Good (2008)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Vicente Amorim

Writers:

C.P. Taylor (play)
John Wrathall (screenplay)

Release Date:

11 December 2008 (Hungary)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Anything that makes people happy can't be bad, can it?

Plot:

The rise of national socialism in Germany should not be regarded as a conspiracy of madmen. Millions of "good" people found themselves in a society spiralling into terrible chaos. A film about then, which illuminates the terrors of now.

Plot Keywords:

Dementia | Novel | Professor | Germany | Neurotic

Cast

Viggo Mortensen	...	John Halder
Jason Isaacs	...	Maurice
Jodie Whittaker	...	Anne
Steven Mackintosh	...	Freddie
Mark Strong	...	Bouhler
Gemma Jones	...	Mother
Anastasia Hille	...	Helen
Ruth Gemmell	...	Elizabeth
Ralph Riach	...	Brunau
Steven Elder	...	Eichmann
Kevin Doyle	...	Commandant
David de Keyser	...	Mandelstam
Guy Henry	...	Doctor
Adrian Schiller	...	Goebbels
Rick Warden	...	Brownshirt

Runtime:

96 min

Country:

UK | Germany

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX

Certification:

Australia:M | Brazil:12 | Ireland:15A | UK:15 | Netherlands:12

Filming Locations:

Budapest, Hungary

Company:

Good Films

Trivia:

Romola Garai was cast as the female lead but backed out to take some time off movies to concentrate on University. Jodie Whittaker replaced her.

Goofs:

Errors in geography: In the scene, when Halder takes a walk with his ex-wife in the cemetery, which is supposed to be in Berlin, Germany, Hungarian names are clearly visible on the gravestones.

The moral question...

Gemma Jones ran away with this film as the TB-ridden gaga mother of our protagonist Halder (Viggo Mortensen); She is the touchstone poster-child for the T4 programme of the late '30s in the Third Reich. I've never seen acting that captured such pathos and fear in the ageing process before this coup de theatre. She is an annoying burr under the dried leather saddle of a disintegrating marriage of her academic and sometime-novelist son and unbalanced pianist daughter-in-law; her whining for attention had me grinding my molars in the first ten seconds of her appearance. One could see why good men really have to do nothing for evil to prevail; just listen to this harridan mother for 5 minutes and 'live' the fantasy of murder enter your psyche.

Otherwise, you've seen and heard this Holocaust morality tale a hundred times before and it serves merely as a ho-hum reminder not to leave the cat out all night in the winter...