Bringing out the dead
Operation Mincemeat resurrects bonkers scheme of wartime spycraft
Oh! What a lovely war!
This British historical drama about a bit of Second World War subterfuge features a beautiful, well-dressed and talented cast topped by not one but two Misters Darcy: Colin Firth from the 1995 Pride & Prejudice miniseries, and Matthew Macfadyen from the 2005 movie.
They star as British Naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley of MI5, respectively. In 1943, the two men spearheaded Operation Mincemeat, a moon shot mission that involved dressing up a corpse in a Naval uniform, giving it a dossier of information about a planned invasion of Greece (when the real target was Sicily), and letting the man and his memorandums fall into enemy hands. Or as Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) puts it: “All the reasons it shouldn't work are the same reasons the Germans might believe it's true.”
As directed by John Madden (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and adapted by Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) from the book by Ben Macintyre, the movie is itself a bit of narrative subterfuge. On the cover it's the story of how the deception was dreamed up (with help from Johnny Flynn as a young Ian Fleming) and implemented. But we also spend a lot of time with Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), an MI5 clerk whose photograph was used as “Pam,” the fictitious man's fictitious fiancée.
Jean also helped flesh out the couple's relationship, in the process falling into an uneasy love triangle with her two main co-conspirators.
It's the weakest subplot in an already overlong film, though it does allow the usually stiff upper lips to quiver.
It's also not quite enough to derail the main story, which (re)introduces a bonkers bit of wartime spycraft still unknown to many. The last big screen adaptation of this tale was 66 years ago in The Man Who Never Was. Time to dust off the story and tell it again, I say.