If you were a movie star, is there anyone you’d rather be than Jesper Christensen? Playing along side such fantastic, talented, and gorgeous women as Dame Judi Dench and Dame Helen Mirren would be any actor's dream come true. Few film stars have such grace, such presence, and such exquisite depth and charisma as these two marvels.
But Jesper’s no scrub either. As a doer of evil, there may be no equal (except of course, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood), and his role in Labor Day’s new release The Debt has proven that there is just not enough of this master of the diabolique in current film.
Of course, I admit, I have an over-the-top bias for Danes and Danish cinema. Susanne Bier is probably the best thing to ever happen to movie-making, and for dark humor, does anyone come close to Anders Thomas Jensen? Coming from a movie culture such as this, it’s no surprise that viewers get the caliber of darkness and brutality that Christensen emotes.
The Debt is the story of a team of three young Mossad agents in the ‘60s that are assigned to take captive the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), a WWII-era monster loosely based on Dr. Joseph Mengele. The team, comprised of a beautiful translator (Jessica Chastain), an ambitious unit commander (Marton Csokas), and a driven yet damaged operative (Sam Worthington), all too quickly falls into the inescapable games of humanity, and are tormented to the breaking point by their charge.
On the surface, the first movie you may think of to compare this to is 2005’s Munich. Same dark theme, same driven yet guileless characters. But a story that more readily compares is 1994’s Death and the Maiden, a similarly haunting tale of victims of Nazi ruthlessness facing their demons. The Debt has the same intimate feel as the Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley film, folding us viewers into the delicately intertwined hands of the young, idealistic protagonists who only know they want to do right, but have not yet learned how to comfortably categorize right into simple terms of black and white.
Director John Madden has done a brilliant job, much as Roman Polanski did in Death and the Maiden, of ratcheting the tension tighter and tighter in every scene of this movie. From the relationship between the three agents, to the plotting and violent capture of Vogel, and on to the mounting tedium, uncertainty, fear and hatred the agents endure while holding Vogel captive, this film lets viewers personally and intimately experience the slow spiritual and emotional decline that grows from hopes for justice into acts of violent revenge, and finally, prayers for redemption.
While you won’t leave The Debt feeling good about, well, anything much, you won’t be left with a lack of deeply moral and philosophical questions to explore for the next few days. Some of those I took away include: Is a man’s death fair justice to those he has killed, or is it merely a tentative salve that hides surviving victims’ wounds for ever so brief a time? Also, is it fair to expect a few people to sacrifice their innocence, or even lives, for what may be, but is not guaranteed to be, a happier, safer future for others?
On the lighter side, the big shocker of the film is that Sam Worthington is indeed a human being after all. After shooting to stardom as first a robot, then a demi-god, and finally a giant, blue, über-humanoid, it was a bit surprising to see him in a role where he’s just a regular Joe who can’t crush cars in his fists or jump from 700 foot high cliffs onto the back of flying pterodactyls (or whatever those were). Despite such a long hiatus from roles that required much more besides fighting, yelling, and looking pissed off, it was surprising, in a good way, to see him show a range of emotions. Of course, playing the younger version of the character also played by eternally melancholy Ciarán Hinds helped his credibility a great deal. Hinds practically bleeds gravitas and despair with merely a simple shift of the eyes or dip of the chin. With Tom Wilkinson and Helen Mirren playing the older versions of the other two protagonists, you know that the film is going to be teeming with volatile emotional conflict and intensity.
There is nothing about this film that would keep a person seeking something serious, dramatic, and deeply thought-provoking from writing off a couple of hours some evening this week to watch it. Love, revenge, genocide, hate, truth—your tragic themes know no end. Just be sure to bring your tank of helium. You’re going to need something to make you laugh after it’s over.
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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.