Charlotte Gray - film review

I enjoy watching films. It is one aspect of pop culture that probably sucked me in early, and has me hooked. Hollywood is a very powerful morality-impacting medium – an inconvenient truth that I think film-makers like Mel Gibson have discovered, and decided to use, for their own ends.

Charlotte Gray features unrewarded Cate Blanchett (who looks likely to be the bridesmaid again at the Oscars this year after her role in Babel – who can forget her inexplicable loss after her great performance in Victoria). Blanchett plays the eponymous protagonist, a Scottish girl who falls in love with a British pilot who then goes MIA over France. Gray somehow fools British intelligence – who were interested in her because she was fluent in French – that she wants to support the war effort, when in truth she wants to find her lover. Without ruining the plot for those who have not seen it, all is not as it seems in France as Gray (now “Dominique”) supports the Communist-leaning French resistance.

Two things struck me about this film, two scenes with different but powerful effects.

The first is the assassination of the slimy collaborator and traitor by the male protagonist, young “freedom fighter” Julier. I found myself rejoicing at the man’s death but thinking – is that a Christian way to feel? What else could he have done to a school teacher who was giving up Jewish children to the German death camps? I am yet to resolve this question in my mind.

Second is the scene when Gray writes a letter from two young Jewish boys’ parents, saying they are “helping the war effort” and encouraging the boys to be good. They have, most likely, died in the death camps. However the scene when the two boys – whose parents where whisked away when they were out playing – touching the “letter from mother and father” is one of the most profound and touching scenes I have seen in a movie. I think as a parent this effects me more than as the carefree young-adult movie-goer I once was.

The film’s rating of “medium level violence” did not bear out, for me, as violence was as tastefully dealt with as could be possible (given the context!) – aside from a very bloody assassination. Watch out for that one.

This film won’t be to all people’s liking, but the way culture is transformed and people are transformed in war is, to me, gripping stuff. Bravo to Australian director Gillian Armstrong for a great film, and to Blanchett for giving it more credo amongst a cast of lesser lights (though the man playing Julier’s father performs, in my view, magnificently in the role).