STYLE: Cold War comfort

While not one of his best, Bridge of Spies is a good Spielberg film. Seventy-some feet above the plain, we looked out over strips of minefields, triple lines of steel wire and fencing, troughs, dog-lanes-first ours, then theirs in virtual mirror-image-and finally, a mile or more away, their observation tower, their spooks, their snipers, looking back at us, eye to eye, Spy-vs.-Spy, on the front line of a war that never happened. So confident was Hanks as Donovan, his director and pal was even a bit intimidated. He fails in getting Abel acquitted and in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court – but he does succeed in persuading the judge to spare Abel the death penalty, with the argument that the spy may be a bargaining chip if the Soviets ever catch one of our guys. The Glienicke Bridge (referred to by the film’s title) from West to East Berlin, across which multiple U.S.-Soviet spy exchanges occurred over the decades, including the one depicted here between Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, has become, along with Checkpoint Charlie, one of the quintessential images of the era. It’s a sound business approach, geopolitically speaking.

They meet after Abel is finally arrested at his easel. Donovan’s wife (Amy Ryan) didn’t call the foreign citizen Abel a “traitor” (she wasn’t that dumb), nor did Donovan’s career at his law firm suffer after the trial, as the movie snidely implies. I’d happily see “Bridge of Spies” again just for Klaussner’s scene, full of florid gesticulating and a genuinely amusing temper tantrum.

This is clearly Spielberg’s view, and there’s a superficially inspiring quality to the film-we’re invited to take pride in Donovan’s righteous stance and share his belief in the principles upon which the country was built.

The film’s atmosphere is thick and luxuriously managed. No one but Donovan cares about fair play. Kaminski’s palette favors noir shadows cut by blinding contrasts; he relishes the sheen of pearly white light hitting wet pavement or the hoods of old automobiles.

Captured pilot Powers is a minor player. The design and execution of “Bridge of Spies” draw attention to themselves, but just in the right ways. Yet those ideals themselves are so powerful, and so powerfully explicated by Spielberg’s camera and the script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, that Bridge of Spies ultimately does work as an affirmative underdog story.

“This subject matter has always fascinated me, because of the area and because of the time”, says Hanks. But when the “everybody” is a flag burner, or a racist, or a child molester, or a spy, etc., the consensus seems to be, “put up a good front for the miserable son of a bitch, but don’t do anything that might actually let him get away with the crime of which we are certain he is guilty”. Clarity of meaning and design is everything to Spielberg.

Interestingly, both these films were based on true stories, and directed by popular American filmmakers whose movies attract major stars and have enjoyed considerable box office success.