"Most of Diplomacy is a two-handed chamber drama restricted to a pressurized hotel suite leased by the German occupation, a half-lit royal office that plays host to hours of zigzagging polemics between Nazi commander Dietrich von Cholitz (Niels Arestrup) and Swedish pacifist Raoul Nordling (Andre Dussollier)...Relying on newsreels to ground its liberally fictionalized back and forth in historical record, even at one point draining its staged footage of color for a brief moment of trickery to further visually meld the reality and its recreation, Diplomacy isn't really fooling anyone into feeling doom-laden suspense (Paris, after all, is still standing), but the principal performers sell the momentousness of the drama." Full review of Schlöndorff's Spielbergian history lesson up now at Slant.
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