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The Statement (2003)

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40 comments in total

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41 out of 45 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than Critics Say, 5 agosto 2004

Author: (normangelman@verizon.net) de Washington, D.C.

"The Statement" deserves far better ratings than critics have given it. In the first place, it's NOT about an ex-Nazi in flight. It's about a French collaborator, the Vichy Government, France's failure to confront the role its officials -- some still in power -- played in the Holocaust, and the efforts of right wingers in the Catholic Church to shelter the collaborator. Michael Caine is superb in the leading role, and Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Northam are excellent as the judge and army colonel who are trying to bring him to justice while those who formerly hid him seek to execute him, blaming a non-existent group of Jewish vigilantes. The supporting cast, which includes the wonderful Charlotte Rampling in a minor role as the collaborator's undivorced wife, is also quite good. I don't see how anyone can complain that this movie "drags." While there are legitimate criticisms that could be made about unexplained motives, the action moves at the appropriate pace given the complexity of the story it is telling.

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29 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
divided loyalties, divided feelings, 13 mayo 2004

Author: chetley de Michigan

I rated this film a 7/10 - with some mixed feelings, because in many ways it was a downbeat film without any kind of neat "message" that would make me feel "a better person" for having seen it. But on second thought I realized that the finished film rather neatly reflects the moral complexity of Brian Moore's novel which it is based upon - and which Ronald Harwood's screenplay follows remarkably closely.

Brian Moore is one of my favorite late 20th century authors, whose work has provided the basis for several other memorable films, most notably "Black Robe." He writes in a Graham Greene-esque mode, his characters often anguished or guilty Catholics or ex-Catholics who struggle to live morally in a degraded and corrupt world. Moore himself appears to have known much about divided loyalties and twentieth century alienation. Although identified as a Canadian author, Moore was born in Ulster - and actually lived most of his later life in California and the South of France. He was clearly fascinated by questions of faith, of good and evil - and he boldly tackled these themes in "The Statement."

In France in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were several prominent cases of Vichy-era collaborators who were belatedly brought to justice by the French court system. Moore was clearly fascinated by the way in which leading members of the French governmental and bureaucratic system continued to hide unpleasant truths about their own pasts - and by the role of the Catholic Church in France in providing refuge and assistance to some individuals who had been involved in the persecution and round-up of Jews.

Michael Caine deserves a great deal of credit for taking on the role of a reprehensible character who nonetheless retains his full humanity. There's never any question in the film about his guilt - he clearly took part in the brutal murder of Jews during wartime. (He's also quite mean to dogs.) And yet he is not without a sympathetic side. It's clear that he's manipulative, but it's also easy to see why many intelligent and devout people of faith would be willing to assist him in his attempt to live "underground" hiding from justice. Caine isn't a caricatured film villain - not like Ralph Fiennes in "Schindler's List" or John Malkovich in "Ripley's Game." But in a real sense, it's all the more disturbing that he seems like "just another innocuous old man."

It was disappointing to me to see that fine performers Jeremy Northam and Tilda Swinton with so little to do in the film - other than looking bewildered as Caine's character continues to elude their grasp. On the other hand, it is quite enjoyable to watch their flirtatious glances with one another. There were many nice touches in the film showing the pleasures of French life - gourmet business lunches, for example, and the beautiful scenery of Provence. Even the supposedly seedy cafes look like they belong in a tourist brochure.

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22 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Kudos to Jewison for an important, intelligent film. Someone I know who hadn't been to the cinema in decades saw The Statement last week and has had his faith in film restored by this movie., 30 diciembre 2003

Author: (de_rosa) de Canada

Kudos to Jewison for an important, intelligent film. Someone I know who hadn't been to the cinema in decades saw The Statement last week and has had his faith in film restored by this movie.

I can't understand why newspaper critics focussed on the fact that French accents weren't used. I find that some directors, not this one, try to add in accents where they are not at all necessary. After all, the "real" characters merely spoke their language, and didn't have "foreign accents". As an English and French speaker, I find the use of accents in other films (that is, where the real character would not have spoken with a "foreign" accent, but in his or her own language) to be provincial at best and distracting at worst. The director is from Canada - as an intelligent person which we can assume he is based on his brilliant career, he would understand the importance of not adding in accents where they would not naturally have occurred.

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24 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
The Unforgiven, 16 noviembre 2004
Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) de Deming, New Mexico

Michael Caine plays a pathetic wretch who, 40 years ago, participated in the murder of seven Jews in France. Certain rogue elements within the Catholic Church have been hiding him, shuffling him from place to place, and another organization has been sending him money from time to time. I'm a little confused about the other organization. I think it may have been founded by his fellow executioners, also war criminals, but it wasn't easy to follow.

Caine is a marvelous actor, but this thoroughly dramatic role of a devout Frenchman, suffering from heart failure, tortured by guilt and constantly praying, is almost beyond him. He is forced to shoot two assassins sent after him by his fellow war criminals, and at those points the movie comes to life, so to speak.

So there are two conflicting interests in pursuit of him -- the police who want to put him in jail, and the assassins who want to kill him before he is caught and makes a deal with the gendarmes. The assassins get there first.

Caine is such a pitiful figure, stumbling about and asking for help when cornered, that one is reminded at times of much better films like "Odd Man Out" and "M". We more or less know from the beginning that no Vichy war criminal is going to escape and live happily ever after, so watching Caine huffing and puffing around on rooftops and constantly asking priests for absolution is painful. And repetitive too. Halfway through I began wishing the cops would get him -- or the assassins for that matter -- or that he would expire from an acute infraction of the myoculinary -- just to get it over with.

The Catholic church comes off pretty badly. The Vatican wants nothing to do with him. The monks who are his old friends are told to stop helping him. Except for his demons, no one is interested in him. His patron saint, he claims, is St. Christopher, whom I thought had been kicked out of the Pantheon years ago. If I'm right, then he's praying to a discredited saint. (Is this supposed to be symbolism?) It would have been spot on if he'd chosen St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, whose medallion I have so aptly clipped to the visor of my Ford.

At any rate, we don't see him do anything that could be construed as a reflection of his Nazi-tainted past. He's weak, old, and scared to death. (Come to think of it, he looks a little like Max von Sydow with his gray hair.) It's true that he threatens to kill his wife's dog if she doesn't put him up. And it's true that he offhandedly boots the dog out of the way when he gets underfoot. I hope that's not a crime worth being executed for.

Caine's performance is so weary and ridden with Angst that I kind of wished he'd get away to Quebec or somewhere. He was involved in those seven murders and should pay for it. At the same time his soul has been in jail for more than 40 years. His best bet, of course, would have been to give himself up to the police, confess openly to his crimes, and spend the rest of his life in jail. It's too easy for a priest to listen to him and say "Ego te absolvo, now go away." You commit a sin, you do penance for it.

I don't want to get into the moral implications any further because they're pretty muddled. I'm not really sure what the film's point of view is. Is it that the Catholic church is corrupt and anti-Semitic? Is it that repentant sinners deserve to be shot to death by criminals?

It's one of the lesser works by director Jewison, Michael Caine, and most of the other involved. The photography, of Provence, is nice. And the shrike-like woman detective is good too, all angular and sharp eyes. But it's a slow slog overall.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Caine is sublimely fine as usual; the film leaves something to be desired, 22 diciembre 2003
Author: george.schmidt (george.schmidt@hbo.com) de fairview, nj

THE STATEMENT (2003) ** Michael Caine, Tilda Swinson, Jeremy Northam, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, John Neville, Ciaran Hines, Matt Craven. Caine is the best thing about this rambling and languidly paced suspenser about a true life French policeman who assisted the Nazis in WWII is now being pursued by the dogged investigator Swinson and Northam while marked for execution. Director Norman Jewison clearly knows he has an IMPORTANT movie on his hands but the creaky machinations involved leaves one desiring more meat to the drama at hand.

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A Good Adaptation of a Thriller, 13 diciembre 2003

Author: Ralph Michael Stein (riglltesobxs@mailinator.com) de New York, N.Y.

Your comments will be displayed as follows: A good adaptation of Brian Moore's thriller novel, director Norman Jewison's "The Statement" has its ups and downs.

Michael Caine, who has played many English roles as well as being an American abortion providing doctor, now takes on elderly Frenchman Pierre Brossard, once a shining star of the toady Vichy police force without which the Nazis could never have murdered some 77,000 French Jews. A small percentage of the Holocaust toll but not an unimportant one. Among other acts he participated in the roundup and murder of seven Jews. Such an incident was the basis for the novel.

A man who may belong to a Jewish revanchist organization is killed by Brossard before he can shoot the wheezing, cardiac condition-afflicted former right-hand helpmate for the SS. He's been sheltered for forty years by members of the Catholic clergy.

Tilda Swinton is Judge Levy assigned along with Jeremy Northam, a French army colonel, to find and bring Brossard to trial based on a new law reviving prosecutions against those who committed crimes against humanity. Actually, every important actor in this film except for Charlotte Rampling, who has a small role as Brossard's wife, is English. I'm surprised the French actors' union didn't raise a stink.

This is a chase film with Judge Levy and her colonel either warm or hot on the trail of Brossard who goes from monastery to monastery receiving food, money and help. (In France a judge has vast investigative authority and can and does direct inquiries so the director could credibly have Swinton going from city to city. Imagine Judge Judy flitting about in a chopper ferreting out facts.) At times I thought I was watching a travelogue about the abbeys of Gaul.

There are, of course, hints of a dark conspiracy reaching beyond the Church that I won't reveal.

Caine's peripatetic suspect is deeply religious in the formulaic sense that absolution and ritual salve his conscience but in no way mediate his actions. Caine plays a dirtbag to perfection.

Possibly to avoid charges that the film is unfairly anti-Catholic we're told that

1) the Church is vast, has many subordinate bodies, and those at the top just can't know all that is happening (this defense comes from a gentle librarian-Jesuit priest who also happens to be black, the predominant racial group in the French church).

2) responsibility for aiding genocide by clerics was individual so don't trot out any revisionist Hochhuth/Cornwell/Goldenhagen theories arraigning the Church's leadership.

3) we can't forget that the Resistance was largely communist so maybe there's a rational justification for Vichy's supine collaboration and the very real clerical support for the Nazis if not for every French assisted atrocity.

I despise the mindless Francophobic reaction to France's lack of support for U.S. policy on Iraq. But for too long Vichy and its spineless leaders, Petain and Laval, never mentioned in the film, have gotten a bit of a free ride. So I was happy to see Brossard made frightened as his pursuers close in.

Enjoyable, some nice scenery. Not much more except that Michael Caine is always terrific. And so is Tilda Swinton who brings focused intensity to Judge Levy's unyielding crusade for justice, for that it is.

6/10.

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13 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
a truly bland thriller, 18 julio 2004
Author: Roland E. Zwick (magneteach@aol.com) de United States

In Norman Jewison's tepid thriller, `The Statement,' English-accented Michael Caine plays Pierre Brossard, an aging French war criminal whose past has begun to catch up with him. In 1944, Brossard, a member of the infamous Vichy regime, not only collaborated with the Nazis, but was personally responsible for the cold-blooded execution of 14 unarmed Jewish Frenchmen as well. Immediately after the war, Brossard was tried and convicted for these offenses, but somehow managed to escape before he could face his deserved punishment. In the years since, Brossard has lived his life underground, finding protection and sanctuary from a branch of the Roman Catholic Church sympathetic to his cause. And although the French authorities have been unsuccessful in their attempts to locate him, Brossard has recently found himself the target of a mysterious group of assassins, possibly members of a secret Jewish organization seeking justice for his yet unavenged crimes against humanity.

The idea of a Nazi war criminal still living in hiding all these years after the end of World War II has the makings of an interesting movie, no doubt, but `The Statement' is not that movie. To the filmmakers' credit, they do at least attempt to present Brossard as a three-dimensional character, a man who, decades after his horrendous crimes, is still seeking redemption through his pious devotion to the Church. Caine, in a deftly balanced performance, manages to make Brossard almost sympathetic while still allowing us to see the `monster' hidden beneath the ravaged soul. Unfortunately, the actor is let down by a screenplay that seems more concerned with tired cloak-and-dagger espionage routines than with a serious study of a fascinating and conflicted character. Even more annoying is the attempt on the part of the film to paint the entire Catholic Church hierarchy as a bunch of diabolical, self-serving individuals who are busy either protecting one of their own at any or all costs or acting out of political expediency rather than true moral conviction. Fans of `The Da Vinci Code' may swallow this anti-Catholic paranoia without question, but the rest of us can merely wonder why the Church hasn't been able to cop a break from the movies since Father Damien kicked the be-Jesus out of the devil in `The Exorcist,' thirty long years ago. I'm certainly no apologist for the Catholic Church (see my review of `The Magdalene Sisters'), but even we non-believers can wonder when we will be seeing a little more evenhandedness and balance in the movies' portrayal of the Church. Certainly there must be SOME well-meaning priest, nun or bishop out there that some filmmaker might consider as worthwhile movie material.

There are other problems with the film as well. Tilda Swinton, as an impassioned judge searching for Brossard, and Jeremy Northam, as a more pragmatic policeman who reluctantly joins her in her pursuit, make an annoying, constantly bickering couple who look, for all the world, like a minor-league Mulder and Scully, minus the attraction and charm. Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling (reunited from `Georgy Girl,' though the two actors never appear in the same scene together) are wasted in minor roles. And Jewison, who was once so fine a young director, fails to bring any of the scenes in this film to life. One also questions the propriety of taking a serious subject like Nazi atrocities and using it as little more than cheap window dressing for an undistinguished, run-of-the-mill thriller.

`The Statement,' despite another fine performance from the ever-reliable Michael Caine, is a tired, lackluster and cynical exercise, strangely devoid of meaning, conviction and purpose.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Far too basic on all levels – not bad but just rather disappointing throughout, 27 diciembre 2005
Author: bob the moo de Birmingham, UK

After the Nazi's were driven out of France, those who had collaborated were mostly rounded up and punished – many by death. However some escaped and were hidden, while others rose in power within the new regime. Pierre Brossard is one of the former and continues to live in fear, protected from those that would avenge his victims by his friends within the Catholic Church. However a close encounter shows that some group is closing in on him, meanwhile political pressure from Judge Livi and Colonel Roux's investigation into his whereabouts mean that he is quickly running out of friends willing to shelter him.

It is difficult to know how to approach this film because it itself doesn't seem too sure of what it is trying to do. Is it a drama looking at the idea of fleeing war criminals? Is it a chase movie? Is it a character piece looking at Brossard? It is never clear because it does do some elements of each but it doesn't really do anything that well and I, as a viewer, was a bit confused about what I was supposed to feel or think during it. The story itself is OK, reasonably engaging but not having anything of interest to it. As a chase film I was interested and the themes helped it seem more than the sum of its parts but not in reality. The motivations of the characters are never that well developed; the Livi/Roux parts are dull and quite routine although the sections with Brossard are more interesting.

It is a shame then that the film cannot decide what it wants to do with him – do we feel for him, hate him or just watch him? The film doesn't let us decide this in a good way representing the complex nature of the character, but rather just doesn't push out any ideas one way or another. Caine does well despite this and gives a good character a bit of depth. He is where the film is although he probably benefits from the fact that everyone else is quite ordinary. Swinton and Northam are quite ordinary and their parts of the film just seem put of place and half-cooked. Support from Neville, Bates, Rampling and others just about do the job but add little.

Overall this is an OK film but nothing at all more than that. Despite the interesting and complex potential the film just delivers an ordinary chase movie and fails to do anything with the ideas and concepts inherent in it. Caine does well to produce quite a convincing character but he is alone in that, with the material and the rest of the cast failing to do anything that interesting. Not bad but not worth trying to find because it is nowhere near as good as one would have hoped.

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8 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
All Caine, 1 mayo 2004

Author: George Parker de Orange County, CA USA

Michael Caine carries "The Statement" on his back. In spite of an elegant cast, without him as the central character, this convoluted mess of a film wouldn't be worth watching. Telling of an aging French-Nazi war criminal who finds himself on the run and squeezed in the jaws of subterfuge, "The Statement" is too vague in its historical flashbacks, gives poor depth into its sundry characters, breaches realism with a bunch of Brits in France, never makes its agenda clear, and doesn't sort itself out well in the end...to mention just a few of the flaws. The result is a film with a lukewarm reception by critics and the public at large and little reason to watch save another excellent performance by Caine. In spite of all that, I quite enjoyed this flick. Go figure. (B-)

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
What it means to be Catholic, 13 enero 2005

Author: dallanor-1 de Brazil

I am afraid that Catholic believers are better entitled to understand the true essence of The Statement. Protestants and agnostics are admittedly individualists, but a Catholic believes that sin is collective and pardon is collective, too. When a Catholic says "The Church" he is meaning the body of believers, and not only the organization with headquarters in Rome. All those who submitted comments on this film have forgotten that Brossard was NOT a criminal before the passing of the law on crimes against humanity, so the Church was giving him shelter against outlaws who wanted to eliminate him, not against the State. The Catholic Church has always given protection to the persecuted, as we Brazilians do know from the times of our not-really-entirely-gone military dictatorship. During World War II, the French clergy helped the communists and the partisans, and priests have always given their life in the defense of the persecuted. So, Brossard believes that he can receive remission, because remission is never denied to anyone, but he sees his world coming down around him - the true criminals being those who are now in power and KEEP killing to maintain power. And Brossard is a touching portrait of a man like me and you who only wants to put and end to his paying his debts.

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