“The Statement” (2003), directed by Norman Jewison, appeared
shortly after I returned to the DC area, but I somehow missed it then. It’s a bit in the tradition of the Hitchcock
war-related films, and in a rooftop sequence near the end, there’s a touch of
“Vertigo”.
As the film opens in black and white, the Nazis raid a home
in a village in Vichy France in 1944.
Seven men are taken out, stood against a wall, and totaled to disrobe so
the guard could see who was circumcised.
Then they are shot.
The film then shifts almost 50 years, and Michael Caine
plays Pierre Brossard, the former Vichy Nazi sympathizer and executioner. He has been on the run. He recognizes a hit man in the south of
France, and on a mountain road encounter out maneuvers and kills the hit man,
who had come with a typed statement to lay on his corpse to show that justice
had been done.
The murder of the hitman attracts the interest of a local
judge (Tilda Swinton). Brossard is on
the run, trying to hide behind the Church, which has to come to terms with its
own complicity. He meets up with his
estranged wife (Charlotte Rampling) and dog.
In the end, justice must be done.
The film, based on a “non-fiction” novel by Brian Moore,
develops an idea through several moral stages.
Why would local French politicians cooperate with their invaders and
then attack their own people? Why could
the Catholic Church become complicit?
One point used to rationalize their actions was that the alternative to
Germany would be rule by the Soviet Union under “godless” Communism.
The DVD includes interviews with Michael Caine and Norman
Jewison. who describes the process of getting financing for independent film.
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