Michael Caine is at his best in this suspense drama based on a specific instance of French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, but the point of the film is not to point fingers at France but rather to examine the very nature of collaboration and religious hypocrisy. Every character is perfectly cast, and Tilda Swinton,Jeremy Northam, Alan Bates, and Charlotte Rampling especially so, but it is Caine with his extraordinary ability to express tension and desperation with a grimace and a cold sweat who carries the film. The anti-Semitism of the Vichy government and the ways in which many French people eagerly handed over Jewish people to the Nazis is well documented; this film takes it to a very personal level and shows the depths to which human beings will sink in order to save themselves.
Review of The Statement
