Anthropoid is better than your average WWII film. But it’s not for the faint of heart, and maybe only for the serious masochist.
The UK-French-Czech historical thriller takes on a chapter in WWII history less frequently covered in film and literature. “Anthropoid” was the name of the operation to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydrich, leader of the Nazi occupying forces in Czechoslovakia. As Anthropoid’s opening titles relish in explaining, Heydrich’s viciousness got him the nickname “The Butcher of Prague.”
For a moment, these opening words threaten the victory of sensationalism over empathy. But such fears are soon alleviated. The two soldiers tasked by London with Heydrich’s assassination are Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcík (Cillian Murphy). They are parachuted back into Czechoslovakia, where they face the first portent of looming violence with sorrow and shaking hands. The men come to be sheltered by a mother and son in Prague. They are also aided by the dwindling national resistance, as well as by their respective love interests, Marie Kovárníková (Charlotte Le Bon) and Lenka Fafková (Anna Geislerová).
The film is generous in its character development. In limited time and with many moving parts, it wins our investment in Jan and Josef, in the family that shelters them and in their fellow resistors. Director Sean Ellis treats his female characters—Mrs. Moravec (Alena Milhulová), who hides the men, and Marie and Lenka—fairly, although the romantic plotlines are a difficult sell in the allotted time. Visually, Anthropoid is a love letter to Prague. A sun-shot mist hangs over the city, omnipresent as fear or hope.
Dornan brings some real acting chops to the table, delivering a charming boyishness and a range of feeling untapped in his work in “The Fall” and certainly in Fifty Shades of Grey. He is convincing in all but his Czech accent. Still, Murphy steals the show. He seems to carry good and evil heavy on his shoulders, though here he plays resigned patriotism less rawly than he did as Damien O’Donovan in The Wind That Shakes the Barley a decade ago.
The ending scenes of Anthropoid parse the true history buffs from the Boy Scout adventurists. In a barrage of bullets and brutality (and cyanide), the latter portion of the film is practically unbearable. Beyond tragedy, it is a visceral bombardment, a sensory overload, an inevitable anxiety attack. It blows away the quiet suspense, the sparing use of soundtrack, the faux-quotidian intimacy established in the first half of the film.
The titles that close Anthropoid do nothing to alleviate this trauma. Instead they relinquish facts—the Munich Agreement was nullified; the number of Czech villagers murdered in retaliation for Heydrich’s murder was 5,000—so that the theatre is left in a dazed hush.
Maybe the ordeal of watching Anthropoid isn’t worth it. The story is arguably no longer actionable. It might only reiterate that one historical evil most familiar to our culture. Yet, the violence the film so unrelentingly portrays does not feel like the trampled soil of human suffering. It cuts a fresh wound.
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