Bridge of Spies

Yeah that nails it.

 

Very interesting. Although before my time, did Powers have a rough time in his return to the US? I know the military use to be quite strict on prisoners who did not follow orders to a tee in captivity (Only give name, rank, serial #). One of the sailors who drifted into Iranian territory started chatting away. I'll be curious how "inside" the Military will address if such is breaking a rule. Personally, I don't think he was doing anything wrong...but I'm not Military.

 

Another extremely interesting moment that Spielberg never mentioned. He was NOT the real Abel! His name was William Fisher. The real Abel, also a KGB agent died 4 years before his arrest in 1955. Fisher called himself Abel when questioned by FBI as a sign to KGB that he stays true and didn't switch sides.

 

Well, I liked the movie. Probably my favorite Tom Hanks, since he does not act like Tom Hanks

I liked seeing it in a theatre-the cinematography doesn't need it but the ambience is enhanced.

As for the cartoonish bad guys, not sure cartoonish is the word. Um, weren't things rather creepy like that? I wasn't there so I don't know. People are people, but the morph when toeing official propaganda lines.

 

It's not like Khruschev didn't order the Wall to be built and east germans didn't shoot people at the wall, but at the same time most people in DDR and USSR at the time truly believed that they fought for the bright future of mankind (communism) and that THEY were the good guys who fought a noble fight against brutal capitalism and it's oppression of the working class. They had normal faces, open smiles and didn't look and speak like VERY VERY EVIL villains portrayed here. The soviet "diplomat" looks and acts like a 100% cartoonish villain if you ask me and the german officers at the checkpoint Charlie look like they just came from the set of another movie where they played SS.

 

Great post, antonkk. Thanks.

 

Saw it, liked it.

 

As mentioned, yet again another true story told with only 30% of the truth.

Hopeless.

 

A good film. Not great. Minor Spielberg.

 

I saw this last night and found it mostly boring. It's very workman-like, with a little Spielbergian sentimentality. I was surprised to see that Ethan and Joel Coen were involved in the script. I couldn't identity any spark I would have attributed to them. Pretty forgettable movie in the Spielberg catalog.

 

The funny thing about this movie was, Spielberg directed it as if it were an enormously tense and suspenseful tale of spy intrigue, and yet when you think about it afterwards, nothing terribly dramatic happened. The lawyer came up with the idea of a prisoner swap, he went to the Soviets and proposed it, and the swap went ahead as planned and without a hitch. While the situation was not without its tensions it seemed in retrospect that the movie made much ado about...not nothing but not that much.

 

The wife and I watched it last night....we thought it was very entertaining.

 

Same here.
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us too.

i did the duck and cover drill in grade school, because my school desk was going to protect me from a nuclear explosion! i always wondered why sister mary robert didn't hide under her desk too?

 

There's always a tendency in a lot of movies to revert to a kind of "story shorthand" where everything is kind of on a superficial level -- and that goes for emotions, character types, and reducing plot elements to the bare essentials. Unfortunately, if you want more detail, more realism, and more subtlety, you're going to have to read a novel. They can't do all this in 2 hours.

As I've often said, these films are dramatized entertainment, not documentaries. But I agree totally that there is a line that should be crossed when you're creating a fictionalized version of a real-life situation. That line has blurred considerably for many films made in the last 50-60 years, and there is too much of a tendency to dumb the stories and characters down.

 

The reason is that many of these DDR security forces had been Nazis in reality. So that would not be surprising. From what I know these guys were brutal and hostile in reality.

I'd say that there were certainly people who believed that communist East Germany was "the better Germany", especially early on, but by the early 1960s their number had greatly decreased. People were leaving the DDR in great numbers which caused the East German regime to built the Berlin war (Khruschev approved the decision, but it was really the leadership of the DDR who wanted this wall to be built) . Afterwards, it was basically clear to most people in East Germany that the DDR was an oppressive dictatorship that would do everything to survive.

 

Frankly I don't know much about the realities of 60's DDR but in 60's USSR the mood was quite different, very romantic and optimistic. This was the time of Gagarin, huge economic breakthroughs etc. And up until 1968 the much more liberal climate called The Thaw. I'd say most people truly believed in communism as Heaven on Earth, which was just around the corner, as Khrustchev promised. In contrast soviet people saw political murders, race violence and Vietnam War across the Iron Curtain. It was the Golden Age of USSR, great movies, poets, etc. The disillusion started after the crackdown on Prague Spring in 68.

 

In East Germany the situation was very different. I think that some of that spirit existed there too, but you have to remember that the uprising of 1953 had been crushed by Russian forces. So from that point on it was clear that the DDR could not count on the support of its own population. If there had been free elections the communists would have instantly lost power which of course the Soviet Union could not allow. So people left in droves, more than 2 million went from East to West Germany until 1961. If this had continued the DDR would have collapsed.

 

I finally got around to seeing this film this week, and it was stellar from start to finish. It's an extraordinarily well-shot film, incredible sets, costumes, a fantastic recreations of 1962 Germany, and absolutely believable performances. Hanks is 100% convincing in the part. I think it's the best film I've seen in a long time, and I was not expecting to like it much on the assumption that it would be a boring history lesson. It's anything but -- it's a moving drama of people in very precarious situations.

After I saw the film I checked out some web resources for the historical revisions, and clearly there was some "story shortcuts" involved. None of them bothered me too much, though I did find it interesting that the Russian spy who went back to the USSR was hailed as a hero and had a good life back home. The movie implied they might shoot him, and I thought the truth was a more interesting story.

Well, except: you had an ordinary guy in the middle of a huge spy swap, and he had to completely make up what he was doing as things went on. The amazing thing to me was that he turned out to be an extremely bright, quick-thinking negotiator who badgered the Russians (and the East Germans) into doing what he wanted. And he did it under almost impossible odds, at great risk to himself.

The classic Spielberg moment was the ending, where he comes home from his "business trip," goes upstairs, and then about a minute later his name is mentioned as being one of the pivotal people who made the Francis Gary Powers swap possible... and the family's jaws drop. Great bit.

BTW, the "making of" documentary reveals that it was Tom Hanks' idea to have his character look out the window of his NY train and see innocent children jumping over the fences between their property, echoing the tragedy of the people he saw killed on the Berlin Wall. I think that was the single best moment of the entire film, and it was something that Hanks the actor thought of on the set, and Spielberg gave him credit for it.

 

I thought the film was fine, but bland and uneventful. It was very much by-the-numbers type affair with nothing much to set it apart. It wasn't bad, just - meh. I could have done without the same line (initially funny) being repeated three times (about worrying - would it help?).

 

For me, it was Mark Rylance's performance, honored by an Oscar win, that really made this movie special.

 

I finally saw it and was surprised by how much good there was in it, particularly since I've felt that Spielberg lost it long ago.
But being a spy nut I can't help but be more critical than usual. I agree with previous comments that it felt too heavy handed and overall little occurred. The cross cutting between the Hanks character and the guy you knew was gong to turn out to be Gary Powers never really worked for me and I felt that all the Powers segments were way too heavy handed.
Hanks was wonderful and definitely doing a role in the 50's Stewart mold. In fact that may be what I hated most: that promise was never really fulfilled. Imagine Jimmy dropped into a LeCarre atmosphere....oh boy I think I may have just made myself drool like crazy.
Admittedly I'm not a fan of Kaninski's shooting style so I frequently wished that they had used normal photography. The period setting worked mostly but then would collapse otherwise. I did love the theater marquee touch, but it broke me out of the film thinking it must be a later reissue of Spartacus dubbed and cut down for general release.

The sound was stellar and reason alone to buy the blu-ray. This is thanks to Gary Rydstrom, maestro behind T2 and many others. Here all the sound is so warm whilst being realistically laid out that it becomes truly seamless.

I think the best things abut the film are Hanks and Rylance (though I did feel it odd that he snagged an Oscar for such a small role.)
Overall this is rather reminiscent of Munich, another historical drama that was surprisingly engaging and shows there's still life in the old boy yet. But it's the old fashioned quality the both helps and hurts this film. It helps in that it is certainly a defined story with no crap editing or camerawork but harms it in that it is too sentimental and reassuring. I loved the final bit when he returns home but it was too pat and too easy. Young Spielberg or his contemporaries would have ended it on the bridge with the possibility that Abel would be killed.

(But that fade to black from the opening search of Abel's apartment was just...baaad.)

 

My feelings also. I mean, it's "beautifully made" but it's so stiff and plodding. It just goes through the motions and you can see it all coming with no surprises. Dull. Speilburg wanted to do a Capra-like thing here but he blew it. Also, God knows why the little guy got the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, he was hardly in the film and just moped around looking sullen and cute.

 

I agree. Fine the first time, but it became groan inducing after that.

 

Rented this recently. Couldn't get through it once the caricatures started rolling in. A decent first half that loses all its suspense/tightness once Hanks' character goes to E. Germany. Strongly agree with posts here about it being stiff/plodding and bland. Rylance was good b/c he made the viewer believe in his motive and ideals. Hanks did well just to keep up with him in their scenes together.