Fantastic!

Disappointment for a huge fan!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is another "small" film that Nick Nolte has turned into a "must-see" film. His subtle performance (especially when he's playing the burned-out hulk of a man), combined with the Kurt Vonnegut story (with more swerves than you might expect) and some great supporting performers (Sheryl Lee, Alan Arkin, John Goodman and a young Kirsten Dunst)and even its quirky use of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas", make this a film that deserves more attention than it has gotten. From the production side, it also makes excellent use of black and white for the 1960 sequence and tells the flashback in color. Even if you are not a Nick Notle fan, the story alone is worth watching, especially if you are looking for an edgy thriller.

There are numerous films relating to WW2, but Mother Night is quite distinctive among them: In this film, we are introduced to Howard Campbell (Nolte), an American living in Berlin and married to a German, Helga Noth (Lee), who decides to accept the role of a spy: More specifically, a CIA agent Major Wirtanen (Goodman) recruits Campbell who becomes a Nazi propagandist in order to enter the highest echelons of the Hitler regime. However, the deal is that the US Government will never acknowledge Campbell's role in the war for national security reasons, and so Campbell becomes a hated figure across the US. After the war, he tries to conceal his identity, but the past comes back and haunts him. His only "friend" is Wirtanen, but even he cannot do much for the avalanche of events that fall upon poor Campbell...The story is deeply touching, as we watch the tragedy of Campbell who although a great patriot, is treated by disdain by everybody who surrounds him. Not only that, but he also gradually realizes that even the persons who are most close to him, have many secrets of their own. Vonnegut provides us with a moving atmosphere, with Campbell's despair building up and almost choking the viewer.Nolte plays the role of his life, in my opinion; he is even better than in "Affliction", although in both roles he plays tragic figures who are destined to self-destruction. Sheryl Lee is also excellent, and the same can be said for the whole cast in general.I haven't read the book, so I cannot appraise how the film compares to it. In any case, this is something of no importance here: My critique is upon the film per se, and the film wholeheartedly deserves a 9/10.

This movie is a disappointment of Kurt Vonnegut's breezy and engaging novel, for the simple reason that it lacks what the novel has. Mother Night is a better story than The Pianist, so why didn't it win the academy award? The beauty of the book is in its grace and flow, and in the irony we share with the protagonist, not the premise which Vonnegut himself does not strain to prove, just kind of lets it kind of hang there. It would have been an intelligent hand indeed to guide this film away from the major premise that Vonnegut insists on in the foreword of the book, and himself does not insist on proving too thoroughly.The novel has a life of its own outside the premise, and that life is muted and distorted almost completely in the film, by the full commitment to the fulfilling of that premise.Vonnegut stated the premise himself, explicitly, so it must be true. "We must be careful who we pretend to be, because we become who we pretend to be" But a close examination of the book can reveal to a sensitive reader that it's beauty lies not in the major premise, but in the humanity that the reader shares with the protagonist through intense irony throughout. Vonnegut's genius doesn't hurt, but the truth of the matter is that for the most part the premise as it is stated by Vonnegut falls by the wayside to no detriment of the humanistic, ironic, and mind boggling developments, and, yes, finally implications of the novel itself.The story in the book is uplifting in the end, unless you truly believe the last sentence, and in the film it is a downer. The melodramatic hoops this film is forced to jump through is unforgiving. From the sappy music that underscores almost every scene without which the scenes would not "work," to the absolutely worst scene in the film where Resse commits suicide, this film cannot find it's center and, I think, it is because, interestingly, that center is not in the book. The film looks for it, looks for it in various climaxes, like when Resse commits suicide, fitfully and futilely I might add, and Howard J. Campbell's personal demise, but those climactic scenes don't climax the film as a whole because even in the book they are not meant to.To me, Campbell getting his pardon at the end is the pay off to the patient, expectant, and empathetic reader, but in in the film what we see is a guard blowing cigarette smoke over Cambell's dead body. The premise is proved, but I would sincerely ask to what effect? Amazingly, the most amazing thing about the film is Vonnegut's cameo, that is, if you know what he looks like before hand. The film, moment by moment, sucks all of life out of the book, that which gave it an easy breeze of self-confidence and made it exhilaratingly light reading, despite the subject. What it lacks gravely is the élan vital, and again the irony, of the book which for various reasons has it and the film does not.I hope I have at least begun to make the case that the permeating premise is the fait accompli that is the ruin of this project. What the producers achieve by taking and holding the story in its death grip is unfortunately what they got.

In order to enjoy Mother Night, I recommend that you have a lobotomy first. This has to be one of the most unpleasant and unbelievable movies ever concocted. More is required of the viewer than the usual suspension of disbelief: hence my recommendation of a lobotomy. But don't do it; you probably would not understand the movie afterwards, only now the reason would be having too low an IQ, whereas the previous reason was having one that was too high. To focus on just one of the many implausible, indeed absurd, features of the movie, the chief character, played by Nick Nolte, is a German-speaking American asked by the American government to pose as a Nazi in Nazi Germany; via his hate-filled radio speeches, he transmits surreptitious messages to the Allies that help us win the war. He is married to the daughter of a vicious Nazi policeman, who really believes in Der Fuehrer and Nazi ideology. We are given no reason to doubt that the daughter was successfully indoctrinated in the Nazi hatred of non-Aryans. So we have to wonder about this couple presented as being very much in love: what do they talk about? How does Nolte manage to love his Nazi wife?To focus on just one of the many unpleasant features of the movie, at the end Nolte is given the opportunity to prove to the world that he was indeed a double-agent. To say the least, he squanders this opportunity. I guess we are supposed to believe that he does so for a noble reason - to keep his spy activity a secret, so that prospective future American spies can engage in the same work - but to me this rationale doesn't make much sense and it is painful to watch the Nolte character accept it, if that indeed is what he does. You would think, after all he has been through, that he would want to educate the world as to just how painful the life of a spy is, so that prospective future spies would appreciate in advance what they were signing up for. Before signing up, these potential spies could apply moral pressure to the governments of the world that seek to recruit them: they could demand that these governments support them when the mission is complete, instead of abandoning and renouncing them.