"Good", an interesting film by Vicente Amorim

Written by Isabel del Río

Wednesday, 17 March 2010 19:37

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Recently I have been seeing the film “Good”: Vicente Amorim’s and John Wrathall’s adaptation of CP Taylor’s play.
I like the film and for me, it is a good example to explain the famous sentence which will be the title of Yareah magazine next issue “To Be or not to Be”.
What is “to be”? At the beginning of the film, Viggo Mortensen plays a professor of French literature (John Halder) in the early 1930’s in Germany.

He is happy teaching in the University and in his free time, he is a writer too. His novels are not still successful but, on their pages, he can express his true feelings creating good stories and characters: one of them about euthanasia…
What is “to be”? He is also a father and a good husband. His wife is a little peculiar and nervous and, above all, unable of cooking or ordering the home, but he helps her making the typical tasks of a housewife…
What is “to be”? Not only is our main character a teacher, a writer, a father or a husband but also a good friend of a Jewish doctor and a good son who takes care of his old mother.

What is “not to be”? During the Nazi regime, the main character will be awarded by his novel about euthanasia and he will start to support Goebbels’ ideas writing what he orders him and leaving teaching French literature.
What is “not to be”? He will be seduce by a young ambitious student and he will turn into a stupid lover who makes all that she likes, even to betray his Jewish friend and to abandon his ill mother.
What is “not to be”? Not only is he now a nobody but he is unable to understand what is happening around him and he starts to vanish while inexistent images and sounds are devouring his mind and life.
Good forces us to question about the nature of humanity because we must be things and not to allow that other men or women, events or circumstances, fashions or powers destroyed our mankind.

Title: Good
Year: 2008
91’
Country: Reino Unido
Director: Vicente Amorim
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mark Strong, Jason Isaacs, Steven Mackintosh
Script: John Wrathall sobre la obra de C.P. Taylor
Music: Simon Lacey
Photography: Andrew Dunn
Production: Good Films / Miromar Entertainment