Bridge of Spies: Standing man
"Shouldn't we, by giving him the full benefit of the rights that define our system of government, show this man who we are? Is that not the greatest weapon we have in this Cold War?"
After last week’s entry, which found me grappling with a French-Japanese film from 1959, could there be more solid ground to return to than a film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks? I’ll be honest. Reviewing Hiroshima mon amour pushed me – in a good but unsettling way. While I found the movie to be deeply affecting, it also reminded me of my limitations, as a writer, as an empathetic human, as a white American male in the 21st century, 80 years removed from the atomic horror that struck Japan. What does one say about art? Or more a more relevant question might be: What does someone like me say about that particular work of art, as divorced as I was from its origins?
At the same time, one of my goals for Nuclear Theater is to attempt to capture how the mindset of the Cold War was and continues to be expressed through the culture. To me, that means that films such as Hiroshima mon amour and Bridge of Spies contain elements in common that may not appear to be obvious at their surface. It’s fascinating to watch a movie filmed in 1959 back-to-back with a 2015 release set at the same time.
If we can trust any living filmmaker to get it right, I would argue that it is Spielberg. Born in 1946, he is one of the few directors left who can say they lived through the period. In fact, in Bridge of Spies, a young boy, the son of Hanks’ character, freaks out after watching the infamous “Duck and Cover” video in school. He fills his bathtub with water to make sure there’s a supply in case the Russians start dropping bombs. (This separates his world from our childhood in the 70s and 80s, when we knew that ducking under desks or hiding in bomb shelters was simply folly. There was nowhere to hide or survive unless you worked for NORAD.)
One of the wonderful aspects of watching a film such as Bridge of Spies at my age is understanding the creative journey undertaken by the principals. I’m old enough to remember when neither Spielberg nor Hanks was taken seriously by the cultural gatekeepers of the time. Spielberg was the wunderkind director who delivered amusement-park thrills: Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park. Hanks dressed in women’s clothing for a long-forgotten ABC sitcom based on Some Like it Hot and then found brief stardom as a goofy leading man in a series of second-rate movie comedies.1 Both realized at some point in their careers that they wanted more. They wanted to push their limits.
You know the rest: For Spielberg, it was films such as The Color Purple, Amistad and Schindler’s List. For Hanks, it was Forrest Gump and Philadelphia. Then Hanks began to become something closer to a classic movie star, the everyman American: Apollo 13 by Ron Howard led to Saving Private Ryan, with Spielberg, a key film in both their careers. Spielberg became more and more interested in mining the American past. Hanks turned into the epitome of it.
It has been gratifying to watch younger generations embrace Spielberg and see him for the genius he is. My social media feeds are filled with praise for his directorial style, his framing, the elegant way he moves the camera, his belief in emotion and the power of film to express it. He is a classicist in the best sense, not beholden to antiquated methods but finding power in them.
And to be sure, Bridge of Spies is a throwback to a certain kind of movie, one that predates not only the modern cinema but even the boundary-pushing films of the New Hollywood, with Hanks filling a role once reserved for the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck.
So whether you chose to watch something like Bridge of Spies to witness two icons collaborating with a lifetime of moviemaking experience behind them or you see it as a backwards-looking “Dad” movie that seems out of touch with the modern marketplace of endless IP cannibalization or films or centered around identity is entirely up to you. I think it’s the closest thing Spielberg has ever made to a John Ford film, which is either high praise or damning, depending on your POV.2
Let’s get into the plot. (About bloody time, I hear you saying.) It’s the height of the Cold War. A man suspected to be a Soviet spy is trailed and captured by the FBI in a 1957 Brooklyn almost perfectly recreated by Spielberg in a painstaking and visually arresting sequence that features almost no dialogue for several minutes into the picture.
James Donovan (Hanks), a respected New York insurance lawyer who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, is tasked by the court to defend the spy, Rudolf Abel, (Mark Rylance, who won the Oscar) in court in what is supposed to be a demonstration of American constitutional ideals to the world. Everyone deserves a defense, even an accused Russian spy, is the idea. It quickly becomes clear that principle is only intended to be a slogan on a billboard, that neither the federal judge overseeing the case, nor the prosecution, nor Donovan’s law partner (Alan Alda) expects him to put some muscle into it.
A recurrent theme of Bridge of Spies, and what makes it one of the great films of the 21st century, is that American ideals must be able to survive being tested. While the film takes place in the late 1950s, it had equal applicability to much that came after it, particularly the shadow justice system set up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Hanks ends up arguing this very concept before the U.S. Supreme Court, that America can be the shining city on the hill, can believe in human rights and be a force that pushes more repressive regimes to do the same. But that view demands courage.2
Spielberg is not a subtle director, which is a longstanding criticism of his work. But he does work in layers. He is not trying to equivocate in Bridge of Spies; he’s not both-siding it. He’s making clear that the U.S. system of justice, indeed even of warfare, is superior to that of its opponents, but only if its tenets are respected, not short-circuited. He wants the country he loves to measure up. Without giving too much of the film away, Spielberg shows Donovan at one point riding a train in East Germany where people don’t survive scaling a fence and another one in New York where they do.
The director’s own relationship to authority is interesting. Like many of his generation, he seems to have no use for the idea of bureaucracy. His characters frequently upend it. They’re an impediment in Close Encounters and E.T., His FBI agents are clueless in Raiders and a hostile force in Minority Report. Hanks’ character in Bridge, Jim Donovan, seems to delight in frustrating his handlers. His imagination is larger than theirs. He gets creative within the space he is given, like Spielberg. Like the great Hollywood classic directors such as Michael Curtiz and Ford.
But these are all people who work within the system, even Oskar Schindler. Spielberg isn’t like his closest remaining peer, Martin Scorsese. He doesn’t make gangster films. He isn’t drawn to outsiders. Spielberg could never make The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese couldn’t make Bridge of Spies. Spielberg believes in heroes; Scorsese doesn’t.
And James Donovan as played by Hanks is a hero, make no mistake. I grew up in a family of lawyers and was one myself briefly many years ago. My grandfather served as a Navy officer on a ship in the Pacific during World War II and then came home, and like Donovan, entered private practice. My father, before he retired, was a gifted, and even somewhat legendary, trial lawyer who believed in providing every client with the best defense he could give. Donovan’s first scene, in which he methodically and collegially details why his client’s liability is limited, makes me think of him and smile.
In law school, I feasted on the stories of lawyers speaking truth before federal judges who understood the power and responsibility of their offices. My professor for Constitutional Law, David Goldberger, was a Jewish lawyer who defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois in a famous 1970s case, paying a dear personal price in the process. Later in my career, I covered the U.S. Supreme Court – and although that institution’s image has taken a hit in the eyes of many in the American public as of late, I found it thrilling to witness ideas and principles being debated and scrutinized at the highest level.
Bridge of Spies is really two tales in one. The first half is Donovan realizing it’s up to him to put teeth in the concept of due process of law; the second involves Donovan being recruited to negotiate a prisoner exchange in Berlin involving Abel and a captive U.S. airman named Francis Gary Powers. But both sections require the moral clarity of purpose than Hanks provides. Abel tells Donovan that he reminds him of a man who knew as a child he wouldn’t bow down to the abusive local authorities, a “standing man.”
Spielberg idolized John Ford (you can watch a fictional version of their encounter in The Fabelmans) and revered the The Searchers, the film Ford is best known for. But I view Bridge of Spies as Spielberg’s version of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a late-career Ford picture that concerned itself with the advent of law and government in the untamed West. The star of that movie? Jimmy Stewart. But Hanks could re-make it today with little lost.
When Hanks returns home at the end of the film with his mission accomplished, one for which has sought no recognition and no glory, you might feel a soft clutch in your chest when his family realizes where he has been and what he has done. These days, concepts such as modesty and duty can feel revolutionary.
WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: Bridge of Spies is rentable on major streaming platforms such as VUDU and Amazon.
HEY ISN’T THAT: Donovan’s wife (who largely spends the movie worrying in that very 50s way) is played by Amy Ryan, who will always be patrol officer Beadie Russell in season 2 of the “The Wire” to me.
DUST CLOUDS: Gary Powers was flying a U-2 spy plane on a recon mission for the CIA when he was shot down over Soviet territory in May 1960. The United States initially denied the existence of his mission but had no choice to but to acknowledge it once the Soviets produced Powers, who had parachuted out of the plane, and pieces of the aircraft. (As the film notes, Powers was supposed to commit suicide in the event of capture.) The incident was a major embarrassment for the U.S. and led to the cancellation of a peace summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev.
ARMAGEDDON INDEX: 6/10. Cold War tensions were high.
WHAT ELSE AM I WATCHING: TV: Vigil (S1, Peacock), Curb Your Enthusiasm (S12, MAX), Tokyo Vice (S2, MAX). Movies: Simple Men (Hartley, 1992), Mikey and Nicky (May, 1976).
LAST ENTRY: Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
NEXT ENTRY: Barcelona (1994)
Before you say anything, I’ll go to the mattresses anytime for Bachelor Party.
With an assist from the Coen brothers, who punched up the script. Not a cinematic pairing that you would likely expect.