Many films were made on the subject of self-determination of people during the Nazi regime, "Good" is one of them. The main idea of these films is a lost soul, striving for the better, but choosing the wrong path and bogged down in the quagmire of Nazism.
John Halder is a professor of literature, writing his own books in his spare time. On his shoulders is the care of the family, but what kind of family: a hysterical wife who does not take care of the house and children, but only to the point of insanity playing the piano; an elderly mother suffering from senile dementia; two children who need to be taken care of ... To endure all this every day and not go crazy, not everyone is capable. Teaching only allows you to make ends meet, and then the situation at the university is heating up: students must study exclusively ideological literature, burn books, and all dissenters are simply expelled.
And then, like snow on his head, the offer to engage in government propaganda falls, to join the party and start a new page in his life - it turns out that his book is well received in party circles and tarnish Professor Halder's wonderful future in a renewed Germany. Also at the university there is a pretty student, so keenly interested in literature and so strongly attracted to John that he is unable to keep himself in control.
It seems that for all the years of suffering and adversity, our hero has been rewarded. John may not approve of the established regime in the country, but this is such an incredible opportunity to change everything. He can start a new successful life: to leave this house, from a woman for whom there are no feelings left, from a mother who can quite live independently. The only thing John doesn’t want to lose is his best friend, a Jew, with whom they grew up together, but friendship is no longer possible.
It seems to him that his friend exaggerates, the horrors that will be created and are happening in the country, this can not be, because people are inherently good. Even when a real picture of Nazi atrocities is presented before his eyes, he will not believe it, music will sound in his ears and John will decide that everything he sees is just a play of his imagination. And when he realizes that all this is not a dream at all: how false his new wife is, what he condemned his own mother to, what he exchanged his best friend for, and how real the horror of what is happening, it will be too late.
Who is John Halder? Pathetic and cowardly, with a rotten soul of a meek servant, or just naive, not understanding reality, but actually "good"? Wants to live better, isn’t that always right?
At the mention of the name of Viggo Mortensen, the image of Aragorn from “The Lord of the Rings” inexorably arises, and if not he, then the image of an attractive killer and bandit, that is to say, his most famous roles are just such: this is “Perfect Murder”, and “Justified Hardness”, and “The Vice for Export”. Immediately before us is a completely different image, there is nothing militant or dangerous in it, even when his hero wears a Nazi uniform, he is rather ridiculous in it.
Of course, this film is not as penetrating and multifaceted as “The Reader” and put them in one row, a great exaltation of “The Good”, but still, it is also one of the attempts to describe how events unfolded in those years in Germany. Perhaps it is a desire to justify those people, but rather a desire to warn how deceptive the pursuit of the better is.
6 out of 10