Love, secrets, Nazis and a legend in the Kaiser role
‘ The Exception” is an exceedingly odd movie in which one of the romantic leads is a Nazi, the other Jewish and Kaiser Wilhelm II is vaguely charming, when he’s not being a virulent anti- Semite. So, yeah. Odd. And yet for the most part it works, both as a bizarre romance and a fanciful World War II almost- thriller. This is in large part thanks to the cast, particularly Christopher Plummer as the Kaiser. He’s been exiled to the Netherlands after Germany lost World War I, but Hitler doesn’t dare kill him, or let anyone else do it, worried that the German people still hold him in some symbolic regard.
Thus Capt. Stefan Brandt ( Jai Courtney) is reluctantly assigned to lead the group of German soldiers who make up the Kaiser’s security detail; in reality he’s there to spy on him and see if he says anything subversive or otherwise uncomplimentary about the Fuhrer. ( Not- aspoiler-alert: He does, though Brandt is more bemused by it than anything else.)
Immediately after he re- ports to the Netherlands, he and the new maid, Mieke de Jong ( Lily James), make eye contact, and the next thing you know she shows up in his quarters on the grounds. He tells her to take off her clothes, and she does. The next time they’re together alone she tells him to do the same, and he does.
Thus begins a forbidden affair, made all the more dicey when Mieke tells Brandt that she is Jewish.
Word arrives that Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, will join the Kaiser for dinner. Eddie Marsan’s portrayal is a kind of twisted genius, curious and scary, making Himmler a little man capable of great danger.
Director David Leveaux is less interested in keeping secrets than in introducing them, revealing them and seeing how they play out. Several elements come together in the end, which plays more like a caper film than what’s gone before it, and is less satisfying than what leads to it.
While Courtney and James have an undeniable chemistry, Plummer is the clear highlight here. How he manages to balance the character as a kind of lovable old coot and a short- tempered bigot is something to see.