Music Box

You can draw a straight line from Jagged Edge (1985) though Betrayed (1988) to Music Box. All three were written by Joe Eszterhas with the latter two sharing the same director, Costa-Gavras, and producer, Irwin Winkler.  All three  concern a single, professional young woman who finds herself caught in a web of deception spun by the seemingly good man whom she loves,.

This time around Jessica Lange is the woman, a successful Chicago attorney, Ann Talbot, whose father (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a post-war immigrant from Hungary, is accused out-of-the-blue by the State Department of being a Nazi war criminal. Being convinced of her father’s innocence and against advice she decides to be his defense attorney.  As the trial progresses she becomes increasingly uncertain about how well she knows her father.

Much as White Suprematism was the peg on which Betrayed hung its hat, Naziism is the driving evil here, although unlike the former film the events are related verbally with no direct representation. Given our familiarity with Nazi atrocities this is actually a good thing with the plot concerning itself with the on-cue courtroom thrills as both sides (Frederic Forrest plays the prosecutor) go head-to-head over whether dear old Pop is in reality a brutal killer. In this role Mueller-Stahl, doing his kindly, paternalistic family man schtick, is well-cast although his character remains a cipher throughout the film. 

The main area in which Music Box improves on its forbears is in the character of Ann who is brought to life in an excellent performance by Jessica Lange. Unlike the other films mentioned, which were both routine thrillers, with all the violence off-screen and no sex, the film actually works as a drama with Lange doing a superb job of taking us on her character’s journey from a being a woman confident of her place in the world, a working-class daughter made good, to seeing its foundations turn to dust.

FYI:  Eszterhas's own father, also a Hungarian, would subsequently be accused of war crimes although in his autobiography Eszterhas claims that at the time of writing his screenplay he had no knowledge.of his father's ark past. 

 

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