The Debt (Assaf Bernstein, 2007): Israel

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

The Debt is a film of two halves. Director Assaf Bernstein interweaves two different periods in the lives of his protagonists. In the first thread he charts them as young Mossad agents in 1965, pursuing the ‘Doctor of Birkenau’, a surgeon named Max Rainer (Edgar Selge) whose savage medical experiments on the Jews at Aushwitz earned him a place in infamy. The second part follows the impact of a report, thirty years later, of a senile man announcing to the world that was in fact the man reported killed by the young agents. Unfortunately the jump forward in time leads to a step back for the film and this uneven production misses the mark.The film opens with three young, and in some cases wounded, faces peering bleakly out of the shadows. As the light of day strikes them, they step out of a plane to a rapturous heroes welcome, faces contorting with plastered on smiles. The audience is then carried through to 1995 and a party to celebrate the publishing of a book by one of the agents, Rachel (Gila Almagor and Neta Garty), telling the tale of their hunt for Rainer, a hunt which ended in his death. The smile on Rachel’s face seems as false as the one she wielded on the gangplank of the plane thirty years previously. A book signing follows, but a note leads her outside and to the news that The Surgeon may not be dead. Without the knowledge of the Israeli government, the three agents being their hunt once again.

Running in parallel is the story of their first attempt at capturing Rainer. This section contains some of the very strongest scenes in the film. In order to sneak him out of Germany to face trial (a process which echoes the renditions being undertaken by the US government at this time) a carefully timed plan is hatched. With Rachel posing as a woman with difficulties becoming pregnant, she visits Rainer, now working as a gynaecologist , to forward their plot. As the movie skips backward and forward in time, the two groups of agents close in on their target and the audience steps closer to the truth.

The scenes with the young Mossad agents are far and away superior to the majority of those which occur later in their lives. Whilst the 1965 thread focuses on the interactions between the agents, their disagreements and their shared plight, the 1995 section often features Rachel working alone. This shift from character study to thriller comes at the expense of the film. Whilst Gila Almagor’s performance is very good, without other characters to play off the story sags. The second part is also missing The Doctor himself. In all the scenes where he and the young agents interact he sets the screen alight. Once his cover has been blown, his openness about the things he has done, his lack of remorse, is truly terrifying. He seems utterly at peace with his deeds and that makes him as terrifying Lecter or Bates could ever be. In particular the scenes where he has Rachel in the gynaecologists stirrups, his clinical manner and detachment coupled with the utterly vulnerable position that she must submit to in front of this killer, are outstanding. Clarice Starling would have been weeping. Finally, the revelations about the initial mission push the audience away from the characters later in their lives. Whilst their interactions keep the young characters interesting, by the end of the film I simply didn’t care about their older incarnations.

With such wonderful moments it is unfortunate that the rest of film simply does not stand up. As soon as Rainer steps off the screen the fire goes out. From a promising start with fascinating characters, it descends into a trudge towards the inevitable conclusion.