Is the truth too much to handle sometimes? Are there circumstances in which it is better to tell a "noble lie" than to tell a hard truth? "The Debt" engages with that eternally diabolical question on a morally heavy tableau, a sort of alternate-history, post-Holocaust spy thriller set from the perspective of three Mossad agents. The story is told in two intercut timelines, featuring younger and older versions of the three agents. The emotional stakes, then, are pretty high.
In 1965 young Mossad agent Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain) arrives in East Berlin to meet with two other operatives. She and the brooding David (Sam Worthington) will pose as a married couple; the other agent is a more swaggering guy named Stefan (Martin Csokas). All of them take their directive, to capture the infamous Nazi doctor Dieter Vogel, known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau," very seriously. As covert agents of the Jewish state, the issue is of considerable national and personal importance. Rachel's mother died in the Holocaust, and can only assume that David and Stefan didn't go unscathed.
Posing as native Germans recently immigrated from Argentina, Rachel pretends to be pregnant to get into Vogel's postwar East Berlin gynecology clinic, where she is exposed to long, ominous examinations and faux-interrogations with the professional but reptilian former Nazi. "The Surgeon" is played by Jesper Christensen.
The primary plot drama of this narrative is less in the capture of Vogel (although that is pretty cool) but in the process of smuggling him back to Israel. The nasty Cold War setting is put to very suspenseful effect; perhaps the most thrilling scene involves a madcap attempt to cross the Berlin Wall. Between escape plots the three main characters hole up in a dreary East Berlin apartment, and these scenes, where the captors become mired in mutual suspicion and their Nazi captive taunts them by diagnosing the weaknesses of the Jewish race, are the most unnerving and fascinating of the movie. Rachel, David and Stefan take shifts watching and feeding the unruly Vogel; they all want to get out of East Berlin as soon as possible.
In this respect, the personal tension for the characters is largely rooted in their Jewish heritage, and the test that they ultimately face - which comes to a choice between honesty and national pride - is given significantly more weight with the Holocaust context. The Mossad captors only break down when Vogel says something like, "the Jewish deserved to be destroyed because they were too weak to kill" or some such nonsense. They are all children of the Holocaust - to be a citizen of Israel is much the same thing, at least within a generation of the post-World War II founding. And the scene-stealing Christensen, lecherous and cunning, is a wonderful representation of the potent evil and twisted logic of the Third Reich. This historical context gives the psychology of the decision at play gives this movie considerable moral weight. The real story here - about the conflict between honesty and decency - probably could have been told without this context, but it certainly makes the difficulty of the choice the three characters face much richer.
This Cold War spy thriller timeline, very interesting, is unfortunately intercut with another in which the surviving agents are played by Helen Mirren (Rachel), Tom Wilkinson (Stefan) and Ciaran Hinds (David). While it's a pleasure to see these three working together, this narrative doesn't work quite as well. This, in fact, supposed to be the really important part of the film - it opens in the modern-day timeline, and the larger throughline of the film is about the events of 1965 coming back to haunt the three living agents.
But things just aren't as tight or ambiguous in the modern-day thread. All three actors are phenomenal but the story becomes blunter and is structured more like a traditional thriller. The central argument, about truth, is resolved in such a way that sort of allows the characters to have their cake and eat it too. When it's the long-suffering Jewish people that receive this satisfaction, it's hard to complain, but it also undermines the significance of the choice itself. The climactic element was also very silly in the face of all the previous portent. The first thing I thought of was "Nazi zombies," and that didn't help things.
That "The Debt" doesn't stick the landing is a shame, because elements of the film are rock-solid. The performances are excellent, Chastain in particular; she's as compelling here as a novice spy than she was as the cold terrorist-hunter in "Zero Dark Thirty." The film is well-helmed, and it is asking provocative questions. But in this case, things don't add up to anything particularly insightful, and the film sadly retreats to something a little more conventional that it had aspired to be.
In 1965 young Mossad agent Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain) arrives in East Berlin to meet with two other operatives. She and the brooding David (Sam Worthington) will pose as a married couple; the other agent is a more swaggering guy named Stefan (Martin Csokas). All of them take their directive, to capture the infamous Nazi doctor Dieter Vogel, known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau," very seriously. As covert agents of the Jewish state, the issue is of considerable national and personal importance. Rachel's mother died in the Holocaust, and can only assume that David and Stefan didn't go unscathed.
Posing as native Germans recently immigrated from Argentina, Rachel pretends to be pregnant to get into Vogel's postwar East Berlin gynecology clinic, where she is exposed to long, ominous examinations and faux-interrogations with the professional but reptilian former Nazi. "The Surgeon" is played by Jesper Christensen.
The primary plot drama of this narrative is less in the capture of Vogel (although that is pretty cool) but in the process of smuggling him back to Israel. The nasty Cold War setting is put to very suspenseful effect; perhaps the most thrilling scene involves a madcap attempt to cross the Berlin Wall. Between escape plots the three main characters hole up in a dreary East Berlin apartment, and these scenes, where the captors become mired in mutual suspicion and their Nazi captive taunts them by diagnosing the weaknesses of the Jewish race, are the most unnerving and fascinating of the movie. Rachel, David and Stefan take shifts watching and feeding the unruly Vogel; they all want to get out of East Berlin as soon as possible.
In this respect, the personal tension for the characters is largely rooted in their Jewish heritage, and the test that they ultimately face - which comes to a choice between honesty and national pride - is given significantly more weight with the Holocaust context. The Mossad captors only break down when Vogel says something like, "the Jewish deserved to be destroyed because they were too weak to kill" or some such nonsense. They are all children of the Holocaust - to be a citizen of Israel is much the same thing, at least within a generation of the post-World War II founding. And the scene-stealing Christensen, lecherous and cunning, is a wonderful representation of the potent evil and twisted logic of the Third Reich. This historical context gives the psychology of the decision at play gives this movie considerable moral weight. The real story here - about the conflict between honesty and decency - probably could have been told without this context, but it certainly makes the difficulty of the choice the three characters face much richer.
This Cold War spy thriller timeline, very interesting, is unfortunately intercut with another in which the surviving agents are played by Helen Mirren (Rachel), Tom Wilkinson (Stefan) and Ciaran Hinds (David). While it's a pleasure to see these three working together, this narrative doesn't work quite as well. This, in fact, supposed to be the really important part of the film - it opens in the modern-day timeline, and the larger throughline of the film is about the events of 1965 coming back to haunt the three living agents.
But things just aren't as tight or ambiguous in the modern-day thread. All three actors are phenomenal but the story becomes blunter and is structured more like a traditional thriller. The central argument, about truth, is resolved in such a way that sort of allows the characters to have their cake and eat it too. When it's the long-suffering Jewish people that receive this satisfaction, it's hard to complain, but it also undermines the significance of the choice itself. The climactic element was also very silly in the face of all the previous portent. The first thing I thought of was "Nazi zombies," and that didn't help things.
That "The Debt" doesn't stick the landing is a shame, because elements of the film are rock-solid. The performances are excellent, Chastain in particular; she's as compelling here as a novice spy than she was as the cold terrorist-hunter in "Zero Dark Thirty." The film is well-helmed, and it is asking provocative questions. But in this case, things don't add up to anything particularly insightful, and the film sadly retreats to something a little more conventional that it had aspired to be.
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