A SPY AMONG FRIENDS eps 1 and 2 - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 3

 

The first two episodes of Nick Murphy's adaptation of Ben MacIntyre's A SPY AMONG FRIENDS were screened as part of the BFI London Film Festival last night. It's hard to judge the direction of a miniseries on two episodes alone, but so far it comes across as cleverly constructed, beautifully acted and largely faithful to Macintyre's scrupulously researched book.

The book investigates the "mystery" of why the British intelligence service apparently let Philby - finally exposed as a Soviet spy - escape to Moscow in 1963, rather than bringing him in to face charges of treason.  The common answer, and one I share, is that there is no great conspiracy or mystery at all. As with Burgess and Maclean, it was far less embarassing to the SIS and the British Establishment to have Philby fuck off behind the Iron Curtain to pretty much silence in the western press, rather than to stand trial and expose just how lax security vetting was, and just how far Philby had "pulled the Circus inside out" for decades on the basis that no decent chap who went to a private school could ever be a wrongun'.

Still, TV demands drama, so this miniseries posits that a man as clever as Nicholas Elliott - who volunteered to go to Beirut to bring Philby in - would not have let him escape without getting something in return. And this is pretty much the state of play when we leave episode 2.

Guy Pierce seems to nail something of Kim Philby's notoriously mis-used charisma, arrogance and ruthlessness.  Despite his latter day alcoholism, there's a superb scene when the Soviet spy is on a train to Moscow and for a moment - just a moment - when he tells his handler how he murdered a Soviet defector who would have blown his cover in 1951 and reminds said handler not to patronise him - it's just pure ruthless muderous condescension. This is the heart of Philby's egomania.  I believe he became a spy out of ideological idealism, but stayed a spy because he got a kick out of being the smartest person in the room at any time.  It suited his vanity.

Damian Lewis is rather harder to pin down as Nick Elliott and that's probably the point. One understands how Elliott believes in his best friend right up until the point when Burgess and Maclean defect in 1951. But from then on, when it has been categorically proven that "one of us" can be a wrongun', why does someone as intelligent as Elliott remain loyal and credulous - even getting Philby his job in Beirut? Friendship?  Believing he might - like Blunt - just stop? Or trying to get him out of the way? I am looking forward to seeing what the miniseries does with this but so far - nada. 

The final lead actor in this production is Anna Maxwell Martin as the fictional character of Lilly - an MI5 interrogator who debriefs Elliott on his return from Beirut, and provides the framing device for the show.  I know why the writers felt the need to create Lilly. And to beef up the role of Flora Solomon, the real woman who shopped Philby, and Litzy Friedmann, Philby's first wife.  They want to let some women into what is basically an all-male story because frankly that's how the Establishment operated at the time, and this is nothing if not a story about a failure at the heart of the Establishment.

Maxwell Martin is brilliant as always and her character does well to show the rivalry and class antagonism between MI5 and the SIS - security versus intelligence - working class strivers vs the effete adventurers of the upper classes.  I really liked her character. But when the writers make her married to a black doctor you just think okay is this telling us something about Lilly or about appealing to contemporary audiences? I say this as a person of colour - don't add us as bit parts to make a point - give us proper characters that propel action if you must anachronistically include us. That said, I appreciate the earnest good intentions. So let's move on.

The only thing that really worried me was that they seem to be hyping up the role of Litzi Friedmann as not just an instigator of Philby's move to spying but also as someone who kept him there, actively, after the war. Not sure where they are taking this but it just makes me nervous that they're going to go off piste from the facts to make a female character more important.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that other than the great performances I also really love that this show has decided to make post-war Britain look as poor and grey and grimy as it was.  This is the real world of espionage as depicted by Le Carre rather than the glamour and glitz of Fleming. The lensing and lighting and production and costume design are all punching well above the weight of a TV show. And the delicate use of make-up and CGI to age down and then age up the lead actors is first rate.

A SPY AMONG FRIENDS will be streaming on ITVx later this year.

PHILOMENA - LFF 2013 - Day Eight

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.



PHILOMENA isn't a bad film.  But it isn't a good film.  It's a perfectly serviceable TV weepie with a superior cast. The movie spends a lot of time self-mocking human interest stories for being schmaltzy melodrama designed to cater for the weak and stupid.  But it can't escape the fact that this is basically what PHILOMENA is.  It could've been more.  But bound as it is by the truth of the story, it can't get spiky enough to do anything interesting.

Let me explain.  Philomena (Dame Judi Dench) is a real life Irish woman who got knocked up, consigned to a convent, and had her son forcibly adopted when he was a little boy.  Fifty years later, she enlists the help of an ex-BBC journalist to find him, as it turns out, in America.  There's some interest in seeing a lapsed Catholic of some wealth and cynicism help a woman who has been so obviously wronged by her Church, but still has faith and forgiveness in her heart. We could have had a really fantastically interesting philosophical debate here, but apart from one  scene in which Philomena refuses to confess, the screenwriters seem to shy away from such a controversy.  Similarly, without spoiling anything, there are aspects of the son's life that Philomena, given her faith, could have struggled with.  But no, as if by the shake of a magic wand, she is perfectly fine and understanding and modern and lovely.  And then, take the journalist, Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan in an admirably modulated performace).  He could have had to confront some real issues about whether or not to exploit Philomena's story for financial gain.  But circumstances let him off the hook.  

The result is a film in which two basically nice people go on a road trip and any possible issue that might have caused some problems, some fire, some provocation, some debate, some nuance, are neatly handled.   This creates a rather banal and soupy experience better suited to the Hallmark Channel than the London Film Festival. And the jokes that are in the movie - while properly laugh-out-loud - are all in the trailer.

PHILOMENA has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK.

PHILOMENA played Venice 2013 where Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope won Best Screenplay, and Stephen Frears won the Queer Lion. It also played Toronto and London 2013.  It will be released in the UK, Ireland and Iceland on November 1st, in the USA on November 22nd, in Sweden on December 6th, in Italy on December 19th, in Hungary on December 26th, in France on January 8th 2014, in the Netherlands on February 13th, in Germany on February 27th and in Japan in March. 

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA

To listen to a podcast review of this film, click here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

I laughed at almost every line of ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA. And I don't mean an inward knowing intellectual laugh but proper laugh-out-loud, can't eat my jelly babies laughing.  And so was everyone else in the cinema, which was a bit disconcerting because they had an average age of twenty which means they weren't even born when Steve Coogan's comic creation first hit the small screen.  I felt momentarily old and passed it, and in between cackling with laughter at Patridge lip synching to Roachford's late 80s hit "Cuddly Toy", I thought of LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge"  - all those teenagers "in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties".  There was some irony in seeing these "yoot" get down with Alan Partridge - a movie that is at heart about people who are losing their edge, whose faces don't fit with shiny new brands aimed at the target demographic. People who want to stick two fingers up to the airbrushed over-familiar breakfast DJs who play from carefully manicured set-lists and have about as much to do with real music as IPL has to do with real cricket.

But, anyways, back to the matter at hand!  ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA is absolutely brilliant, and not just if you're a fan of his TV appearances as talk-show host and then his ignominious descent into local radio. We've got Alan as we love him - his goofy geeky fashion faux pas - his borderline sexism and racism - his sly selfish survival instinct - and most of all, his egomania.   There's something despairing and tragic about Alan, and yet, he always comes out on top, and that's why we love him.  We all have moments of pathetic desperation and Alan speaks to that. 

In his first feature film, Alan is a DJ at North Norfolk Digital - basically a media no-man's land. But he gets, and ceases his chance at fame, when his fellow DJ Pat Farrell is sacked by the station's new greed capitalist owners.  And when I say sacked, I mean shafted by a devious Alan.  Farrell goes FALLING DOWN, and starts shooting up the station, resulting in a hostage crisis that Alan mediates.  What results in a script that is absolutely packed with jokes but which also hangs together in terms of the  emotional motivation of the key characters and feels satisfying and meaty rather than just another shameless cash-in TV adaptation that has some funny scenes but no real substance.  God bless Armando Iannucci.  For giving us Alan and Malcolm Tucker.  That man shouldn't just be an OBE, he should be a bloody Duke, or Lord or something that signifies what a genius he is.  

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA has a running time of 90 minutes and is rated 15.  ALPHA PAPA premiered in Norwich on July 24th and was released in the UK on August 7th.  It opens in New Zealand on December 5th.