|
THE STATEMENT Send This Review to a Friend
Totally involving and suspenseful, "The Statement" is an important film for what it has to say and another major achievement for director Norman Jewison. Once again Michael Caine is giving a super performance, all the more impressive because he plays an unsympathetic character and makes us become involved with his fate. Written by Ronald Harwood and adapted from Brian Moore's novel, "The Statement" tells the story of Pierre Brossard, who as a young man in World War II committed a war crime, and those who for their own reasons are now hunting him down as he lives a life of secrecy and grows increasingly desperate. The drama is inspired by the true story of war criminal Paul Touvier.
Caine as Brossard conveys a character beset with fear as he moves among those whom he feels owe him help. He must live with the memory of the Jews whom he had executed in cold blood in France, but there are persons in the Catholic Church and government whose hands are also unclean and who have protected Brossard and those like him. Meanwhile, he is being hunted by a judge (Tilda Swinton) and an army office (Jeremy Northam). Those with a reason to kill him include people who would be embarrassed if he were captured and talked.
The title refers to a statement meant to be affixed to his body saying that the execution was in retribution for his war crime.
The subject of the role the French played in the anti-Semitism during World War II is a touchy one in France, and evidence has shown that the French under the occupation didn't only follow Nazi orders in persecuting Jews but sometimes took the lead. Thus the film addresses a major issue, all the more pertinent now in the wake of so many anti-Semitic incidents in France and elsewhere.
But Jewison and screenwriter Harwood don't approach the subject pedantically. They turn it into a thriller, a complex manhunt as the hunters follow leads and a series of attempts to assassinate the prey misfire. The story is also wrapped in character studies of Brossard, the judge, the army officer and persons entangled in the attempt to hide the past and protect right wingers in government and the church. Others in the cast include Charlotte Rampling, Ciaran Hinds, Matt Craven, William Hutt and Alan Bates.
"The Statement" has a strong sense of location, thanks to the filming in France, and it is smoothly made by Jewison, who knows how to tell a good story while reaching his audience viscerally. As for Caine, he deserves an acting award for this one. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
|