Del and Mladen review ‘Truth & Treason’

Image courtesy of Angel Studios.

“Truth & Treason” Starring Ewan Horrocks, Rupert Evans, Ferdinand McKay and Daf Thomas. Directed by Matt Whitaker. 2 hours, 1 minute. Rated PG-13. Theatrical release.

Plot synopsis: Angered by the arrest of his Jewish friend and disillusioned with Nazi Germany after hearing wartime BBC broadcasts, a German teen recruits two of his friends to help circulate leaflets condemning Adolf Hitler – with catastrophic results.

Spoilers: Yes.

Del’s take

I should have liked “Truth & Treason” a lot more than I did.

The story is terrific, about a group of teenage boys who sneak out after curfew to spread anti-Nazi leaflets and essays across the city of Hamburg, Germany in the early years of World War II as the Wehrmacht juggernaut is rolling across Poland, western Europe and Russia.

The parallels between 1940 Germany and 2025 America are undeniable and terrifying. As somebody who read William Shirer’s excellent “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and told himself “It could never happen here,” I found myself shuddering at the image of Nazi recruiting posters that bear an uncanny resemblance to the ICE recruiting memes I saw online just last week.

But “Truth & Treason” is strangely lifeless. The story is told with the callow earnestness of a Boy Scout merit badge project, depriving it of an emotional heart.

That’s too bad because it’s a fascinating story about actual events. Ewan Horrocks plays Helmuth Hübner, a 16-year-old German teen who is part of a posse of four boys – himself, Salomon Schwarz (played by Nye Occomore), Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (Ferdinand McKay) and Rudi Wobbe (Daf Thomas). They jump off bridges together, beat up obnoxious Hitler Youth leaders together, and read subversive books. Then, Helmuth’s older brother returns from the front with a forbidden item – a radio that allows the boys to hear broadcasts from outside the country. It is from those broadcasts Helmuth learns the truth about Nazi Germany. Meanwhile Salomon, who is Jewish, is picked up by the SS and dispatched to Auschwitz. The convergence of those two events radicalizes young Helmuth, who borrows his church’s typewriter to create leaflets critical of Hitler and the Nazis. A local SS officer, Erwin Mussener (Rupert Evans) finds some of Helmuth’s leaflets and launches an investigation. From that point the movie follows the expected trajectory.

The problem with “Truth & Treason” is that it never really develops any of its characters as people, and it glosses over the entanglements of relationships so that when the story reaches its inevitable conclusion, there’s not much in the way of an emotional climax. Mladen will probably fuss about that because he’s not a touchy-feely kind of guy but in this case an emotional bond between character on screen and person sitting in the audience is crucial to the film’s success, yet there’s little to no attachment because nothing much is done with the characters as living, breathing human beings.

Instead, the movie focuses more on the mechanical process of storytelling. Helmuth’s transformation from uncommitted Hitler Youth member to risk-taking radical occurs quickly and without sufficient demonstration. I mean, yes, we see Salomon taken into custody by the Gestapo and yes, we hear radio broadcasts denouncing Hitler. But somehow it’s not enough and then boom! we’ve moved on to the next step in the process.

The only character who rises above the mundane is Rupert Evans as Mussener, the SS investigator who, like Helmuth, begins to realize the Hitler regime is built on a foundation of lies. He is torn between his duty and his humanity, and Evans does an excellent job of portraying this growing inner conflict.

The movie takes pains to stress two points which are relevant to 21^st century America. It wraps with a quote attributed to Russian lawyer and dissident Alexy Navalny: “Sometimes the greatest rebellion is to simply speak the truth!” The other appears in a coda presented as the credits roll – I believe it was director Whitaker who appeared and urged moviegoers to “Practice courage,” an unmistakable call to action for resistance against the fascist lies propagated by the Trump regime.

“Truth & Treason” is a timely and important movie about an act of courage, but in my opinion the story is not told as well as it could have been. Therefore, instead of giving it an A score, I’m giving it a B.

See it, yes, but don’t expect to come out of the theater with tears in your eyes.

Mladen’s take

Let’s get honest about Truth. The word has no meaning today, probably never has at any time in history.

Truth is an obnoxious concoction of beliefs and historical contextlessness. Its users wield Truth as though it’s the same as Fact.

Day in and day out on the internets, we are exposed to Truth. Truth about eye shadow and Botox, about paleodiets and veganism, about Democrats and Republicans, about the economy and unemployment rate, about cryptocurrency, about the war in Ukraine, about the slaughter in Gaza and Darfur. If a story in a newspaper or magazine or on the web has Truth in its headline, I never read it. Truth is nothing more than someone’s opinion about Fact. If there is no Fact involved at all, Truth is Bullshit.

Boy, that was therapeutic.

So, for me, the film “Truth & Treason” already had a big-ass strike against it even before Del and I sat down to watch it. The movie should’ve been titled “Fact & Treason” because Fact exists no matter what we believe to be Truth. The Fact is that Hitler started World War II in Europe and three years later authorized the full-scale bureaucratization of the Final Solution. The Fact of industrial slaughter of millions of people is appalling and hideous all on its own. There’s nothing that neo-Nazis or holocaust deniers can do to change the Fact. What they can do is try to sell you the Truth. The Truth of the genetic inferiority of the Slavic races. The Truth of the financial takeover of the planet by Jews. The Truth of homosexuality as unnatural.

Fact, on the other hand, needs no spokesman. Fact needs no interpreter. Fact needs no political party. Fact takes no sides. Fact is.

It came to pass, of course, that the kid pamphleteer in “Truth & Treason” faced a Nazi judge who effortlessly pointed out that the Allies fighting the Axis had their own cruel histories of barbarism and colonialism and murdering the innocent. Yes, the Nazi judge was a piece of Hitler‑enabling slag. And, yes, the Nazi judge was correct about American and English and French conquest of peoples not as well armed with weapons or propaganda. He, too, spoke the Truth as he defined it.

Truth lets us take sides, no matter who is offending whom. Fact is undisputable. All the governments of the states fighting World War II were savage, and, as Fact now shows, would be again. Their Truths prevailed because they were able to suffocate Fact with bullets and bombs and global trade.

In “Truth & Treason,” the pamphleteer and judge contorted or ignored Fact to speak the Truth as each understood its meaning. In “Truth & Treason” only Evans as Mussener showed that he understood the difference between Truth and Fact. He then made a choice. Mussener decided Truth was better than Fact.

Del is correct, “Truth & Treason” speaks to the times we now face. But, then again, Fact shows that humanity has sucked and always will. The failure of “Truth & Treason” to mitigate that Fact pisses me off. The movie generated an antagonist who was far more compelling and alert than the teenaged protagonist, who, of all things, liked opera, which to me is nothing more than organized screaming. And that’s Fact.

“Truth & Treason” notches a C+.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.