The Berlin Wall came down 30 years ago this fall. To mark the anniversary, let’s look at a movie that takes us all the way back to the days when the Wall was being built, Bridge of Spies (2015), directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen.
In his various historical dramas, Spielberg has generally focused on a man or group of men who exemplify heroic qualities in the face of a grave evil: Oskar Schindler’s courage and basic decency during the unfolding Holocaust; Captain John Miller and his men’s bravery and endurance amid the carnage of World War II; or Abraham Lincoln’s compassion and political shrewdness in helping to abolish slavery.
The protagonist of Bridges of Spies, New York lawyer James B. Donovan (played by Tom Hanks), similarly displays many obvious good qualities despite the pervasive fear and suspicion of the movie’s Cold War setting. Called upon to defend accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), Donovan respects the law and his client’s civil liberties despite the immense unpopularity of these attitudes in late-1950s America. Following Abel’s conviction, Donovan travels to recently divided Berlin to negotiate a prisoner swap with the Soviets—Abel for captured American spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell)—despite the danger involved. Committed to resolving conflicts through diplomacy, Donovan also shows his humanity by taking the initiative to secure the release of an unlucky American graduate student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), imprisoned by the East Germans.
These various forms of heroism are all more than enough to sustain a movie. Yet Donovan also displays a subtler kind of virtue, one that I think is closer to the heart and spirit of Bridge of Spies. Through his various efforts and the challenges he meets, Donovan generally stays calm, measured, even somewhat reserved, often using reason and his legal training to try to persuade an array of antagonists: a biased judge, a weaselly CIA agent, and menacing Soviet and East German officials.
In his undemonstrative professionalism and coolness under pressure, Donovan is more than matched—indeed, is all but mentored—by his client, Abel. As played by Mark Rylance, Abel comes across as something akin to a Zen master of espionage. The movie’s opening is a long sequence, played almost entirely without dialogue, in which Abel collects and decodes a secret message while under FBI surveillance and successfully destroys the message even as he is placed under arrest. We watch the physically small, even frail, Soviet spy effectively run rings around the gang of G-men sent after him: he plays the role of a doddery old man when he is arrested and all-but-invisibly disposes of the message as his apartment is searched. From that point on, Abel stays similarly untouchable, refusing to cooperate with American authorities; making laconic, sometimes disarmingly funny, comments to Donovan; and remaining unmoved at the prospect of his imprisonment or even execution. When Abel praises Donovan for his stoicism, invoking the Russian phrase “стоики мужик” (translated as “standing man”) he speaks with unquestionable authority on the subject.
The value of stoic devotion to duty and professionalism, as demonstrated by Donovan and Abel, is Bridges of Spies’ dominant theme and sets the movie’s tone. Although hardly free of Spielberg’s trademark heavy-handedness and sentimentality, Bridge of Spies is more understated than his typical movie. While larger issues such as the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, the ever-present threat of nuclear war, and the plight of Germans trapped in East Berlin provide the move’s background, what is immediately at stake is the safety and liberty of only a handful of people. While this does not make Donovan’s mission any less important—as he repeatedly says, “Every person matters”—it gives the movie a decidedly non-epic feel. Apart from one scene recreating the downing of Powers’ U-2 spy-plane, and a couple other brief moments of violence, the movie has almost no action sequences; much of Bridge of Spies’ “action” consists of men sitting in rooms talking.
Spielberg and his veteran cinematographer Janusz Kaminski create an appropriately understated, somber look for the movie. Although shot in color, the movie’s palette is largely made up of grays, blues, black, and white. When sunlight shines through windows, the light is bleached and empty of warmth and signals a hostile environment that hems in the characters. Several crucial dialogue scenes are shown in two-shots of the characters separated by a large table; one shot of Donovan and Abel shows them framed by the window of Abel’s prison cell, the dividers between the glass panes separating them. Such visual motifs underline the larger gaps and divides—within Berlin, between the USA and USSR—present throughout the story.
The art directors have also done their work expertly. Wintertime Berlin, where much of the movie takes place, comes across as dingy, run-down (especially in its eastern half, still rebuilding from World War II’s devastation), and very cold. Even the Soviet embassy or East German government offices, while well-appointed, come across as cavernous and unwelcoming—we even see, in one nice period touch, that couriers ride bicycles through a government building’s wide hallways.
The movie’s score is not by Spielberg’s usual collaborator, the legendary John Williams, but by Thomas Newman. Newman’s score is minimal—we don’t hear a musical cue until almost a half hour in—and thus less insistent in hammering home the significance of a scene than a Williams’ score might have been.
One early scene perhaps sums up Bridge of Spies’ overall approach. Under pressure by a CIA agent to violate attorney-client privilege, Donovan responds with a little speech about the importance of respecting the Constitution. The speech is effective but more than a little hokey and could easily have been turned into a Big Movie Moment, complete with soaring strings. Instead, Spielberg stages the conversation in a corner of a darkened restaurant, Donovan and the agent in medium shots, with the only music being diegetic, the mellow tinkling of the restaurant’s piano player.
Among the actors, the two central performances by Hanks and Rylance are excellent. Hanks brings his customary all-American decency to the role of Donovan, layering on other shades such as a prickliness that comes out in arguments, as well as flashes of occasional insecurity. Even while assuring Abel that he is a pretty good lawyer, Hanks blinks nervously, underlining Donovan’s uncertainty in this situation.
Rylance has a role that could have been monochromatic or even boring—Abel says relatively little and expresses even less emotion—but he finds ways to add variety to his performance. In one memorable moment, Abel asks Donovan to get him improved prison conditions; Rylance drops the Soviet spy’s usual closed-off, absent-minded manner and looks directly at Donovan, his eyes pleading for help. The change makes Abel seem sincere—or is he employing another technique in his repertoire of spy tricks? Through such moments, Rylance makes Abel a fascinating enigma.
Other roles are played competently but unremarkably. Two exceptions are other spy characters. In his one scene as CIA Director Allen Dulles, Peter McRobbie makes Dulles a wry eminence grise. As KGB honcho Ivan Schischkin, Mikhail Gorevoy moves easily back and forth between unctuous and threatening.
Bridge of Spies has weaknesses. Much of the movie’s first third, dealing with Donovan’s defense of Abel, consists of functional and by-the-numbers scenes that establish their relevant points with little subtlety: Donovan’s family doesn’t like him defending a Soviet spy; the trial judge is blatantly unfair; Donovan’s neighbors don’t like him defending a Soviet spy; Cold War paranoia is high; Donovan’s employer doesn’t like him defending a Soviet spy, etc. Many of these scenes seem lifted from a mediocre TV movie. (One memorable exception, drawn from Spielberg’s own boyhood, is when Donovan’s son is moved to fill the family bathtub with water and make other preparations in anticipation of nuclear war.) Still, even in this early portion of the movie, Spielberg and his team take time with the scenes that matter most: between Donovan and Abel.
Overall, Bridge of Spies is not a great movie, but it is a good one: an enjoyable drama/thriller that draws on good acting and atmosphere to achieve its effect. I would be delighted if, as with his blockbusters of the 1970s and 1980s, this Spielberg effort inspired many imitators.
The Cameraman 