In September 1938, while a last-ditch peace conference was taking place in Munich, two former comrades from Oxford University, a German and an Englishman, joined forces to derail the plan. Hitler’s secret to invade all of Europe. Based on the novel by Robert Harris.
Posted at 9:30 a.m.
On September 30, 1938, on his return from Munich where he had signed the agreement which allowed Germany to take control of the territory of the Sudeten Germans, in Czechoslovakia, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain brandished the famous paper, declaring “peace for our time”.
If he was cheered loudly at the time, let’s just say the statement stuck with him…for the wrong reasons. Less than a year later, World War II began.
Inspired by the novel by Robert Harris, this film returns to the Munich agreements through two fictional characters, the Englishman Hugh Legat (George MacKay) and Paul von Hartmann (Jannis Niewöhner), two comrades from the University of Oxford who had not seen each other since 1932, when they argued over Adolf Hitler’s political choices.
The one and the other, working in the political cabinets of Chamberlain and Hitler, find themselves at the conference. No longer believing a word of Hitler, Paul convinces Hugh to make him meet Chamberlain to reveal to him the true nature of the Führer’s plans.
Crossed by a few moments of great intensity, this political drama is nevertheless a little too smooth and without much audacity, especially on the artistic level, to remain in our memory. Nor does he manage to make us understand and feel the historical magnitude of this moment.
Worse still, the ultra-programmed appearance of a secondary character allowed us to guess without too much difficulty the outcome of the plot. It’s never good.
Certainly the film is fine and the designers ticked all the boxes for a successful historical drama. But now, they checked them off… without added value.
The (real) character of Neville Chamberlain, embodied by Jeremy Irons, is quite calm, even philosophical, here. In Munich, he navigates by sight, but with blissful certainty. On the other hand, the film makes no room for Churchill, then leader of the opposition, who, in London, had sharply denounced the agreement. The character of Hitler, played by Ulrich Matthes, is not very convincing.
In the business for twenty years, actor George MacKay caught our attention for his role as Corporal Schofield in 1917 by Sam Mendes. In Munich, he plays again with great accuracy, but almost always in the same register. Like the movie…
On Netflix
historical drama
Munich – The Edge of War (vf: The vice of Munich)
Christian Schwochow
With George MacKay, Jannis Niewöhner and Jeremy Irons
2:09 a.m.