Image: Based on an acclaimed 1981 play by C.P. Taylor, Good follows a simpering, softly-spoken intellectual (Viggo Mortensen) as he navigates the moral marshiness of Nazi Germany. It is morally ambiguous and ultimately, leaves you feeling equally ambiguous about it. (AB)
“I’m a Jew. You’re a Nazi. End of story.” If this were the case, Good would never have made it to the stage, or screen. Based on an acclaimed 1981 play by C.P. Taylor, it follows a simpering, softly-spoken intellectual (Viggo Mortensen) as he navigates the moral marshiness of Nazi Germany. This could’ve been a hard-and-fast fable, cast in rigid shades of black and white. Mortensen is a philandering husband, lecherous professor, sell-out to the SS and betrayer of his Jewish friend. But Good is not a comfortable story. It is morally ambiguous and ultimately, leaves you feeling equally ambiguous about it. Punctuated with fleeting, poorly-realised moments of musical surrealism, it could’ve been great, but is instead only good. (AB)
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