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Showing posts with label Spy Films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spy Films. Show all posts

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Spy games



What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?
-- Alec Leamas, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The description of a spy above is in complete contrast to the one created by Ian Fleming and the subsequent James Bond films. Even though Martin Ritt’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold came out in 1965, we still have not had a cinematic spy like Alec Leamas (Richard Burton). Leamas plays a lonely miserable spy struggling for money, who gets drunk frequently, and is not afraid to throw a punch or two. Credit for such a character has to go to John le Carré who was still a “spook” himself when the movie came out and one can see the brutal honesty involved in how the spy game is truly played. But then again, the British know a thing or two about spying since they spent centuries perfecting the art. The following dialogues spoken by Leamas’ boss Control (Cyril Cusack) show the false morality involved in the spying game and the mess such self-righteousness causes:

Our work, as I understand it.. is based on a single assumption that the West is never going to be the aggressor. Thus..we do disagreeable things..but we’re defensive. Our policies are peaceful..but our methods can’t afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition.

You know, I’d say, uh..since the war, our methods - our techniques, that is - and those of the Communists, have become very much the same. Yes. I mean, occasionally...we have to do wicked things. Very wicked things indeed. But, uh, you can’t be less wicked..than your enemies simply because your government’s policy is benevolent.


Shockingly the above words could easily apply today as they did four decades ago.

Technology as a spy tool...or not

Martin Ritt’s film shows how local personnel are critical to the gathering of information and form the most important currency to assist spies. But in the last few decades, technology has given the ability to listen in on others conversations and follow someone’s movements. And this technology gives the false ability that one can understand the enemy. Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies shows that spy technology is useless when the enemy chooses to live off the grid and does not exchange messages via cell phones or the internet but rather meets face to face to discuss plans. In a way both The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Body of Lies show that if one needs to get information from others, then they need to gain their trust. Body of Lies contrasts this style of trust by showing how Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) opts to foster a healthy relationship by trusting the local people while his boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) prefers to push people aside whenever he feels like it and is constantly looking to use people.

Another common element in both films is how the bank is used by both Leamas and Ferris to lead the enemy to suspect one of their own -- in The Spy Who Came from in the Cold a letter to the bank causes the damage while in Body of Lies it is an email that causes an innocent person to be blamed.

The Spy Who Came from in the Cold is a brilliant film that focuses more on the interaction with the characters while Body of Lies is a fascinating travelogue through the middle east depicting the complexity of the problems that lie there. As much as I enjoyed watching it, Body of Lies feels like a missed opportunity and could have been much better had it employed the framework of Syriana and Traffic. The explosions and Hollywood machismo does get in the way but thankfully Leonardo DiCaprio shines in a role akin to the brilliance he brought to Blood Diamond.

Smile..for that camera

London probably has the most CCTV cameras than any other city in the world and it is hard to escape the watchful eye of the cameras. The British TV series MI-5 shows some of the people that do their spying remotely while gathering feeds from these cameras. While the show is currently in the 7th season, I caught up with Season One which consists of 6 one hour episodes. The first episode is the weakest as it features a topic of pro-life activists. But thankfully the show started to take more risks as Season One progressed and the 6th episode depicts the complicated decisions involved in balancing the threat from two different enemies (Islamists and the IRA).


Ratings out of 10

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965, UK, Martin Ritt): 10
Body of Lies (2008, USA, Ridley Scott): 8.5
MI-5, Season One (2002, UK, various): 7.5

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Espionage: Spies and consequences

....."blowback", the term used by spies to describe planted propaganda that filters back to confuse the country that first set the story loose. (page 47, Ghost Wars by Steve Coll)

Information and Misinformation -- both are tools which are part and parcel of a spy's arsenal. The spy on the opposing side also has information and misinformation as their tool set. Things get complicated when misinformation from one side is taken for information by the other side and results in further misinformation being generated.

Lies + Lies = Truth

At the core of Hal Hartley's inventive Fay Grim lie a collection of diaries called "Confessions" which may contain valuable government information. The information is equally coveted by the CIA, KGB, French Secret Service, Israeli spies, British agents, Arab informers and even some terrorists. The diaries might be gibberish but that does not matter as each side believe the information could help them in their nation's cause.

Fay Grim is unlike any other spy movie. The tilted camera and the light hearted background music give the film a stage/musical feel. On top of that, the lead characters (especially Fay played by Parker Posey) are busy dancing their way through stressful situations with such ease. After a slow 20 minutes, the film moves into a high energetic dialogue exchange as Fay moves effortlessly past dangerous spies and killers. The complicated plot is rendered with such ease that the real joy is in watching the characters move through each frame. The light hearted touch removes any barriers between good and evil as all the rival spies are portrayed in the same light. As a result, one can focus on watching this international espionage game at play without having to put a good or bad label over each character.

There are some scenes where the tilted camera works and in others, not so much. But having the entire movie shown in a slanted manner just adds to the story's bizarre appeal. Also, the tilted camera only allows the relevant details in each frame. Never before has a film filmed in Paris and Istanbul allowed so little of the street side or city highlights in each frame. And in Fay Grim this tactic works as the real interest lies in observing the characters and listening to their words as opposed to caring for which location they are in.

Note: I have never seen a Hal Hartley film before so this was an interesting viewing. The film continues the adventures of the characters first shown in his 1997 film Henry Fool. And from his interviews, it seems that there may be future adventures for this colorful set of characters.

Truth moves to the other side

Breach shows what happens when a spy starts working for the opponents. No concrete reasons are given for the CIA agent's betrayal even though a shroud of ethics, morality and religion are mixed in the story. Ofcourse, when it comes to selling information to the enemy, no reason is required by the government. It is 'Us' vs 'Them'. Even though governments on both sides are constantly trying to entice the enemy spy to divulge information.

When a blowback results in a violent reaction:

Newtons's third law: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

Spies from one nation train young men of a second nation to fight and shoot down the enemy of a third nation. Then the spies leave thinking their jobs are done. But the young men of the second nation need a new enemy. So they target the nation of the spies who taught and helped them.

Peter Berg's The Kingdom starts off with a violent act when gunmen and a suicide bomber kill innocent people in a Riyadh housing compound. Initially, there is no revenge reaction but a calm investigation into the identity of the terrorists. But along the way, the investigators come across more deadly enemies. While trying to save one of their own, the investigators end up killing the enemy leader in a defensive act. The film ends with a line that indicates that there will be further killing to avenge the leader's death, while also revealing that the investigators did not just go out to investigate the truth but went with an intention of revenge.

This was a much better film that I had originally expected. But it could have been a lot better if not for some rather cliched Hollywood elements near the movie's end. There is a climatic battle between the terrorists and the good guys which is well shot and engaging. However, the sequence falls into a Hollywood trap where despite the circumstances, the big Hollywood stars are unharmed. And then the one local native who was helping the American agents is killed. Why was this honest policeman killed? Well one reason could be that this man was closest to the enemy leader. But that is a weak excuse. The real reason is that the characters played by big name Hollywood stars in such movies cannot die as they are true 'heroes'. Whereas characters played by actors from other parts of the world are completely expendable.

Truth is a manufactured lie:

The cold war was a tense time when spies and code breakers were in high demand; there was plenty of misinformation out there which needed to be filtered through. In plenty of cases, this misinformation was manufactured in just one person's mind and then transferred to other people. But what if this misinformation never left a person's mind and continued to grow inside their head? The resulting mental 'blowback' could put that person in a horrifying mix of reality and delusion. The true story of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind is an example of a man trapped in his genius creations -- spies, 'big brother', hidden patterns all try to compete with mathematical formulas in John's mind.

Note: William Friedkin's Bug is a powerful example of how one person's misinformation can corrupt others.

Ratings out of 10:
Fay Grim (2006, Director Hal Hartley): 8.5
Breach (2007, Director Billy Ray): 8
The Kingdom (2007, Director Peter Berg): 7.5
A Beautiful Mind (2001, Director Ron Howard): 7.5