Diplomacy

The opening scenes of Diplomacy are slightly jarring. Set during the extremely grave moments towards the end of World War II when Nazi-occupied Paris is about to be liberated by the Allied Forces, the film begins in the wee hours with the most intimate moments of the commanding General Dietrich von Choltitz (Niels Arestrup). Choltitz is a German officer who has been ordered by Adolph Hitler himself to destroy all of Paris before they lose control of it. We are left wondering why such a person, with all of his physical frailties would be so humanised on the cusp of such events.

So begins a film that starts slowly but is written with such precision (unsurprisingly, it is adapted from a theatre version) that every moment is calculated to build up to another, however insignificant it may initially seem.

As General Choltitz wearily starts this fateful day at his residential offices in the Hotel Meurice, which has been entirely commandeered by the Germans, we learn with growing horror the level of havoc and destruction that this failing army intends to wreak upon the Parisians. Working with a reluctant, dismayed French engineer, the Germans have planted thousands of explosives at strategic points, including all the bridges, stations, landmarks (including the Eiffel tower and the Paris Opera) intending to kill and maim as many people as they can before they withdraw, leaving the beloved city unrecognisable.

The film is set almost entirely in General Choltitz’s rooms as he fields his own orders and reflects on his own mortality. It is when Raoul Nordling (Andre Dussolier), a Swedish diplomat who has lived in Paris all his life, sneaks into the General’s offices via a secret passageway that Choltitz is forced to confront the enormity of his orders, and what the wilful destruction of an entire city at the end of a losing battle might mean to Germany for decades to come.

Nordling cajoles, flatters, reasons, and appeals to all of Choltitz’s humanity to try and achieve what he wants, always putting his cause ahead of himself in an act of bravery that is so quietly stoic that it can almost be dismissed as a fluke if one isn’t watching carefully.

We ourselves are at a crucial time in our history when a lack of professional diplomacy (which could also arguably be interpreted as an utter lack of care) has placed an entire nation in dire straits. It is heartening to watch a carefully crafted film that elucidates the usually (sometimes necessarily) clandestine meetings that must take place in order for reason to triumph over madness. Now we just have to hope that the same, somehow, prevails here.