Movie Review: Valkyrie

For the sake of this review, I can ignore the fact that Tom Cruise doesn’t sound the slightest bit German, and focus on the rooms. The politicians, generals and assorted ranking Germans who spent “Valkyrie” plotting the assassination of Adolf Hitler and the overthrow of the SS speak more than they act. They gather in nice places with nice rooms and discuss the details of their plans. The rooms are complete with nice curtains, chandeliers, mahogany tables, and other fine décor. In most movies about the Nazis, there are three planes of action. One is the fancy rooms in which the upper echelons of the Nazi order meet while planning murder, the second is the streets of German cities or the concentration camps where hopeless Jews are evicted, tortured and killed, and the third is sometimes the frontlines of World War II. “Valkyrie” jettisons the latter two planes entirely, and transforms the first. The rebels, the good guys, don’t mean in dusty, hidden tunnels or in remote locations. Their plans are formed in the same types of rooms where atrocities were also planned out, right in the middle of Nazi power bases.

I suspect “Valkyrie” will draw it’s share of criticism. At first glance, the film seems to sidestep the fact that, at the time, Nazis were killing Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, political dissenters and others in record numbers. The concentration camps are never even mentioned, and we see only one character-establishing battle scene. The film isn’t about those elements of the story. It is about important people within the German army who realized that Hitler was destroying Germany, and resolved to stop that for the sake of their country.

Their leader is Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise), who is severely wounded in Africa. He returns home lacking his right hand, fingers from his left, and one eye. In the opening minutes, Cruise does indeed seem an ill fit for the part; once he returns to Germany, his mutilation makes him more believable. His appearance is one we would normally find easily attributable to a villain, and this makes his role as a hero of the story that much more poignant.
Von Stauffenberg is far from alone: a lot of people would like to see Hitler dead. Major-General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) makes a failed attempt to blow up his Furher’s plane, and is later transferred to the front, leaving von Stauffenberg in control of the conspiracy. General Freidrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy) believes in the cause, but is often hesitant to act on the plans; he always demands proof that things are going correctly, although you’d think a General would know that nothing ever goes the way you plan it. Also among the conspirators are Dr. Carl Goerdeler (Kevin McNally), a politician intended to govern in the new regime. Terence Stamp sees a turn as Ludwig Beck, a retired general whose loyalties were never to anything but Germany.

The plan, on its face, is simple: Stauffenberg gets Hitler (played by David Bamber) to sign off on changes to the contingency plan known as Valkyrie. The plan was created to protect Hitler in Berlin in case the allies got that far, but the rewritten plan will make it easier for the plotters to take over Berlin, in the guise of stopping the coup. Stauffenberg visits Hitler at his Bavarian residence, Berghof. Here, Hitler and his top advisorsare set off in a circle at one end of a huge room; sunlight streams through a large window, but the Nazis are largely in shadow. Hitler himself is a small presence, seeming more like a Grandfather in the early stages of arthritis than the powerful speaker seen in German newsreels of the time. After the changes are approved, Stauffenberg will plant a bomb at a strategy meeting, killing Hitler and ushering in the important part of the plan.

Those who know this story (I was one) not only already know the plotters fail, but know some of the details behind that failure. The plan is to get both Himmler and Hitler; when Himmler does not show up to the meeting that is initially targeted, approval isn’t given, and after some tense worrying Stauffenberg escapes with the explosive. At the second attempt, on July 20, 1944, things go wrong: the meeting is moved to an outdoor hut where the bomb will not have the same effect, and it is placed behind the leg of a table opposite Hitler. In real life, the cushioning of that leg saved Hitler’s life; Stauffenberg, however, believes he is dead, and proceeds with his coup in Berlin.

That we know how this all has to end doesn’t diminish the suspense in the slightest. Cruise never establishes himself as Stauffenberg perfectly, but this might be partially due to Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander’s script. His motivations for doing these things are never made entirely clear; the film doesn’t let us into Stauffenberg’s soul. Only one revealing moment is truly given him: he wants the world to know that not all Germans were like Hitler. He refuses to have his family name drug through blood for a party he does not support. Pride? Perhaps.

However, the conspiracy itself is gripping; the plotters actually begin their takeover of Berlin, complete with arrests, believing Hitler to be dead. Since much of the film is told with words and paperwork, the action is in the plans and heads of the people at the coup’s center; I suspect I could count the number of gunshots in the film in my head.
As a thriller, it fares well and actually owes much to our foreknowledge of the outcome. Bryan Singer, whose films I don’t always enjoy, directs the action in such a way that we find ourselves focused on details. Only here, the details we focused on could have changed history. What if they’d kept the meeting that day in the bunker at Wolf’s Lair? What if the bomb hadn’t been placed so far from Hitler? Or what if Stauffenberg has been allowed to go through with it all at the first meeting? What if General Friedrich Fromm (Tom Wilkinson) head of the Reserve Army, had been fully complicit in the scheme, instead of sitting on the sidelines (it didn’t do him much good; he was also executed)?
These what ifs are at the heart of the film. But another element in the film’s success is the rebels themselves. We have a certain preconceived notion of the rebel character; dirty clothes, bumps and bruises, hiding in the woods. The upcoming “Defiance” will present the resistance to the Nazis from that more archetypal viewpoint. The conspirators in “Valkyrie” wear suits, sign papers and still have homes. Does the fact that they also cared about escaping with their lives make them any less heroic? Perhaps if von Stauffenberg had been willing to sacrifice himself to kill Hitler, might things have then been different? Of course, putting what’s right before duty always takes a heroic effort; anyone who has done it can tell you that. But the movie’s narrow focus on the conspiracy and the effects of it allows us to ask our own questions about these things, rather than have them forced on us by the filmmakers. That may be it’s most important victory.