Spielberg delivers old school, unashamedly grown-up drama
BRIDGE OF SPIES (M, 141 MINS)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
✪✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
IN 1957, the Russian intelligence officer Rudolf Abel (actually Vilyam Fisher) was arrested in New York. Abel was defended at trial by the lawyer James Donovan. Abel was convicted, but Donovan and others argued compellingly enough to save him from the electric chair. Instead, Abel was given a 30-year prison sentence.
In 1960, the U2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russian airspace. Powers was convicted of spying by the Russians and sentenced to prison. But two years later (it is believed) Powers was offered by the Russians as part of an exchange of prisoners for Abel. The American lawyer shouldertapped to handle the negotiation was Donovan.
That’s the basic story behind Bridge of Spies.
Director Steven Spielberg and his writers (including Joel and Ethan Coen) stick closely enough to the facts. The years might seem to pass in months and a few incidents and characters are clearly composites and conveniences, but the broad strokes are close enough to not raise my ire. Perhaps more importantly, Spielberg – who is here to make a movie, not a documentary – gets the feel of the place and the time absolutely perfect.
There is a whiff of authenticity about Bridge of Spies that transcends mere surface detail. Whereas last week’s Legend looked to have been made by people who’d studied photographs of 1960s London but never actually been there, Bridge of Spies just feels right to its bones.
Spielberg’s long-time cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Lincoln, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List) still shoots on 35mm film and I reckon he has his reasons. There’s a lovely, muted, nicotine-stained lustre to the interiors and a rich, nuanced sheen to the many snowy exteriors that I swear digital photography still couldn’t capture. Bridge of Spies simply looks and sounds superb (composer Thomas Newman has been nominated 12 times for an Academy Award and never won. Maybe Bridge of Spies will get him over the line).
In the leads, I guess it’s Tom Hanks’s name the posters will save the big print for, but British theatre legend Mark Rylance is perhaps even better here than Hanks. As Abel, Rylance turns in some indelible work. His Abel is a likeable, inscrutable and impassioned creation. A proud man caught between nations.
He might be a generation older, but watching Rylance’s work in Bridge of Spies reminded me of seeing Michael Fassbender back in 2008 in Hunger. As in, ‘‘where has this guy been and when can we see him again?’’
Bridge of Spies is an old-school, slow-burning and unashamedly grown-up drama, with talent and production values to die for. Oscar nominations are inevitable, as is me going to see it again next week, just because I want to.
THE WALK (PG, 123 MINS)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
BILL GOSDEN and his crew at the New Zealand Film Festival office face the task of choosing an opening night film.
Something likeable and approachable enough to work for an audience who might have had a few glasses, but also interesting, original and smart enough to impress a festival crowd.
My very favourite of all Bill’s picks is still the Academy Awardwinning 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which tells the story of how the French trapeze artist Philippe Petit smuggled his cables and equipment into the World Trade Center, rigged a wire between the 410-metre towers and walked upon it for 45 minutes early one morning in 1974.
It is an astonishing story and I’d say Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Castaway) and Joseph Gordon Levitt (Looper) have done a very decent job of recreating it. Levitt, along with co stars Charlotte Le Bon, Ben Kingsley and James Badge Dale (The Departed) are all convincing enough, though Levitt is a far more approachable Petit than the man who emerges from Man on Wire.
Zemeckis wisely retains the ‘‘heist movie’’ template of the doco and keeps the pace and the humour percolating nicely.
The tragedy of the September 2001 attacks that destroyed the buildings isn’t dwelt on, but Zemeckis does allow his film an understated farewell scene.
The Walk is an incredible story, pretty well told. But do find a copy of Man on Wire to watch as well. The comparison will be instructive. And there really is nothing like the real thing.
LISTEN TO ME MARLON (M, 103 MINS)
Directed by Stevan Riley
✪✪✪✪✪
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
MARLON BRANDO ushered in a way – literally, a method – of acting that revolutionised not just performance, but also the types of films that could be made.
Listen to Me Marlon isa documentary on Brando’s life and work. It is curated from hundreds of hours of audio tape Brando recorded himself, recounting his brutal childhood, sudden fame, the arc of his life and the terrible tragedies it contained. Director Stevan Riley (Fire in Babylon) has done a masterful job of assembling this material into a film with far more on its mind than mere biopic.
Listen to Me Marlon intelligently excavates the contradictions of a professional liar who loathed falseness, and a profoundly sensitive man who found fame playing a brute in the world’s most venal business.
It is a hell of an achievement. If you consider yourself a film fan, you should see it.