13/02/2014 - Volker Schlöndorff is back with the adaptation of a stage play by Cyril Gely. The film is as appreciable for its lesson in diplomacy as in movie-making

Volker Schlöndorff's new movie will not surprise anyone who is familiar with the expertise of the maestro from Berlin when he is really in his element. And with the French-German co-production Diplomacy [+see also:
trailer
film profile], all the themes so dear to the director waltz at very close quarters at a ball behind (virtually) closed doors, held in a Gala preview at the 64^th edition of the Berlinale.

August, 1944. Paris is on the point of being literally razed to the ground by the Nazis. Jealous of a city he sees as a symbol of his failure after the bombing of Berlin, Hitler has reserved an explosive version of his Final Solution for the capital of occupied France. Before the arrival of the Allies, bridges, monuments and museums are to be dynamited. Submarine torpedoes have been attached to the four legs of the Eiffel Tower… If General Dietrich von Choltitz (Niels Arestrup), Commander of Paris in charge of operations, follows the orders of the Fuhrer, "the noise of the explosion will be heard in Berlin". Between this demonic plan and the intact Paris as we know it today, stand the negotiation skills of the Consul of Sweden, Raoul Nordling (André Dussolier), who embarks with the Nazi General upon a real verbal joust which lasts an entire night.

Schlöndorffadapts Cyril Gely's play using very precise dialogue and actors at the very peak of their art. The face-to-face between Arestrup and Dussolier is of rare elegance, though it is above all the handling of the tension throughout the negotiations which forces our respect. The staging is discreet, though its squaring of the circle has nothing to do with an exercise in filmed theatre. The movie breathes, holds its breath, gets carried away and alternates temporal expansions and contractions with such ease that the spectator feels that he has lived this night in real time. And it doesn't matter that we know the outcome, the film is just as appreciable for its lesson in diplomacy as for that in movie-making. The festival-goer will, in fact, be able to enjoy the very different treatments of  two little-known episodes in the Second World War, presented almost side by side on Berlin's red carpet, so close in terms of their historic content, but diametrically opposed in their form and artistic quality.

As in George Clooney's Monuments Men [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile], the subject is about preserving European cultural heritage (a subject dear to Schlöndorff, for which he has personally fought both on and off the stage-sets). In both films, the human aspect ("You're asking me to disown my education") and moral implications ("There has to be a limit where blind obedience ceases to be a duty") are the last bastions between Art and war. Diplomacy, however,shows quite unequivocally that barrowloads of millions of dollars canot tip the balance of the 7th Art when it comes to telling a tale based on such fundamental themes which is both legitimate, entertaining and - it can't be said enough - admirably interpreted by actors perhaps a little less distracted by advertising. Two monuments are sometimes worth more than a whole collection of fake buildings.

(Translated from French)