Movie Review: Bridge of Spies

“Bridge of Spies” is far from a movie masterpiece.  Yet, it’s true to historical events.  Moreover, there’s a critically important message here entirely consistent with Spielberg’s legacy as a noble filmmaker and master of historical recreation, that patriotism can mean doing things that unpopular.  That’s something to ponder now, just as much as back then.

Steven Spielberg has become the quintessential film director of our time in bringing history to life.  Several of his movies, based on actual events, take place in the past.  But the consistent themes of humanitarianism and emotional sentiment that his very best films have managed to evoke in audiences worldwide remains just as apropos to our present and future.

The cinematic artisan who gave us indelibly moving reenactments of the Holocaust (“Schindler’s List,” which I rank as the best film ever made), the D-Day invasion (“Saving Private Ryan”), the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games (“Munich”), and a post-American Civil War political crisis (“Lincoln”), most recently has undertaken one of the lesser-known flashpoints of the Cold War.

“Bridge of Spies,” tells the remarkable true story of how two unrelated incidents of espionage came to be fortuitously linked as two disparate men who never met passed each other on a slow walk across the frigid Glienicke Bridge, separating East and West Berlin at 5:30 am on the bitterly cold morning of February 10, 1962.  The secretive prisoner/spy exchange was the culmination of years of delicate negotiations between the world’s two nuclear superpowers during a time of mutual distrust bordering on schizophrenia when tensions were so close to snapping (Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis) that average citizens were building fallout shelters in their back yards and hoarding canned food and potassium tablets.

Five years earlier, a self-confessed KGB spy named Rudolf Abel had been caught in New York City and was later convicted of conspiracy to pass top-secret information to the Soviet Union.  There was little doubt Abel was guilty on all charges.  Nonetheless, an idealistic defense attorney named James B. Donovan, who normally worked insurance cases, believed Abel was entitled to the best defense possible because that’s the way the American criminal justice system (presumably) is supposed to work.  For defending Abel with such diligence, Donovan’s own loyalty and patriotism became widely suspect.  Consequently, his personal and professional life endured escalating levels of anguish and even risk.  Although Donovan lost the legal case and subsequent appeals, which were pursued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, he did manage to spare Abel’s life at the time of sentencing.  In contrast to the convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg just four years earlier, who were given the death penalty and electrocuted for similar crimes, Abel was given 45 years imprisonment, which was something of a victory for the defense given the hostile political climate of the times.  Attorney Donovan, using his expertise as an insurance lawyer, argued Abel’s life should be spared, just in case an American spy might somehow be caught operating in the Soviet Union sometime in the future.  Abel, as a potential bargaining chip and barter exchange, might prove valuable given such a scenario, as a sort of insurance policy against a future unforeseen sticky entanglement.  That legal argument would turn out to be prophetic.

Many of us remember the name Francis Gary Powers.  He was the pilot who was actually a CIA operative assigned with the task of flying high-altitude reconnaissance missions over the U.S.S.R. in a futuristic plane called the U-2.  Flying at 70,000 feet, the U-2 was believed to operate in stealth and would not only be undetectable to the enemy, but unreachable so high in the sky.  In other words, even if the Soviets knew about all the U-2 spy missions which were snapping thousands of photographs of their most secretive weapons installations, there was unlikely anything they could do about it.

Powers found out the hard way that the Soviets’ defense capabilities were much better than were suspected, and he ultimately paid the price by being shot down, captured, tried, and then convicted in a Soviet court of espionage.  Powers was rigidly trained and was supposed to commit suicide under the disastrous scenario that actually took place (revelations which came out later during the Church Hearings held in the U.S. Senate during the 1970s).  Instead, his capture and conviction proved to be an embarrassment for the United States and pretty much confirmed what everyone already knew — that the two global superpowers were spying on each other and doing some pretty wild things to learn the other’s most prized secrets.

“Bridge of Spies” manages to successfully recreate these historical events in a most compelling fashion, thanks largely to the gritty cinematography which has come to largely be associated with much of Spielberg’s past work.  However, aside from a short scene when Powers’ U-2 plane is shown as being shot down, all the drama and tension of this film takes place in courtrooms, law offices, prisons, and the living room of our hero.  The heroine is cast to perfection with that old Spielberg-favored chestnut and All-American boy, Tom Hanks in the lead role, once again exhibiting his utility as this generation’s Jimmy Stewart.  It’s hard to imagine anyone else other than Hanks taking such a dutifully courageous, if ill-advised responsibility of defending a Soviet spy when most of America allowed red-baiting ideologues like Joe McCarthy to flourish, those collective fears flamed by the terror of nuclear war.  However, Hanks elevates the role to something much more than just going through the motions as devoted counsel defending a man considered by many to be a pariah.  What he’s actually doing is defending the Constitution and the American legal system.  By giving Abel the best possible defense, Donovan wasn’t aiding the enemy by threatening our way of life.  In fact, he was preserving it.

Credit screenwriters Matt Charman and Ethan Coen and Joel Coen (I too, did a double-take when I saw the Coen Brothers has co-scripted this story, which isn’t in their usual stylistic wheelhouse).  There are lots of moving parts within the two narratives of Abel and Powers, including scenes that change frequently, introducing us new characters along the journey who will eventually lead us to that bridge in Berlin in the winter of 1962.  The film, running at slightly more than 2 hours, does lag sometimes.  But it’s hard to imagine cutting out scenes or trimming any dialogue which seems essential to providing a historically-accurate portrait of events as they happened.

Another Spielberg hallmark worth marveling at is the film’s ability to capture the time period 1957-1962 through painstaking attention to detail.  While classic cars can be positioned strategically on the streets, and fashions can easily be recreated through costume design, what isn’t so simple is depicting broader and far more complex scenes that would typically require digital imagery.  Yet, we somehow are immersed into life behind the Berlin Wall, what must have been a miserable existence of drab grey for most, devoid of colors and without joys.  The rickety bells of telephones that don’t work half the time, the filthy slime on windows, indoor heat rationed to save on electricity, the flimsy bicycles used indoors by mail delivery behind the East Bloc were a way of life for many in stark contrast to America at the pinnacle of its prime during its Ozzie and Harriet phase.

The final ten minutes of this film are both beautiful, and riveting.  Spoiler alert aside (most everyone knows the two prisoners are swapped successfully), Donovan returns home to New York following the exchange of spies in Berlin.  The intertwined emotional angst, satisfaction without gloating, and ultimate redemption of Hanks in the role of a heroic Donovan who is seen glancing out the window of a subway train on his way going back to work will take a rightful place alongside the other vivid canons of Spielberg’s very best films, which have not only challenged us to see the world from other points of view but have pulled so successfully at our most vulnerable heartstrings.  The actual instances of what Hanks sees and what he must be feeling won’t be revealed here, but the tying up of loose ends proves most satisfying.

“Bridge of Spies“ is far from a movie masterpiece.  Yet, it remains an important film to see for those interested in historical events.  Moreover, there’s a critically important message here entirely consistent with Spielberg’s legacy as a noble filmmaker and master of historical recreation, that patriotism often means doing things that are least popular.  That’s something to ponder now, just as much as back then.

READ:  Other Spielberg films I’ve reviewed