Unfortunately, I can’t totally be sure about all the plot points because it’s no longer in theaters anywhere in Western Washington (my home area) and the DVD won’t be out for a few months. You are right in that the doctor was the only one clearly implicated (in the scene at the mass burial pit). I assumed the lawyer had been involved in the robbery plot because in his confrontation with Rachel right before he was shot he admitted to collaborating with the Nazis. Plus, the likelihood that he would trust the man who sent the Jewish clients on the boat that was attacked by the Nazi patrol boat is much higher if he was involved in the robbery plot. With that assumption, I thought the lawyer had intended to keep the money himself but that the doctor knew about the black book and instead decided to take it himself. .
So . . . even though I introduced it into this discussion by saying, “Verhoeven has said, in interviews, that his childhood memories of the Nazi occupation of Holland are extremely important in his work,” you were still working from the assumption that it was nothing more than a personal theory of mine, which I dug out of my, um, hat for the purposes of this thread? He mentioned his childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland as an overarching influence on his work in the commentary track of Starship Troopers (which is, among other things, a parody of the pro-Nazi propaganda of Leni Riefenstahl). I also saw it in print when I was researching the biographical capsule I wrote for The Scarecrow Movie Video Guide.
O.K., I missed that sentence. What did Verhoeven say about his memories of World War II? What specifically did he remember about it?
IIRC (I’m not going to re-screen the commentary track of Starship Troopers just for this thread; if I do so again in the near future I’ll post something here), he mentioned his memories of the Occupation as one of many influences; I don’t remember the details.
Meanwhile, Google offers a rich supply of references. Here’s one: The A.V. Club | Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.
At the time, were you living in an occupied city during the largest military conflict in the history of the world? Because I think memories of that would tend to stay with you a little longer than, say, nap-time at kindergarten.
See, this is a point I was trying to figure out how I was going to address. My other clearest early memories–besides the one I mentioned, where I saw my mother in a wheelchair without any kind of preparation for this–was when my dad got beat up by a gang with beer bottles and had blood coming out of his ears, and when Bobby Kennedy was shot, when I was five. All pretty traumatic episodes; and none anything to compare to a Nazi occupation.