The Debt (2010)

The Debt (2010)  CALL Discussion Group

Director: John Madden

Also directed: Mrs Brown (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Proof (2005)

In 1966 three young Israeli Mossad agents -- Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain), Stefan Gold (Marton Csokas), and David Peretz (Sam Worthington) -- are assigned to abduct a Nazi war criminal, Dr. Vogel (Jesper Christensen), now passing as “Bernhardt,”  in East Berlin. They are to smuggle him out to stand trial in Israel for his sadistic Mengeles-like experiments on Jewish prisoners at Birkinau. David’s concern for Rachel thwarts the escape so they have to hide with him. As Vogel works on his captors’ minds and emotions, on December 31 he provokes David’s attack, cuts his bonds, and escapes, after slashing Rachel’s cheek. Ostensibly to protect Israel from “a national humiliation,” Stefan persuades the others to claim Rachel killed Vogel, confident he will not reappear. This makes them heroes. Pregnant,  Rachel marries Stefan. After she refuses David’s request to leave her loveless marriage, he disappears in a quest to find Vogel, planning to confess their lie to see Vogel stand trial. Crippled by a car bomb, the womanizer Stefan rises to the Israeli cabinet. 

In 1997 their daughter Sarah celebrates Rachel’s (now Helen Mirren) fame in a book on the incident. David reappears (as Ciaran Hinds) having learned Dr Vogel is living in a Ukrainian asylum and will soon tell all to a Russian journalist. Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) orders David to find and kill Vogel. When Rachel refuses David permission to divulge their secret he leaps into an onrushing truck. On ex-husband Stefan’s orders Rachel speeds to the Russian clinic where she meets a false Vogel but leaves the journalist a confession. As she leaves she and Vogel meet and kill each other.

Here are some things to consider:

1. That was the “plot,” the events in order. The narrative -- the manner in which the plot is conveyed -- interlaces the two time schemes. Even within each period the time is shuffled. What are the implications of this switching? How does the order things are revealed affect the themes?
2. How do incidental objects become metaphors? What meanings ripple out of, for example, that fatal truck, or Rachel’s scar, or Stefan’s wheelchair, or the needles? What’s the effect of Vogel being a gynecologist, instead of, say, a podiatrist (or the dentist of Marathon Man)?  Can you name any others (objects that because they are in a work of art invite wider reading)? In a metaphor, the object is the bulb, the theme is the light.
3. Speaking of which: in the first and last shots the three young Israelis step out of the darkness of their military cargo plane into the blinding light of Israel. How do you read that shot, in the context of the film?
4. How does the romantic subplot -- the David-Rachel-Stefan triangle -- reflect upon the  larger political story? What themes unite the two strands?  What is the point of the differences/similarities between David and Stefan?
5. What are the nuances in Vogel’s characterization?
6. This film is a remake of the 2007 film (same title) by the Israeli director Assaf Bernstein. What does the film say about Israel? And beyond? Remember: “A work of art is more about the time it’s made than about the time in which it is set. The very best are about the much later times when it is viewed” (anon). 
7. What thematic purposes are served by the variety of violence? 
8. Compare the different forms of lying, playing roles, pretending.
9. Can you make anything (on a thematic level) of the following phrases:
1. the three young agents relive “an unimaginable evil...Israel’s worst nightmare.” 
2. they vanquish the monster by confronting it.
3. “It’s not always a blessing to survive.”
4. “the Americans have pulled out.”
5. “You Jews never knew how to kill. Only how to die.”
6. “We’re not animals. Remember what we are. Remember what we are not.”
7. “So. We were all insane. Is this the answer?”
8. “I didn’t think about myself at all.”
9. “Aren’t you tired of lying?”