Valkyrie: They Dared To Stop It

Film is power. As with ideas and the words that convey them, film can inform, inspire, and move people to act – for better or for worse. Some films need to be made. Others are better left unmade for the harm they cause. Of course most films fall into neither category, being rather a general waste of time – amusement – as such, true to the Latin root meaning “to stare stupidly.”

Of the films that need to be made, some are made with more ease than others. Schindler’s List, for instance, needed to be made and, while the subject matter was difficult, the story’s focus on the heroic character of Oskar Schindler made director Steven Spielberg’s task agreeable enough. With a powerful and likable cast, Schindler won Spielberg seven Oscars.

Valkyrie is the other sort of film that needed to be made – the one that isn’t so clean and agreeable, depicting real people with real flaws working up enough courage to confront evil in spite of their shortcomings. It is instructive that the film’s tagline is, “Many saw evil. They dared to stop it” rather than the morally satisfying, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Valkyrie follows men, not necessarily good men, who take life as it is dealt to them right up on the screen, drawing in the audience, and inviting those watching to question whether they would have summoned the courage to do the right thing from deep inside the monstrous regime that was Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Valkyrie is a good film – perhaps one of the best in its class. Most Americans with an even passing knowledge of World War II history know that Hitler was not assassinated in 1944. Yet Valkyrie manages to capture the audience, compelling them root for the July plotters led by Tom Cruise’s Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a war-wounded German officer and minor noble who decides Hitler must be killed and joins the German resistance.

Valkyrie is visually disquieting. The film opens in the chaos of combat in Tunisia with Cruise speaking German as he writes in his diary. Minutes later, he is grievously wounded by an Allied fighter aircraft.

The film ends in wartime Berlin, not yet bombed into rubble, where stark, swastika-festooned buildings evoke an antiseptic malevolence.

As we follow Cruise’s Colonel von Stauffenberg – in combat – recovering from his injuries and touchingly awarding Wound Badges to his fellow patients – seeing his wife and children – then linking up with the resistance in Berlin, we see a man drawn into a frightened conspiracy where the evil ferocity of the Reich makes even combat veterans quail.

In one memorable scene, Stauffenberg meets Hitler in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps just after the Allies landed at Normandy. Stauffenberg’s hope is to persuade Hitler to sign an update to Operation Valkyrie, the real-life plan to restore order in Berlin and other areas should unrest of some sort rock the Nazi government. Stauffenberg modified the plan to make it easier to carry out a coup after Hitler’s assassination. As Stauffenberg walks into Hitler’s mountaintop Berghof, we see a meeting in progress with Hitler (David Bamber), Goring (Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg), Himmler (Matthias Freihof) and Speer (Manfred-Anton Algrang). Hitler’s hand is on a black-faced German Shepherd. The dog radiates wolfen danger and we expect it to leap on Stauffenberg in defense of Hitler. Hitler discusses the progress of the war and is assured by Goring, convincingly fat with large rings on his sausage fingers, that the Allied landings will soon be dealt with.

Bamber’s Hitler is well-executed. In his first scene, he shows a hint of the qualities that vaulted him to Fuhrer of the Third Reich, but at the same time he is menacingly evil and increasingly in denial about the progress of the world war he ignited.

With the Western Allies firmly landed in Northern France, the fate of the Nazi regime is sealed. But moving the plotters from intellectual agreement to action proves a Herculean task. One of the original plotters, Major General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) is shipped off to the Russian front, leaving a less confident General Friedrich Olbright (Bill Nighy) to work with Cruise’s von Stauffenberg. It is here we see the plotters as real people: fears, faults and all.

It is with this core cast of generals, former generals, and politicians that we see the desperation and fear of the last 11 months of Hitler’s Germany – desperation that all is lost and paralyzing fear that precipitous action would result in an assured and painful death (as comedian Eddie Izzard, who ably played the part of General Erich Fellgiebel, said, “When the SS catch you, they will pull you apart like warm bread.”)

The relationship between the vacillating General Olbright and Colonel Von Stauffenberg is especially developed at this point in the film, with Nighy (Davy Jones in the POTC franchise) playing a stressed and conflicted officer to a tee, his trademark twitches subdued and put to good theatrical use. Cruise’s von Stauffenberg, on the other hand, war wounded, religious (he was a devout Catholic), and driven, is concerned with stopping Hitler, fully realizing that his actions will place his wife and children in extreme jeopardy. This friction between a man of action and a man filled with self-doubt, united in the same cause, is believable and adds considerably to the movie’s tension.

John Ottman, music editor and composer, does an admirable job in adding to the film’s tension with his score. Ottman’s work deserves critical recognition.

The film’s critics make much of two points in attacking Valkyrie and Cruise.

First, the critics say that Cruise’s von Stauffenberg is too confident, too sure of himself. They fault Cruise in his acting for not showing more self-doubt. I simply note that these critics have never served as commissioned military officers, much less, ever served in uniform. I marvel at the real-life von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg got himself appointed to a key position in Berlin. He sized up his target, meeting Hitler more than once. Stauffenberg then flew from Berlin to Prussia on the morning of July 20, 1944 with his briefcase bomb. He got into the heavily guarded command post and excused himself to arm the bomb. He armed the bomb with one mangled hand on which he had a thumb and two fingers, coordinating his progress through his one eye. He was interrupted by a guard telling him to hurry as the briefing with Hitler was about to begin. He placed the briefcase bomb under the briefing table and was called out of the room by a “phone call.” He waited in a nearby shelter to observe the blast, then walked away with his aide-de-camp. Stauffenberg then bluffed his way out of a command post crawling with heavily armed men just after a mysterious explosion. He flew back to Berlin, arriving at 3:30 p.m. Stauffenberg got to his command post, the Bendlerstrasse, an hour later and tried to rally a military coup. By 7:00 p.m., Hitler had recovered enough to made a radio broadcast, proving he was alive. Stauffenberg was then wounded in a firefight and was executed by firing squad just after midnight, shouting before being shot, “Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland!” (“Long live our holy Germany!”) The SS was so incensed by Stauffenberg that they dug up his body the next day, stripped it of medals and cremated it. These are not the actions of a timid man, hobbled by fear. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a few officers who could have pulled off what Stauffenberg did – I can assure the critics that such people do exist.

Secondly, the critics rail over Cruise’s lack of a German accent – or that Cruise’s “flat American accent” is out of place amongst British actors. I didn’t find the accents, or lack thereof, at all bothersome – while the prevailing American film convention is to have German characters speak in a German accent, a German would hear his language spoken in a range of accents, from the lilting accent of the Alps to the hard accent of the Northern German plains as well as Prussian, which is altogether different. I have always been annoyed at a German accent affectation for war movies – unless the actors actually are German. If you want accuracy, have the actors speak German and use subtitles (as was done in the opening seconds of Valkyrie).

These critics are missing the larger meaning in the film – all of it is taken from history. When Kenneth Branagh’s General von Tresckow says, “God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men… I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one,” it does not sound odd or out of place in the film. It is a statement of deep value. The real von Tresckow said, “The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.” No wonder that after von Tresckow committed suicide, making it look like a partisan attack to save others, the SS dug up his body and had it cremated.

Perhaps movie critics have become so jaded – and who wouldn’t become jaded after being bombarded by all the garbage Hollywood produces – that they have largely become unable to judge the films they are charged with reviewing. Or, perhaps the critics pay too much attention to the non-stop coverage of the Hollywood elite whom they think they know and often loathe as a result. I can’t admit to knowing much at all about actors or their personal lives. If, however, an actor makes a pronouncement about public policy, I do pay attention – long enough to scoff – unless, of course, the actor was someone like Jon Voight or Gary Sinise. This might explain the critics’ rush to dump on Cruise and Valkyrie. Cruise appears to be Hollywood’s equivalent to the kid who got picked on on the playground. He is an easy target. But without Cruise and the money from his United Artists studio, Valkyrie never would have been made in today’s largely shallow and inane Hollywood pool.

Sadly, I have even seen “Cruise contempt” in the California legislature where, in August 2006, by a vote of 72 to 7, the Assembly approved AB 2360, a bill written to prevent what Tom Cruise did: buy an ultrasound machine so that he and the mother of his baby could see images of their unborn daughter. Cruise later donated the costly machine to an inner-city clinic and Gov. Schwarzenegger later wisely vetoed the bill.

All of which brings us back to films that should be made and those which are a waste of time and resources. At the beginning of the piece I mentioned Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as a film worthy of effort. One might say the opposite about his 1998 effort, Saving Private Ryan. While the film won five Oscars, Saving Private Ryan was entirely devoid of any meaning beyond that of soldiers fighting for each other. Yet, even the Nazi SS soldier could make that claim, as could the Imperial Japanese soldier in Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima. As we know – at least those of us outside of Hollywood – the American soldier fights for a larger cause, the cause of liberty in defense of the Constitution of the United States. Ask any American in military uniform why they serve and most of them will respond with a patriotic rationale that would make the average Hollywood executive producer blush.

Since war is terrible, Hollywood ought to explore what it is that makes men fight. Men go to war to expand their evil intent or to defend against evil, then defeat it.

Tom Cruise instinctively grasped this when he led his fellow film crew in a moment of silence on the spot where von Stauffenberg was executed. Lionel Chetwynd understood this when he wrote and directed the Hanoi Hilton in 1987 to bring closure and dignity to those who resisted their Communist Vietnamese captors in the face of propaganda visits from Hollywood big shots like Jane Fonda. I’ll never forget the special screening of the Hanoi Hilton I saw in the White House in 1987. The screening, arranged by former TV and screen actor, then Cong. Bob Dornan, and attended by numerous administration officials and veterans, was a needed vindication of the sacrifice made in freedom’s name by Vietnam veterans. The same cannot be said about the better funded and technically higher quality Saving Private Ryan, a movie with no soul, no higher purpose, other than the tribal urge to fight for your buddy.

Valkyrie has soul and dignity – and it’s about time some soul was restored for the benefit of the Germans who served in uniform who weren’t Nazis, and who did what they could to resist Hitler’s evil when doing so would cost them everything.