Questions about The Good German...

[fajrdrako]

While showering this morning, slightly more awake than I was last night, it became clear to me that there were key points in The Good German that I didn't understand, and if I had understood them, I might have appreciated the movie more. Spoilers here, so I'll cut for my actual questions.

1. This may be really obvious, but who was the "good German" of the title?



2. Was Jake Jewish? I was assuming he was - I think it makes for a stronger story - but I don't think they ever said.



3. Did Jake love Lena? Seems to me that the whole movie suddenly makes sense if he did - especially if his love is a strong and overwhelming passion that overrides common sense - but in the course of the movie it never even occurred to me that this could be the case. I assumed he had his own unspoken agenda, but nothing in the acting or the story implied to me that it might be love.



4. What were we supposed to make of the ending? After Lena confessed to Jake, does he simply forgive her and they go off into the sunset to America together, love conquering all? Or do they separate forever then and there? Or does he try to come to terms with what she did to survive? - Another thought I had was that if she felt compelled to do anything to survive, why didn't she pretend to love Jake, who looked to me like her best bet of getting herself and her husband out of Germany? Playing the whore and brushing him off looks like bad survival strategy to me.



5. Maybe it was just me, but wasn't her confession kind of anticlimactic?

Another subliminal problem I had with the movie... in retrospect... is that it seemed to deal in negative national stereotypes. The Americans were all hearty, blunt and arrogant. The British were softspoken and duplicitous. (For some reason I really, really liked Bernie. I think it's the actor's features I liked.) The Russians were tight-jawed, anorexic, brutal and harsh. Nobody was trustworthy but the nature of the untrustworthiness went according to ethnic lines.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Another subliminal problem I had with the movie... in retrospect... is that it seemed to deal in negative national stereotypes.

I can't think of many movies that don't simply pander to stereotypes, unfortunately.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, sadly, they do. And I think now that this one did it more shamelessly than most - or maybe it was that the plot made the stereotyping so obvious.