“I’m a soldier, I serve my country. But this is not my country.”
-Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), Valkyrie (2008)
It’s an acknowledged fact not only of enjoying media—books, films, music, and the like—but also of studying history (and wine) that certain things do not age well. This can be difficult when the subject of our nostalgic enjoyment has become progressively more problematic by shifting tastes and times, and as its messages become harder to revisit upon rewatching and reexamining under the ever-changing march of time. That 2008’s Valkyrie—directed by Bryan Singer written by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, and starring Tom Cruise—may not have aged as well as I would have liked does not underscore its importance to me in several major aspects of my development and ability to appreciate not only media and history, but also current events around me.
Recently, I began writing a Russian-fairytale inspired novel in part after being deeply touched by an article I read in The Atlantic by Russian author Mikhail Shishkin which opens with the line: “Culture, too, is a casualty of war.” As a History Major and an almost Asian Studies minor in college—one preparing for a job with the State Department or in intelligence—I remember how we were always careful to discuss a country’s citizens as apart from its government. This is a very delicate way of leading into the fact that I am writing about a movie which is at best a fairly ahistorical retelling of the plot to assassinate the leader of Nazi Germany in the fading days of World War II. These are not easy topics, and they are certainly more relevant and more difficult to discuss at the present time.
But it does not do to ignore difficult topics in difficult times.
This is, in fact, one of the messages of the movie. There is a kind of heartening nature to the way in which the film portrays the July 20th Plot to assassinate Hitler. Through the lens of a Cruise-led slick spy thriller we are woven into an apparently misfit bunch of disgusted and disgruntled officers who believe that “Any problem in the world can be solved with the proper application of high explosives.” There is a heroic kind of naivete in watching Cruises’ Stauffenberg navigate the inner workings of the Third Reich’s bureaucracy to turn a contingency plan into a coup attempt, and also in the genuine way certain characters come about to his side whether by force and surprise or sheer charisma and moral compass realignment. It is at once a saccharine Hollywood makeover of a dark period in world history and a hopeful message to the world that, should circumstances such as this ever arise again, it will never be too late to act.
“God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men,” opines a character near the film’s midpoint. “I have a feeling that for Germany, it may come down to one.”
The film is full of those kinds of corny one-liners that seem already to exist to a different kind of cinema world. It is full of gripping, dark close-ups, moralistic dialogue, clicking heels and marching rows of battle-ready soldiers. The thin veneer of The Rule Of Cool splashes across much of the film, when it isn’t overtly trying to pull heartstrings or sell ideas broader than simply “Hitler=Bad.” In being the vehicle it is, Valkyrie dispenses with most of the historical complications of its eponymous plot: that there were plenty of Nazis willing to get rid of Hitler for the preservation of the Nazi regime, that many of the plot’s officers were among the best and the brightest of the Wehrmacht and had therefore enabled the war unfolding over Europe and the horrors of the Holocaust which followed, and that, to a certain degree, the July 20th Plot was doomed from the start.
There were no real good men in any of this.
But, as a historian and as someone who has lived through and studied his fair share of history, the question remains: Where are the purely good men? It’s an ideological and ethical test frequently put up to the lens of both modern and historic events and one which is ultimately poised to fail. This is not to excuse the whitewashing of history which occurs in this movie, but to hedge it against critiques of a portrayal such as this. The truth of a story and the way it’s told are not always the same—and there’s something to be said about Valkyrie attempting to embody the spirit of resistance to the Nazis as opposed to its messier reality.
If it seems like I’m almost embarrassed to like this film, well, I am. This is a guilty pleasure of mine, and one which I am a little wary of sharing in the first place. But, here we are! I fully admit it has no place alongside many of the others on this list—and fully admit it lacks many of my own criteria for a top movie. It is absurd in only that it is so genuine, its cinematography is nothing special and its music is serviceable. The screenplay, as mentioned above, is fine, and the acting isn’t exactly what I would call subtle. Tom Cruise can only ever be Tom Cruise, and he is perfectly himself in this.
Why, then, is it here?
Well, first because of when I watched it. 2008 was an interesting time in my life—I was deep into my WWII historian phase, beginning a temporarily ruinous temporary infatuation with Ayn Rand, and just beginning to enter that wonderfully teenaged period where one is convinced they have seen the world and know everything there ever is to know. The ideas presented in this movie were some of the first to really give me a kind of pause: that there could be a moment in the future where one could regret a vast multitude of things not only that they themselves had done, but also that they have enabled to happen. There was an element of ordered resistance and malicious compliance which I found appealing then, and something of a teenage boy’s natural susceptibility to the aforementioned Rule Of Cool which does permeate this movie.
Now, revisiting Valkyrie, I see more of what I may have missed when I was younger, and it makes this more a guilty pleasure in viewing but one which I must still acknowledge at being formative. My first great foray into writing and self-publishing—the ongoing Freedom and Control series—was heavily inspired by this entire period of history and something of the July 20th Plot and therefore also of Valkyrie. My eventual progression away from the person I was at that age owes something to this movie and its cries of morality and understanding in the face of acknowledged injustice and evil. Even now, there are moments and lines from the movie which I find applicable. Perhaps now, more than ever, if I am to be honest. (I think barely a month goes by that I don’t quip, “This is a military operation. Nothing ever goes according to plan.”)
There’s nostalgia involved too—because who doesn’t want to think back on a time when there were good guys and bad guys like this? That’s part of the movie’s conceit, but it’s part of life’s conceit, too. Tom Cruise is good for this—the consummate tragic Hollywood hero swaggering about with eyepatch and pistol or briefcase and falling before a firing squad shouting: “Long Live Sacred Germany!” (I would give a spoiler warning, but this is ostensibly a historical film and I think we all know the plot to kill Hitler failed and how a failed plot to kill Hitler would go).
In the end, though, I find the most interesting ahistorical element of the film is in its portrayal of the plot’s chances of success. I think it’s safe to say the consensus of the July 20th Plot, regardless of whether or not Stauffenberg succeeded in killing Adolf Hitler, is that it wouldn’t have remotely brought down the Nazi regime or even necessarily brought about a swifter end to World War II. It was a plot of desperation, and as such was full of the kinds of holes men and women in desperate situations ignore in the hopes of it all working out. But the plot in the movie is well-executed barring a few bad (or just feckless) actors, a misplaced suitcase, and too-good weather. It’s a heroic last stand by impassioned, moralistic individuals working to overthrow the true great evil of the world. It’s a Hollywood spin on a thoroughly tragic and complicated chapter, and in doing so it turns into something akin to an inspiration of a kind the plot itself perhaps never could.
In an honest sense, Valkyrie becomes not a film about a historical event, but an almost plea which I heard then and still hear when I rewatch it: What if there had been just one good man?
“We need to show the world that not all of us were like him.”