The Cost of Truth is High in `The Debt'

In 1990's Aaron Sorkin calling card A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson's gung-ho general bellows a line guaranteed to live in celluloid infamy: "You can't handle the truth!!!" And its the central question raised by that statement which animates director John Madden's English-language adaptation of the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, which translates roughly to The Debt.

It's 1965, in Cold War-era East Berlin. We're watching a young woman named Rachel (The Tree of Life and The Help's Jessica Chastain) as she goes about her business in her apartment. You know, everyday things like plugging a leaky roof, touching up the kitchen and bathroom, holding a bloody and beaten 50-ish man captive (tied and gagged), attacking him when he tries to break free, and then shooting him in the back as he runs away.

The only reason we don't hate this femme fatale is because, in the scene immediately prior to that, set some 30-odd years later in 1997 Tel Aviv, the movie has shown a fifty-something Rachel (now having morphed into Helen Mirren) as the toast of her journalist daughter's book-launch party, along with her (very) estranged ex-husband Stephan (Tom Wilkinson in 1997; Martin Csokas in the '60s). Since Rachel is the good girl, her captive must have been be a bad guy.

And he was -- Dr. Dieter Vogel, the "Surgeon of Birkenau", an homage to Dr. Josef Mengele. Both film's storylines were clearly inspired by the hunt for Adolf Eichmann in Cold War-era Europe. Rachel, it turns out, was a young Mossad agent assigned to help capture Dr. Vogel, along with two fellow young operatives, senior agent Stephan and his strong but silent and sensitive backup, David (Sam Worthington), whose entire family had been executed in the Holocaust.

Their plan for smuggling the Doctor into West Berlin and then on to Israel involves stopping at a post office near a railway station that skirts the Berlin Wall -- which is armed 24/7 with Red Army guards trained to "shoot to kill on sight" anyone who would try to rob the Worker's Paradise of its human capital by escap -- er, I mean, leaving--East Germany.

While I won't give away the ending, there is no honest way to continue discussing the film in any kind of detail without giving away one key plot point, so if you don't want to know the score, here's where to cease and desist.

It turns out that while the struggle between Rachel and the Surgeon was true to form, Rachel's execution of the Doctor was her fantasy, the wishful-thinking construct that Stephan devises rather than admit that they had failed such an important task, one where failure truly was "never an option".

In reality, the Doctor had knocked Rachel unconscious during their struggle and made his escape, but as he now knows that Israel is actively on to him, he'll never have another truly "free" moment, however long and wherever he lives, and will dare not divulge his true identity.

Now it is 1997, at the same time as Rachel's daughter's book is hitting the Israeli bestseller lists, a dying old man, now in his mid-eighties in a Ukranian state-run nursing home (and clearly far past mental or physical competence to stand trial) is making claims that he is the supposedly long-dead Butcher of Birkenau, and has given away a few key details to back his story up.

If proven true, Rachel and Stephan would be revealed as having perpetrated their own "Big Lie" -- not only nationally disgraced themselves, but giving neo-Nazis and Arab anti-Semites the ultimate high-five validation. David, for his part, recently committed suicide, haunted for the rest of his sad life by the loss and deception, and unable to cope with the forthcoming possible expose.

Although it has some genuinely suspenseful scenes (and a not entirely convincing ending that seems tacked on to give the story a quickie catharsis), The Debt works best as an exploration of the dynamics of power. Before the Surgeon is captured, he is practicing in East Berlin as an OB/GYN. Of course, the best way to capture him is for Rachel to go in for a pelvic exam -- requiring the young woman to undergo a not-so-subtle symbolic rape at the touching hands of this monster.

Later, when he's captured, each of the agents have the power to kill Dr. Vogel, and they know it (and so does he). And it would be far easier for all concerned if they did just that, as the the agents know that smuggling the Surgeon out of the country could easily result in their own deaths or imprisonment at the hands of the East German Red Army.

As horrible as the Doctor's crimes were, while he's never exactly sympathetic, he cannot help but become humanized to some extent as he lives with the three agents day to day while they figure out their next move. "It" becomes "him", as he talks to the agents and observes the unfolding soap opera between the two boys and one girl. As a gynecologist, he has no trouble telling that Rachel has become pregnant by Stephan, even though she clearly loves damaged David more.

While The Debt makes no bones about who the good guys and who the bad guys are between the Israeli agents vs. the Nazis and Communists, the movie has plenty of grey accessories to go with its black and white outfits. Like the superior Munich, the film cannot help but raise the question (though it does so passively) of whether the Mossad has the right to go into another sovereign country (even a Communist one, and even for human garbage like a war criminal) and conduct kidnapping and extradition missions without that country's permission -- even to the point of killing a couple of East German guards as they try to make their escape.

And what would be more indecent? To perpetrate a hoax that the evil Nazi was captured and punished for his crime? Or to admit to the world that the "weak" Jews were outwitted and victimized once again by the Nazi genius, even when they had him right in the palm of their hands?

That's the big question. Were Rachel and Stephan frightened by the old man and the news story merely because they were afraid of being exposed as liars, as incompetents, and of giving anti-Semites a propaganda victory? Or was it also because they feared losing all the attendant "bling", the legend that had grown up around them (Rachel in particular) over the past 30 years -- the testimonial dinners, the ADL awards, the cable talk shows, the lectures and symposiums and book deals?

Nobody knew better than the Nazis and Communists about the principle that "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth." The Debt is probably best enjoyed as a high-IQ thriller, a James Bond for the arthouse set, more than as a Serious Exploration of Holocaust Themes. As the New York Post noted, the film "awkwardly marries Munich style moral conundrums with cheesy Robert Ludlum stylings", or as its crosstown rival The Daily News snarked, it's a "gritty thriller with a highbrow pedigree."

But props must go to it for it's provocative look at situational ethics, and for raising the question -- just how much "truth" are we really ready to handle?