POTUS will impose tariffs on multiple European countries until a deal is made to buy Greenland.
Stephen Miller makes the case for US control of Greenland.
To better understand how history is repeating…
April 9th 1940. Nazi Germany occupies Denmark, demanding an immediate surrender. Mere hours later, the government begins collaborating. But a Danish ambassador in the US decides to rebel in order to save his country.
The Good Traitor is a 2020 Danish drama film about Henrik Kauffmann and the signing of the Greenland treaty with the United States after the Nazi occupation of Denmark during World War II.
By Nicolas Rapold
March 25, 2021
The Good Traitor
Directed by Christina Rosendahl∙Biography, Drama∙1h 55m
In the first few minutes of “The Good Traitor,” a woman slits her husband’s throat in a sanitarium, and somehow it’s not the movie’s most dramatic event. The man is the Danish ambassador to the United States, Henrik Kauffmann, and Christina Rosendahl’s handsome historical film recounts his renegade campaign to save Denmark after the Nazi invasion in 1940.
Based in Washington, D.C., Kauffmann (Ulrich Thomsen) wheels and deals with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Henry Goodman) and others to secure the support of the U.S., in defiance of the surrendered government back in Copenhagen.
Kauffmann’s machinations — granting Roosevelt special access to Greenland, and generally acting like an unofficial leader in exile — were an audacious gamble during wartime chaos.
Rosendahl fleshes out a secret history of back-porch diplomacy: Roosevelt was a family friend of Kauffmann’s wife, Charlotte (Denise Gough), allowing the couple to press their cause during nattily costumed garden visits.
While the patient sit-downs of diplomacy do not reliably translate to high drama, the somewhat cold-fish ambassador keeps busy on the home front by carrying on with Charlotte’s beloved sister, Zilla (Zoë Tapper). (Even F.D.R. notices — and commiserates.) The film’s prime setting, the embassy grounds, is shot with a lush, charged ambience, sometimes eerily overlaid with audio dispatches about the war.
Rosendahl’s framing complicates any “great man” narrative of the period, and shows how the energies of public and private worlds course back and forth. And in case you’re wondering, the throat-slitting of the opening, which took place years after World War II, was apparently classified by the police as a “mercy killing.”
The Good Traitor
Not rated. In English and Danish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.
Watch it free on Amazon Prime.
