Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg – 2015 – USA

There are times when Spielberg’s magisterial touch rubs me the wrong way and, less often, there are times when it works for me.  Bridge of Spies is the latter case, and this is the first time in many years when I’ve been able to say that.  I rarely bother with value-judgments about whether or not certain films of his are simply ‘good’ or not; because Spielberg is a director who was in a class by himself and could essentially do no wrong for such a long time, and whose successes were so tremendous that his occasional failure was happily forgiven.  It was really around the turn of the century that it started to become difficult to differentiate Spielberg from his many imitators, and more importantly, to detect what especially interested him about his various projects; (I still contend that the world was not itching for another remake of The War of the Worlds that looked exactly as it would if anyone from Gore Verbinksi to Peter Jackson had directed it).  In any case, Bridge of Spies has a Fordian warmth and stateliness about it that I found both pleasurable and appropriate to its story.  The closest actor Spielberg has to an alter-ego, Tom Hanks, plays an infallibly ethical lawyer selected to represent a Russian spy during the darkest depths of the Cold War in the late 1950s, leading to him being asked to negotiate the release of captured American pilot Francis Gary Powers.  For better or worse, Hanks seems to be the only actor around who has the average all-American good-guy thing down in a way even remotely comparable to Spencer Tracy, James Stewart or Gary Cooper, any of whom could certainly have been cast in a movie like this had it been made in the 50s.  The purity of this character’s moral righteousness – unlikely in any real human being, let alone in a lawyer – could probably only come off as plausible with Hanks in the part.  I do still struggle a little with the leisureliness of Spielberg’s pace, though.  Perpetually stuck in “epic” mode since Schindler’s List (1993), he seems incapable of remembering that there are some films that manage to clock in at under two-and-a-half hours.  About half-way into the film, it feels like Spielberg is just then getting settled in to start telling his story.  Given all the complicated elements of politics and espionage that make up the story, this might have been one time when a sense of urgency could have augmented the suspense of the film.  But Bridge of Spies’ best achievement, for me, at least, is the way in which it explores some very difficult issues in a mature way without ever becoming simplistic on one extreme or preachy on the other.  As the jaundiced, laconic spy, Mark Rylance won as Oscar.  Co-written by Joel & Ethan Coen.