Claus von Stauffenberg was a
Nazi army officer who attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf’s
Lair on July 20, 1944. Stauffenberg was shot the next day as a result. The
Nazis did not surrender until May 7, 1945, a few months shy of a year later, so
Stauffenberg’s intent to end the war would have made a substantial difference in
terms of the number of dead and wounded from World War II in Europe. The 2008
film, Valkyrie, chronicles
the story in the genre of historical fiction, even though Tom Cruise, Bill
Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson play Nazi figures (without even German
accents), although Tom Hollander does play a suspicious Nazi quite convincingly.
Viewers could still be excused for approaching the film as a “Wagner meets
Shakespeare in the Park” production. The film gets its title from the Valkyrie
in Wagner’s opus: handmaidens of the gods. The sparce religious nomenclature in
a few scenes of the film is easy to miss, and, I submit, the interlarding of
religion is ill-suited to the political drama.
The full essay is at "Valkyrie."
