Black Book (film)


Black Book is a 2006 war drama thriller film co-written and directed by Paul Verhoeven. The film, credited as based on several true events and characters, stars Carice van Houten as a young Jewish woman in the Netherlands who becomes a spy for the resistance during World War II after tragedy befalls her in an encounter with the Nazis. The cast also features Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman and Halina Reijn.
A co-production of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the UK, it is the first film that Verhoeven made in his native Netherlands since The Fourth Man. With a $21 million production budget, Black Book was the most expensive Dutch film ever made.
Black Book had its world premiere on 1 September 2006 at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion. Upon its wide release in the Netherlands on 14 September, Black Book was well-received by film critics, who especially praised the performance of Van Houten. It went to gross $27 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing Dutch film of 2006. At the Netherlands Film Festival, Black Book won three Golden Calf awards, including Best Feature Film. It was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and was the Dutch submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not nominated. In 2008, the Dutch public voted it the best Dutch film ever.

Plot

In 1944, Dutch Jewish singer Rachel Stein is hiding in the occupied Netherlands. When the farmhouse where she had been hiding is destroyed by an Allied bomber, she goes to see a lawyer named Smaal who had been helping her family. He arranges for her to escape to the liberated southern part of the country. Aided by a man named Van Gein, Rachel is reunited with her family and boards a boat that is to take them and other refugees to the south. They are ambushed by the German SS who kill them and rob valuables from the bodies. Rachel alone survives but does not manage to escape from the occupied territory.
Using a non-Jewish alias, Ellis de Vries, Rachel becomes involved with a resistance group in The Hague, under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers and working closely with a doctor, Hans Akkermans. Smaal is in touch with this Resistance cell. When Kuipers's son and other members of the Resistance are captured, Ellis agrees to help by seducing local SD commander Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze. During a party at SD headquarters, Ellis recognises Obersturmführer Günther Franken, Müntze's brutal deputy, as the officer who had overseen the massacre on the boat. She obtains a job at the SD headquarters while falling in love with Müntze who, in contrast to Franken, is not abusive or sadistic. He realises that she is a Jew but does not care.
Thanks to a hidden microphone that Ellis plants in Franken's office, the Resistance realises that Van Gein is the traitor who betrayed Rachel, her family, and the other Jews. Against Kuipers's orders, Akkermans decides to abduct Van Gein to expose him. Their attempt goes wrong, and Van Gein is killed. Franken responds by planning to kill 40 hostages, including most of the plotters but Müntze, who realises the war is lost and has been negotiating with the Resistance, countermands the order.
Müntze forces Ellis to tell him her story. On her evidence, he confronts Franken with a superior officer, Obergruppenführer Käutner, who orders Franken to open his safe, expecting to find the valuables stolen from the Jews he had killed, this being a capital offense. The safe contains no valuables and Franken then tells Käutner that Müntze has been negotiating with the resistance for a truce. Müntze is imprisoned and condemned to death. The resistance plot to rescue their imprisoned members; Ellis agrees to cooperate only on the condition that they also free Müntze. The plan is betrayed and the rescuers find the prisoners' cells filled with German troops. Only Akkermans and one other man manage to flee.
Ellis is arrested and taken to Franken's office. He knows about her and the microphone and, knowing that the resistance members are listening, he stages a confrontation to make them believe that Ellis is the collaborator responsible for the failure of the rescue. Kuipers and his companions swear to make her pay for her treason. Ronnie, a Dutch woman working at the SD headquarters to whom Ellis had confided her role in the resistance, helps her and Müntze escape.
When the country is liberated by the Allies, Franken attempts to escape by boat but is killed by Akkermans, who takes the Jewish loot. Suspecting Smaal is the traitor, Müntze and Ellis return to confront him. Smaal states that the identity of the traitor is evidenced by his 'black book', in which he had detailed all his dealings with Jews. He refuses to discuss it further, wanting to go to the Canadian authorities. When they are about to leave, Smaal and his wife are killed by an unknown assailant. Müntze chases him into the street, only to be recognised by the Dutch crowd and arrested by soldiers from the Canadian Army. The Dutch also recognise Ellis and arrest her as a collaborator but not before she grabs the black book.
Müntze is brought before the Canadian officers and finds that Käutner is helping to keep order among the defeated German forces. Käutner convinces a Canadian colonel that under military law, the defeated German military retains the right to punish its own soldiers. Due to the German death warrant, Müntze is executed by a firing squad.
Ellis is imprisoned with accused collaborators, humiliated and tortured by the violently anti-Nazi volunteer jailers but rescued by Akkermans, who is now a colonel in the Dutch Army. Akkermans brings her to his medical office and says that he killed Franken when the Nazi tried to escape. He shows her the valuables stolen from Jewish victims. When informed about Müntze's fate, Ellis goes into shock and Akkermans administers a tranquilliser which is in fact an overdose of insulin. Ellis, feeling dizzy, sees the bottle of insulin and survives by quickly eating a bar of chocolate. She realises then that Akkermans is the traitor who had collaborated with Franken and had killed the Smaals. While Akkermans is distracted, waving to a crowd that cheers him, she jumps from the balcony into the crowd below and runs away. He tries to follow but is blocked by the crowd.
Ellis proves her innocence to Canadian military intelligence and the former Resistance leader Gerben Kuipers through Smaal's black book, which lists how many Jews had been taken to Akkermans for medical help just prior to their murder. Ellis and Kuipers intercept the fleeing Akkermans, hiding in a coffin in a hearse with the stolen money, gold, and jewels. They beat the driver, and while Kuipers drives the hearse, Ellis screws down the coffin's secret air vents. They drive to Hollands Diep where the original SS trap had been sprung and wait until Akkermans suffocates. Ellis and Kuipers wonder what to do with the stolen money and jewels.
The scene changes to Israel in 1956, reprising the opening scenes and shows Rachel meeting her husband and their two children, walking back into Kibbutz Stein, with a sign at the gate announcing that it was funded with recovered money from Jews killed during the war. In the final scene, the tranquillity of Rachel and her family is interrupted by explosions heard in the distance; the siren announces an air attack and Israeli soldiers position themselves at the front of the kibbutz.

Cast

  • Carice van Houten as Rachel Stein, alias Ellis de Vries
  • Sebastian Koch as Ludwig Müntze
  • Thom Hoffman as Hans Akkermans
  • Halina Reijn as Ronnie
  • Waldemar Kobus as Günther Franken
  • Derek de Lint as Gerben Kuipers
  • Christian Berkel as General Käutner, superior of Günther Franken and Ludwig Müntze in the Sicherheitsdienst
  • Dolf de Vries as Mr. Smaal, attorney who keeps the black book
  • Peter Blok as Mr. Van Gein, policeman who betrays those trying to leave occupied territory
  • Michiel Huisman as Rob, sailor who helps Rachel Stein
  • Ronald Armbrust as Tim Kuipers, son of Gerben Kuipers, a communist, and a member of the resistance group
  • Frank Lammers as Kees, member of the resistance group
  • Matthias Schoenaerts as Joop, member of the resistance group
  • Xander Straat as Maarten, member of the resistance group
  • Johnny de Mol as Theodore, member of the resistance group

    Production

Writing

After 20 years of filmmaking in the United States, Verhoeven returned to his homeland, the Netherlands, for the making of Black Book. The story was written by Verhoeven and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman, with whom he made successful films such as Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange. The two men had been working on the script for 15 years, but they solved their story problems in the early 2000s by changing the main character from male to female. According to Verhoeven, Black Book was born out of elements that did not fit in any of his earlier movies, and it can be seen as a supplement to his earlier film about World War II Soldier of Orange.
Verhoeven has emphasised that the story does not show an obvious moral contrast between characters, for a theme of moral relativism:

Black Book is not a true story, unlike Soldier of Orange, but Verhoeven states that many of the events are true. As in the film, the German headquarters were in the Hague. In 1944 many Jews that tried to cross to liberated parts of the southern Netherlands were entrapped by Dutch policemen. As in the film, crossing attempts took place in the Biesbosch. Events are related to the life of Verhoeven, who was born in 1938 and grew up in the Hague during the Second World War. The execution of Müntze by German firing squad after the war had ended echoes the notorious May 1945 German deserter execution incident.