The Statement (2003)

Director:

Norman Jewison

Writers:

Ronald Harwood (screenplay)
Brian Moore (novel)

Release Date:

27 February 2004 (UK)

Genre:

Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

At the end of World War II, many of those involved in war crimes were prosecuted. Some got away. Until now.

Plot:

Tale of a former Nazi executioner who becomes a target of hit men and Police investigators. |

Plot Keywords:

Police | Catholic Church | Typewriter | Murder | Vichy France

Awards:

4 wins

Cast

Michael Caine	...	Pierre Brossard
Tilda Swinton	...	Annemarie Livi
Jeremy Northam	...	Colonel Roux
Alan Bates	...	Armand Bertier
Charlotte Rampling	...	Nicole
John Neville	...	Old Man
Ciarán Hinds	...	Pochon
Frank Finlay	...	Commissaire Vionnet
William Hutt	...	Le Moyne
Matt Craven	...	David Manenbaum
Noam Jenkins	...	Michael Levy
Peter Wight	...	Inspector Cholet
Malcolm Sinclair	...	Cardinal of Lyon
Colin Salmon	...	Father Patrice
David de Keyser	...	Dom André (as David De Keyser)

Also Known As:

Crimes contre l'humanité (France)

MPAA:

Rated R for violence.

Runtime:

USA:120 min | Argentina:120 min

Country:

Canada | France | UK

Language:

English | German | Italian | Latin | French

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Australia:M | Argentina:16 | USA:R | UK:12A | Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Canada:14A (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, Oise, France

Company:

Serendipity Point Films

Trivia:

The film opens with a man seeking Michael Caine with the aid of a photograph. In the photograph, the man seen next to Michael Caine is director Norman Jewison.

Goofs:

Continuity: When the statement is shown being typed, the typist underlines the name Pierre Brossard except for the P. When it is shown completed, the name is underlined completely.

Movie Connections:

Features Only You (1994)

Soundtrack:

Au revoir mon coeur

A Good Adaptation of a Thriller

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.