Bridge Of Spies

Bridge Of Spies is a historical drama 'inspired by true events' which tells the story of a spy swap during the Cold War. It sees Steven Spielberg in collaboration with the Coen Brothers in collaboration with Walt Disney. Quite a combination.

In Brooklyn in 1957, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested under the suspicion of being a Soviet spy. James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is a mere insurance lawyer who is asked to defend Abel in order to show the world that the American justice system is just and fair, even though the public have already convicted him.

Donovan may be defending the most hated man in America but he wants to do right thing, legally, by his client. That isn’t easy when even the judge has already reached his decision.

When Abel is convicted Donovan has the foresight to persuade the judge not to send him to his death. He foresees a time when having a Soviet spy in your jails could be useful.

Donovan is vindicated when an American U-2 spy plane is shot down over Soviet territory and the pilot, Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), fails to destroy both the plane and himself, as ordered. The Soviets capture Powers, convict him as a spy, and send him to prison.

When the Soviets get in touch with Donovan, he is sent out to East Berlin to negotiate a prisoner exchange. This he has to do as a private citizen rather than an American official. Any deal is further complicated by Donovan’s wish to also release another US prisoner, a student called Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers).  

Overall it is pretty good film if you can cope with the large dose of American patriotism that it comes served with. Patriotism that attempts to paint the East Germans as clowns which I'm sure they weren't. There’s also the totally over the top (and unnecessarily so) crash scene of the U-2. This is the only nod to your typical Hollywood action movie which this thankfully isn’t. The rest of the two hours is mercifully free of any other such gimmicks.

The film seems to be largely historically accurate and the cinematography is fabulous with some great scenes of cold war Berlin such as the construction of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie etc.

Tom Hanks is solid as Donovan but it is Mark Rylance who shines out as the star of the film. His understated performance as Rudolf Abel is pure class.

‘Bridge of Spies’ shows that the power of a good story can still stand up on its own even in modern day Hollywood.

The Lady In The Van

‘The Lady in the Van’ didn’t make a lot of sense to me but then you perhaps need to be an Alan Bennett aficionado to appreciate it. This film comes with not one but two Alan Bennetts (Alex Jennings), well actually three if you count the real one who turns up at the end.

This is apparently the real story of Mary Shepherd aka Margaret Fairchild (Maggie Smith), a woman who wiped out a motorcyclist and then went on the run from the police even though the police weren’t looking for her because it wasn’t her fault.

Bennett doesn’t know this when she turns up in a battered old van and parks in his well-to-do street in Camden. Spotting Bennett as a soft touch she worms her way on to his driveway, where she then lives in her van (or vans and always repainted yellow) for fifteen years until her death.

It wasn’t until after her death that they finally found out who she was but the film shows us, sort of, as we go along. Like how she was a gifted pianist who then tried to become a nun. How her brother put her in an institution from which she escaped. 

None of which fully explains why she acted as she did in the first place and what happened to the life she left behind. She is, it is implied, simply eccentric.

If that isn’t eccentric enough, then there’s Bennett himself or indeed the two Bennetts, Alan the writer and Alan the homeowner. Bennett the writer wrote a book about the whole thing, turned it into a play and now this film. Both of which starred Maggie Smith, who better to play a batty old woman.

The relationship between the two leads is the heart of the film but I found both of them insufferable and while I couldn’t understand the logic of her decision to live in a van, I couldn’t understand Bennett's decision to let her stay either.

So it’s all a bit too eccentric for me and that’s before we get to the graveyard scene at the end.