I used to joke with younger colleagues (when we worked in offices) that I was like a visitor from a far-off planet — the 20th century. Back when you had to go to a bank to pull out money or use dial-up internet or, you know, slide letters into mailboxes. One thing about getting older is that it all feels rather seamless. One day, you’re waiting for America Online to connect, the next you have a phone more powerful than the computers that took Apollo 11 to the Moon. Such is progress. And if you have any hope of surviving in the modern world, you adapt.
Still, it remains jarring when cultural streams cross, when the modern-day attempts to make sense of a period though which I lived. This is probably particularly true for the 1980s, which now has been so thoroughly parodied as a decade where everyone was accessorized with headbands, legwarmers, Vans, Walkmen headphones, Ray-Bans and shirts with their collars flipped up that I can’t remember now if I was actually me back then or Adrian Zmed.
There were actually two rather distinct but parallel tracks running though the 1980s. The early Reagan years were marked by a turn toward cultural conservatism and a fervent embrace of me-first capitalism (see also, Trump, Donald J.), with movies featuring brawny, uncomplicated heroes such as Stallone and Schwarzenegger. The other track was, of course, MTV-driven and heavily influenced by European music and fashion, which explored the subversion of the Reagan idyll and the fears of nuclear war.
Those tracks collided in film (which is the whole idea behind this site) and music in songs like “99 Luftballons” or “London Calling” that directly referenced East-West tensions. One aspect of those days that might be hard to relate to younger folks is how political the decade was since it’s usually written off as an age of bubble-headed mall-rats. It was not only with the Cold War reigniting, but the protests against Apartheid and the collective artistic efforts to aid Ethiopia and American’s farmers and the battles over AIDS policy.
It was actually a hell of a time to be alive, for better or worse. As such, you might understand why films that reduce that period to a bag of cheeky, ironic cultural cheese doodles might stick in my middle-aged craw.
Thus, we have Atomic Blonde, released in 2017 and starring Charlize Theron as a bad-ass MI6 agent sent to Berlin for a covert mission in 1989 just as the Wall was beginning to crumble. And let’s just get this out of the way right now: I have no problem with Theron’s right to swill vodka, chew bubble gum, kick ass, screw around and be a lethal weapon in the mode of Arnold, Sly, Bruce Willis or Chow Yun Fat. She’s pretty damn good at it, and she is an absolutely compelling figure to watch. So-called Cold War or spy movies historically were the province of men, with women relegated to the role of honeytraps or victims. So, it’s always welcome to see a star of Theron’s caliber go the La Femme Nikita route. I just wish it had been in service of a better movie.
Atomic Blonde treats 1989 Berlin like a Cold War-inspired theme park. All of the elements are present, but nothing feels authentic. The film is stylized in an almost crushing way, which, to me, only elongates the distance between the viewer and the material. The opening titles are direct lift from To Live and Die in LA (1986), itself a hyper-stylized movie but one that, paradoxically, strove for realism. That film, directed by William Friedkin, was an attempt to meld the sleek 80s aesthetic with hardscrabble sensibilities of the 1970s and is now considered a genre staple, largely because it made style secondary to character and motivation.
Is it fair to compare Atomic Blonde to a crime classic directed by one of Hollywood’s great craftsmen? I would argue yes, if only because Blonde wants to have it both ways. The film is trying to say something about those perilous times, but I’m not sure it even knows what it is. The movie opens with footage of Ronald Reagan telling Gorbachev to “tear down that wall” but throughout much of the movie, the swelling protests in East Berlin are in the background, like wallpaper or the sports report on the evening news. Never does there feel like there’s an organic connection between Theron’s mission and the historic events taking place around her. It all feels like a game. Or maybe a video game.
There’s a bit from David Fincher’s The Killer in which Michael Fassbinder tells the audience over and over again how it important it is as an assassin to be unremarkable in appearance, to blend in. Blonde flips that concept to a ridiculous degree. As a six-foot tall, gorgeous blonde woman who favors stiletto heels, slinky dresses and long, black overcoats, let’s just say Theron stands out. And she has more costume changes than Cher hosting a 70s variety show. She must be the only the covert agent who travels with a steamer trunk. At the end of the film, a betrayed Theron tells her handlers the KGB had to know she was in Berlin. Well, no duh.
West Berlin itself is portrayed as the city from Metropolis, streaked with graffiti, laced with neon and filled with denizens with bad mohawks or looking like they just came from all-night Helmut Newton shoot. When Theron crosses over to East Berlin, she ends up in a brawl in a cinema showing Tarkovsky’s Stalker and at one point is knocked through the screen. Why? What are the filmmakers doing bring poor Tarkovsky into this mayhem? It’s like if Patrick Swayze in Road House sat around watching Citizen Kane in his off hours. What exactly is the point here?
Or put another way, Chinatown, which was filmed in the early 70s, works as a period piece because it takes its 1930s setting as a given without calling attention to it, where as Blonde holds a boombox aloft under your window to make sure you get the point about its setting.
The director of Atomic Blonde was David Leitch, who co-directed the first John Wick film and ports over that sensibility to this project. Like Blonde, John Wick took place in sort of a snow-globe universe that married shimmering, iconic images and baroque production design to bone-shattering violence. And it must be said that the fight scenes with Theron are well choreographed and fairly brutal. But whatever tension is generated by the film’s action sequences, it’s quickly drained by the Pop Art approach toward the whole thing. In the film’s signature battle in a rundown East Berlin apartment, Theron barely escapes with her life with a terrified Eddie Marsan in tow. It’s an extended, tense sequence that’s the best part of the movie. But then when they jump in a car to escape (by driving backwards, naturally), it’s scored to “I Ran” by Flock of Seagulls. Another fight in the movie is matched up with George Michael’s “Father Figure.”
The film does feature a killer soundtrack that includes the Clash, New Order, David Bowie plus all of your early MTV favorites such as “Voices Carry” by ‘Til Tuesday and of course, “Der Kommissar” by After the Fire. But that’s a reveal in and of itself. In interviews, Leitch said he chose songs from the early 80s rather than the ones from the end of the decade because he was going for more a vibe than looking for verisimilitude.
And that’s what Atomic Blonde is – a vibe looking for a movie.
WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: Atomic Blonde is rentable on multiple platforms, including Amazon Prime and VUDU.
HEY ISN’T THAT: British actor Eddie Marsan, who plays “Spyglass” has been in a lot movies, but I know him best as one of the annoying brothers in Showtime’s “Ray Donovan.”
DUST CLOUDS: The fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the most consequential moments in modern history, and I’m not sure a discussion of Atomic Blonde is the right place to get into all of it. But these really were remarkable times, with the world literally remaking itself before your eyes. And it all happened with startling speed. In August 1989, Hungry lowered its border with Austria, allowing Hungarians – and later other refugees -- to stream into the west. That produced a chain reaction that led to mounting pressure in East Berlin to allow passage through the Wall. On Nov. 9, 1989, after weeks of demonstrations, East German border guards gave up and let thousands of people through. By the following June, East Germany was dismantling the wall and by October 1990, the country ceased to exist.
On that note, let’s listen to “Wind of Change” by Scorpions. An anthem for the moment.
ARMAGEDDON INDEX: 2/10: These were the good times, my friend.
WHAT ELSE AM I WATCHING: TV: Monsieur Spade (S1, AMC); The Sopranos (S6, MAX) Movies: Amarcord (Fellini, 1973), State and Main (Mamet, 2000).
NUCLEAR THEATER is cited in the Los Angeles Times! Check it out here.
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LAST ENTRY: The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961).
NEXT ENTRY: Rocky IV. We 80s kids all know how the Cold War really ended.
I put this movie on sometimes JUST for the soundtrack.
But, I also think they should've used Falco's Der Kommissar instead of AtF's. Oh well