Spielberg brings Cold War story ‘Bridge of Spies’ to silver screen

Also co-written by No Country For Old Men Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen, the movie is based on the true story of the American lawyer who defended a captured Soviet spy in 1957, and later arranged a swap with the U.S.S.R. for American reconnaissance pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down in his U-2 spyplane over the enemy country in 1960.

“Bridge of Spies” will be released in theaters October. 16 and I would definitely pay to see it again.

While promoting his new film, ‘Bridge of Spies, ‘ at a recent press event, Spielberg said, “To clarify, I didn’t predict the implosion of the film industry at all, I simply predicted that a number of blockbusters in one summer – those big sort of tentpole superhero movies – there was going to come a time where two or three or four of them in a row didn’t work”.

Hanks was the right choice for Donovan because the lawyer “had to be a superb diplomat and negotiator, and he also had to be a fish out of water”, Spielberg says.

“There’s a scene in Lincoln in which he has his cabinet around the table and has to justify why he needs the 13th Amendment signed and why he needs them to back him on getting these votes”.

Although most of the movie belongs to Hanks, the prisoner (and bargaining chip) haunts the picture from off screen.

I suppose that might be a lesson we can take from Bridge of Spies, something about war, or conflict, not actually being its own inevitable entity, but rather a mosaic of human lives-each Donovan, each Stasi officer a tessera in a grander portrait, one we really ought to stop making and remaking. I’m simply attempting to get my s**t together.

But for now there is “Bridge of Spies”, a skillful, thoughtful movie about moral quandaries, duty and obligation imbued by a spirit and tone that is retro and low-key. “And you’re not supposed to”, Spielberg says.

He added: “A couple months ago I was selling coke [and] doing coke until I couldn’t even snort it up my nose anymore because it was so clogged”. To play the street-smart but profoundly ethical Donovan, Spielberg thought of Hanks, who quickly signed on. As for how he enjoyed playing his character, he told me, “I like being a spy”. “And yet, I wanted to cast somebody who would even be in the scenes he’s not in”. Rather, Bridge of Spies is an interior, introverted kind of movie, composed mainly of scenes of men talking in rooms about big, faraway things. This is more about very smart people in conversation with each other, and the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads is that if they make the wrong decisions, it’s the end of the world.