Title : Black Book
Genres: Art/Foreign, Thriller and War
Release Date: April 4th, 2007 (limited)
Distributors: Sony Pictures Classics
U.S. Box Office: $4,398,392
Starring: Carice van Houten, Halina Reijn, Thom Hoffman, Peter Blok, Derek DeLint
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Synopsis :
In the scenes which bookend the film, a schoolteacher is shown living in 1950s Israel. By chance, she has encountered Ronnie, a wartime friend, who is now married and on a tourist package trip in Israel. The film flashes back to 1944, during World War II, and begins the story of Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), a Jewish singer who lived in Berlin before the war and who was then living in hiding from the Nazi regime in the occupied Netherlands.
When the house that she has been hiding in is destroyed, Rachel visits a lawyer named Smaal (Dolf de Vries), who provides her with some of her father's money so that she can flee. Rachel is reunited with her family and tries to flee by boat with other Jews. The goal is to escape from the Nazi-occupied part of the Netherlands to the liberated southern part of the country. However, they are ambushed on the river by members of the German SS. Rachel survives, but does not manage to escape from occupied territory.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org
She becomes involved with a resistance group and assumes the alias Ellis de Vries. She seduces SD officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) and is offered a job at the Gestapo headquarters in The Hague. She recognizes Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus) as the SS officer in command who had ordered the massacre of her fleeing refugee party, and manages to bug his office. She falls in love with Müntze, who in contrast to Franken is not abusive or sadistic, and becomes friends with her Dutch colleague Ronnie (Halina Reijn), who has come to terms with the occupation; Ronnie works for the Germans, has lots of sex with them, and has accepted stolen gifts from them. Her introduction in the film portrays her as being sexually loose, supposedly impervious to the Nazis’ brutality in her country, and indifferent to its citizens, except for finding life there to be dull.
Rachel's resistance cell decides to abduct the collaborator who has caused so many Jewish deaths, but the plot goes wrong and he is killed.
Müntze confronts Ellis, who persuades him to search Franken's safe, which she suspects contains the jewels stolen from fleeing Jewish people, but when a search of the safe by the commanding officer reveals nothing, the angry and embarrassed Franken reveals that Müntze has been negotiating with Dutch resistance "terrorists", and he is imprisoned, along with members of the resistance group. Rachel agrees to participate in a rescue attempt only on the condition that they free Müntze too, and reluctantly the others agree. However, the attempt fails because their plan has been discovered, and most of the prisoners and rescuers are killed.
Rachel is subsequently arrested and jailed by the Gestapo. It turns out they have known about the bug all along, and they now use it to make the resistance group believe she is the Nazi collaborator, and frame her for the catastrophic failure of the rescue operation. However, with Ronnie's help, she and Müntze escape and the two of them hide in the countryside.
When the country is liberated by the Allies, Rachel is imprisoned by the Dutch and publicly humiliated as a traitor. Because of an Allied occupation agreement that allows the German military to discipline its own soldiers, Müntze is executed on the orders of his former commanding officer, who believes him to have been a collaborator. Rachel is rescued by physician and fellow member of the resistance Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), who had in fact not only been a traitor, but also responsible for the brutal death of her family at the hands of the Nazis. Akkermans, in a bid to cover his tracks, murders Franken and Smaal, and also tries to kill Rachel with an overdose of insulin, but as it begins to send her body into shock, she manages to survive by eating a bar of chocolate to counteract the drug, and escapes. (The chocolate was given to her by Akkermans in the previous scene.)
Rachel proves her innocence to resistance member Gerben Kuipers (Derek de Lint ) by means of the titular black book, in which Smaal had detailed all his dealings with the Jews he helped. Mention of his bringing many of the Jews to Akkermans for medical help just prior to their murders provides enough circumstantial evidence to implicate Akkermans as the traitor. Together Rachel and Kuipers intercept the fleeing Akkermans, who is hiding in a coffin in a hearse which he has filled with stolen money and jewels. Rachel seals the coffin's air vents, suffocating him.
After the war, instead of being imprisoned and publicly shamed as a collaborator and Nazi whore, Ronnie manages to get herself a key spot in the victory parade and falls in love with and marries a Canadian liberator. It is implied that the currency and jewels in the coffin with Akkermans were recovered by Rachel and used to fund the kibbutz where she now lives and has re-encountered Ronnie.
When the house that she has been hiding in is destroyed, Rachel visits a lawyer named Smaal (Dolf de Vries), who provides her with some of her father's money so that she can flee. Rachel is reunited with her family and tries to flee by boat with other Jews. The goal is to escape from the Nazi-occupied part of the Netherlands to the liberated southern part of the country. However, they are ambushed on the river by members of the German SS. Rachel survives, but does not manage to escape from occupied territory.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org
She becomes involved with a resistance group and assumes the alias Ellis de Vries. She seduces SD officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) and is offered a job at the Gestapo headquarters in The Hague. She recognizes Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus) as the SS officer in command who had ordered the massacre of her fleeing refugee party, and manages to bug his office. She falls in love with Müntze, who in contrast to Franken is not abusive or sadistic, and becomes friends with her Dutch colleague Ronnie (Halina Reijn), who has come to terms with the occupation; Ronnie works for the Germans, has lots of sex with them, and has accepted stolen gifts from them. Her introduction in the film portrays her as being sexually loose, supposedly impervious to the Nazis’ brutality in her country, and indifferent to its citizens, except for finding life there to be dull.
Rachel's resistance cell decides to abduct the collaborator who has caused so many Jewish deaths, but the plot goes wrong and he is killed.
Müntze confronts Ellis, who persuades him to search Franken's safe, which she suspects contains the jewels stolen from fleeing Jewish people, but when a search of the safe by the commanding officer reveals nothing, the angry and embarrassed Franken reveals that Müntze has been negotiating with Dutch resistance "terrorists", and he is imprisoned, along with members of the resistance group. Rachel agrees to participate in a rescue attempt only on the condition that they free Müntze too, and reluctantly the others agree. However, the attempt fails because their plan has been discovered, and most of the prisoners and rescuers are killed.
Rachel is subsequently arrested and jailed by the Gestapo. It turns out they have known about the bug all along, and they now use it to make the resistance group believe she is the Nazi collaborator, and frame her for the catastrophic failure of the rescue operation. However, with Ronnie's help, she and Müntze escape and the two of them hide in the countryside.
When the country is liberated by the Allies, Rachel is imprisoned by the Dutch and publicly humiliated as a traitor. Because of an Allied occupation agreement that allows the German military to discipline its own soldiers, Müntze is executed on the orders of his former commanding officer, who believes him to have been a collaborator. Rachel is rescued by physician and fellow member of the resistance Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), who had in fact not only been a traitor, but also responsible for the brutal death of her family at the hands of the Nazis. Akkermans, in a bid to cover his tracks, murders Franken and Smaal, and also tries to kill Rachel with an overdose of insulin, but as it begins to send her body into shock, she manages to survive by eating a bar of chocolate to counteract the drug, and escapes. (The chocolate was given to her by Akkermans in the previous scene.)
Rachel proves her innocence to resistance member Gerben Kuipers (Derek de Lint ) by means of the titular black book, in which Smaal had detailed all his dealings with the Jews he helped. Mention of his bringing many of the Jews to Akkermans for medical help just prior to their murders provides enough circumstantial evidence to implicate Akkermans as the traitor. Together Rachel and Kuipers intercept the fleeing Akkermans, who is hiding in a coffin in a hearse which he has filled with stolen money and jewels. Rachel seals the coffin's air vents, suffocating him.
After the war, instead of being imprisoned and publicly shamed as a collaborator and Nazi whore, Ronnie manages to get herself a key spot in the victory parade and falls in love with and marries a Canadian liberator. It is implied that the currency and jewels in the coffin with Akkermans were recovered by Rachel and used to fund the kibbutz where she now lives and has re-encountered Ronnie.
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