Anthropoid

Anthropoid is an absorbing account of an event in WWII less remembered today than it should be—the 1942 assassination by Czech partisans of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, commander of Germany’s occupying force in Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).  One of Hitler’s chief lieutenants—the primary architect of the “Final Solution”--Heydrich was the highest-ranking Nazi official assassinated during the war.  The film meticulously reconstructs the days leading up to the attack and its horrific aftermath.  Anthropoid does not depict a triumph in any conventional sense of the term, but its portrait of determination and courage in the face of nearly impossible odds is all the more stirring for that. 

 

The film begins literally in medias res, plunging the audience into the story from the point-of-view of a parachutist hitting the ground.  In 1941, the exiled Czech Army, based in England, sends two soldiers, Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy), back to Czechoslovakia to kill Heydrich.  They parachute in at night and, barely eluding German patrols,  make their way to Prague where they are given shelter in a “safe” house run by a warm-hearted patriot (Alena Mihulova) and her family.  Soon they make contact with the few members of the Resistance left alive, a demoralized group led by a weary veteran, Uncle Hajsky (Toby Jones).  Fearful of spies and informers, they are initially suspicious of the newcomers.  Even worse, they’re appalled by the boldness of their mission—reprisals for killing Heydrich will be severe, they warn, bringing death to countless civilians and perhaps an end to organized resistance in Prague. 

But the plan moves forward despite these reservations.  The reluctant allies are all patriotic Czechs, differing only in their ideas on how best to fight their Nazi occupiers.  Rather than presenting a monochromatic view of patriotism, director Sean Ellis and co-writer Anthony Frewin’s screenplay explores the many shades of loyalty and levels of commitment among people engaged in a life-and-death struggle against a ruthless enemy. Under constant threat of exposure and death, the conspirators remain mostly indoors, venturing out only under extremely guarded conditions.  Low interior lighting and tightly framed shots of cramped, crowded rooms visually capture this claustrophobic existence.  

Kubis and Gabcik recruit two local women (sensitively portrayed by Charlotte Le Bon and Anna Geislerova) to accompany them on “dates” as they scout possible locations for the ambush.  The presence of the women is calculated to make them less conspicuous but also makes them more vulnerable as each forms an emotional attachment to his partner.  The scenes of growing tenderness between the two pairs are some of the film’s most affecting, and when the day of the attack arrives and all realize they may never see each other again, the heartbreak is powerfully conveyed in glances and halting words.  Murphy and Geislerova are especially effective. 

 

As are many of the other performers in the superb supporting cast. Mihulova and Jones stand out for their sympathetic portrayals of ordinary people rising to the extraordinary demands of their time, as well as Harry Lloyd as an intrepid Resistance fighter and Jiri Simek as a tortured collaborator.  The Prague setting is used effectively as another character in the drama  Doing his own cinematography, Ellis limits the film's palette to mostly grays and browns, suppressing color to convey the bleakness of a city drained of lifeblood.  This visual design pops up in the story, too—when the two decoy women show up to their first date with the assassins in bright dresses and lipstick, the older, battle weary Gabcik lectures them sternly on the importance of not standing out, not calling attention to themselves.  After that, they deliberately dress in drab colors, fading into their sepia-toned surroundings.

 

Coming at film’s midpoint, the explosive assassination scene releases the tension of the first half, removing all restraints from the pace and action thereon.  Constricted compositions and longer takes give way to careening handheld shots and fluid editing.  The finale sees the surviving commandos holed up in the basement of a church, hoping against hope to escape discovery by vengeful Stormtroopers unleashing chaos on the city as they hunt them down.  Brutally staged in what feels like real time, it’s almost too harrowing to watch. (The real siege lasted several hours but is compressed for dramatic purposes.)  

Previous films about Heydrich’s assassination (Hitler’s Madman, Operation: Daybreak) have depicted Heydrich himself, but Anthropoid sticks exclusively to the point-of-view of the assassins.  The mission’s name, Anthropoid, means “in the form of a human being,” an appropriate code name for the man known as the Beast of Prague.  In this film, Heydrich’s in the form of a character only—he’s a target, glimpsed from afar by his stalkers, a presence more motivational and symbolic than personal.  It’s a choice that risks distancing the audience from the emotional urgency of eliminating him, a dim historical figure whose atrocities we hear about but never witness, and reducing the film to a dry exercise in reenactment.  But Anthropoid’s use of cinema verite techniques ensures that a sense of immediacy is never lost. The viewer shares the constrained physical and emotional space of the characters, hiding in tiny rooms with them and later racing at breakneck speed down streets and through backyards, partners in their flight.    

Some viewers will undoubtedly be disappointed that Anthropoid isn’t another Valkyrie, the 2008 thriller about a failed conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that starred Tom Cruise and Kenneth Branagh.  But eschewing star power and glossy production for a lower-key, more indie approach not only serves the story better but is the more honest way to pay tribute to the men and women who died heroically fighting their oppressors in Prague those many years ago.