The Statement
review by Nicholas Schager,
12 December 2003
The
Statement is the kind of inert, serious-minded Holocaust-themed
film that makes you pine for campy Nazi-hunting adventures like the
Laurence Olivier-Gregory Peck Hitler cloning saga The
Boys from Brazil. This earnest historical suspense yarn from
director Norman Jewison (Fiddler
on the Roof, The Hurricane)
concerns a former Vichy government murderer sought by both a dogged
French judge and the ex-Vichy bigwigs who want their secret
Nazi-sympathizing pasts concealed. The
Statement (based on the novel by Brian Moore) wants to be both a
thriller and a revelatory historical exposé, but on both counts it
falls flat. Stern and stolid, Jewison’s film can’t muster an
ounce of edge-of-your-seat tension, and, even worse, its
condemnation of the Vichy government amounts to little more than an
inadequate slap on the wrist.
Pierre Brossard (Michael Caine)
killed seven Jews in 1944 as a willing member of the Vichy
government’s military police. Although pardoned for his crimes
years later, Brossard is forced back into hiding by a pesky new
Crimes Against Humanity law that has made him both fresh bait for
prosecutors interested in nabbing France’s remaining Vichy-era
criminals, and a dangerous nuisance to those in government who would
prefer Brossard not spill his guts about the current
administration’s ties to the Vichy regime. As portrayed by Caine,
Brossard is a devout religious man hiding, like a simpering coward,
in abbeys across the country for fear that his capture will surely
mean spending his final days locked behind bars. Yet when confronted
with life-and-death decisions, the trembling, agitated Brossard
undergoes a startling transformation – his eyes turn cold, his
lips contort into a snarl, and his movements become swift and
deadly. He’s like a wounded dog who, when backed into a corner,
bares some mighty impressive fangs.
Judge Annemarie Livi (Tilda
Swinton) and her military sidekick Colonel Roux (Jeremy Northam) are
hot on Brossard’s trail, suspecting the fugitive is being
sheltered by both the Catholic Church and the government.
Unfortunately, their tenacious, Veronica Guerin-like investigation
– characterized by demanding immediate answers with rude bluntness
– soon becomes a wearisome expository device constructed to give
us some filler about Brossard’s powerful friends. As they race to
find Brossard, Swinton and Northam exchange limp banter with erudite
snappiness in English and without a French accent (thus giving the
film a peculiarly British feel), and they eventually deduce the
conspiracy that’s keeping Brossard temporarily safe with
unbelievable ease. Charlotte Rampling fares better as Brossard’s
scorned wife, instilling the film with some passion and vitriol
during a scene in which she is reunited with her husband-on-the-run.
Yet as befitting a film with jumbled priorities, Rampling disappears
almost as soon as she appears, thus turning a potentially
fascinating detour into just another distracting narrative
affectation.
Meanwhile, a covert organization
purporting to be friends and family members of Brossard’s Jewish
victims have hired assassins to silence the former Vichy lackey.
Jewison, however, reveals this group’s true colors fairly early on
by showing us their ringleader perched, with regal Gallic
narcissism, at an imposing desk with the French flag hanging in the
background. Rather than saying something interesting about the ways
in which ordinary citizens helped conspire with the Vichy government
to aid and abet Jewish persecution, the film merely offers us an old
white guy (in this case John Neville) as the monstrous symbol of
French collaboration. The result is a shameful cop-out in which the
Vichy government – presented as a few evil, power hungry rich men
– is reduced into an easily quantifiable, and thus easily
rectified, mistake that can be effortlessly digested by mass
audiences. Ironically, such simplification is what ultimately makes The Statement difficult to stomach.
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Directed
by:
Norman Jewison
Starring:
Michael Caine
Tilda Swinton
Charlotte Rampling
Alan Bates
Jeremy Northam
Ciarán Hinds
John Neville
Matt Craven
Edward Petherbridge
Written
by:
Ronald Harwood
Rated:
R - Restricted.
Under 17 requires
parent or adult
guardian.
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