Moviegoers are a suspicious lot. I’ve been suggesting to whoever will listen that Bridge of Spies is a must-see film and in return I get side-ways glances, probably because the sell on the thing is so off-putting.
The title is apt as it turns out but it’s hardly smart and the poster has a crusty Tom Hanks in front of an American flag with a hammer and sickle tattooed on the side of his skull. Add to that the fact that the director is Steven Spielberg and people start to imagine some kind of backward looking sop to purity and righteousness where America is once more the world-police defending Democracy against a global threat. In a real world of sanctioned torture who wants to swallow that?
Don’t fear because Bridge of Spies is a fine piece of work, nimble, quick-witted, and very funny. It isn’t deep exactly but Spielberg allows a healthy scepticism to creep through. A clue to its success is that Joel and Ethan Coen delivered the final screenplay, re-working Matt Charman’s original script.
Thus Bridge has the Coenesque traits of brilliantly re-imagined genre tropes, droll dialogue and scathing irony. This is combined with Spielberg being in a late career surge. He drives the thing with a mobile camera and an urgency not seen in years. Its emotions are earned and it leaves a powerful must-see-again afterglow.
Yet its Cold War spy story is bleak, even depressing in essence.
It’s a movie of shifting allegiances and sympathies, where camouflage is a necessity. Spielberg uses that idea to control his style - which takes large satirical bites out of the material wherever possible, while delivering one terrific set-piece of suspense after another.
‘Spielberg drives the thing with a mobile camera and an urgency not seen in years.’
Bridge of Spies negotiates a tricky parlour game of sincerity and piss-take, hard-boiled pragmatism and deceit all built around an irony: What do the Yanks do when they get caught out spying on the Russkies? They send a lawyer to seal the deal, a man whose business is all about liabilities, risk percentages and the price you pay for peace of mind.
The plot, which begins in 1957, is based on a true story where a top-gun Manhattan insurance attorney Jim Donovan (Hanks) who once prosecuted Nazis in the Nuremburg trials is selected by his peers to defend Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). It is a political gesture both cynical and naïve; it’s Uncle Sam showing the Soviets that even spies get a fair shake, even if by popular consensus and ideological necessity Abel is destined for the electric chair.
No one expects Donovan to take the job seriously. His wife Mary (Amy Ryan) and kids think it’s a bad idea as though exposure to a spy will in some way unhinge this nice-guy patriot. Spielberg is expert at evoking the rank atmosphere of Red-hating; Donovan’s subway ride to work is a minefield of fish-eye stares. His house even gets shot up. But Donovan believes he is not defending a spy so much as he is proving that the Constitution actually means something; after all wasn’t Abel a soldier in the service of his country?
Abel - Rylance is brilliant, delivering the part in a shuffling gait, hang-dog expression and sing-song voice - is shakeable in his silence and his stoic resolve. Every time Donovan reminds him of the danger that surrounds his every move Abel offers the perfectly sensible (and Coenesque) rejoinder: “Would it help?”
Donovan argues his case before the Supreme Court and wins a life sentence for Abel. But the tipping point comes when Donovan explains that things being what they are might one spy be worth trading another spy one day?
While Donovan is fighting the menace of Cold War cruelty in court, the Pentagon plots. The US has the top secret U2 spy plane program designed to give the Americans the edge in the Cold War’s game of nuclear brinkmanship. When U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down and captured by the Soviets the US lose the moral high ground and Donovan’s ‘bargaining’ chip, Abel, now has force.
Source: Dreamworks
The CIA send Donovan to East Berlin on a mission that ‘does not exist and never will exist’…to negotiate the exchange of not only Powers, but also an American economics student Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers) who found himself on the wrong side of the newly erected Berlin wall.
This leads to the film's lengthy end-game set in a frigid Berlin where spy craft takes on an air of bizarre cabaret; the scene where Donovan meets Abel’s ‘family’ – obviously stooges – is hysterical and certainly the high comic point in Spielberg’s CV.
‘Mirroring is used as a cunning metaphor that evokes shared humanity while accepting deceit as part of the game.’
Bridge is full of so much good stuff. From Janusz Kaminski's cinematography that paints moods of disquiet in a wash of grey, brown and black with the occasional splash of red, to the expert performances, to the typically rumbling action scenes – the U2 crash is mind-blowing - this is Spielberg getting absorbed in material he clearly relishes. I especially liked the visual theme used throughout of ‘doubling’. Images, gestures, even actions are mirrored both literally and figuratively. It’s a cunning metaphor that evokes shared humanity while accepting deceit as part of the game.
Still, for me what I like best are those off-hand moments that give off the chill of the Cold War; terrified children watching atomic war ‘safety’ films or a spook explaining to toughened pilots the practical necessity of self-execution once captured, as if it was a mere hazard that comes with the gig.
Some have said that what happens at the film’s climax – the so called ‘bridge of spies’, the Glienicke bridge that joins East and West Berlin – is but a foregone conclusion. They are right of course and it doesn’t matter. Because in the end all everyone ever wants is to go home if they still have one to go to.
Bridge of Spies is out now.
RELATED
SBS Coen Brothers Season
