party, then make the film in the German language. What confused me more was that the film’s opening voice-over began in German and mid-sentence flowed straight into English. I have such admiration and such respect for actors and actresses that learn dialogue in another language (I know they’re actors and that’s part of their job) but to learn a language with difficult pronunciation, such as German, is indisputably something that deserves applause.

The fact remains though, that this is a mainstream American film, and if you subtitle a film and advertise it as so, then people will not go and sit and “read” a film for two hours. Although Valkyrie is a genuine attempt to push a boundary and to make a mark, it still has too many problems with it. As soon as filmmakers lean to try and cut the ties to Hollywood and grow to not care what people think, then perhaps the genre and the cinema itself can grow.