Is Soderbergh's Latest a Mixed Black Bag?
Taking a look at Steven Soderbergh's recent Espionage film.
Espionage, Fidelity, and Loyalty
Since the revelation that “Kim” Philby, at one time the chief British Intelligence representative in the United States, was in reality working for the Soviet Union, the vast majority of Espionage films and literature have focused on the themes of fidelity and loyalty. To be fair, the themes of loyalty and fidelity have always been central to Espionage tales and those issues are central to the Kipling novel Kim which inspired Philby’s nickname as well, but there was a division in the genre after Philby’s exposure. There were those who questioned why the West deserved fidelity and loyalty at all, and argued that the Intelligence community was filled with disloyal and disreputable figures, and then there were those who argued for fidelity as the highest virtue of a spy.
John le Carré and Graham Greene, who fall into the first camp, both worked in MI6 and served with Philby (or in areas affected by him) and his betrayal echoes throughout all of their fiction. In the case of le Carré, his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is based on the discovery of Philby and the demoralizing effect such betrayals have on peers, and his The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a key text for those who seek to understand the mindset of a spy who can no longer tell whether those he serves are worth being loyal to. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold makes a strong argument that Western Espionage and Diplomacy were out of synch with Democratic Values, a moral critique that all too accurately critiques the policies of the Mann Doctrine that was first articulated in Thomas C. Mann’s memorandum on Latin American policy to Charles Sawyer in 1952. This doctrine was one that was willing to tolerate authoritarian regimes in Latin America, so long as they weren’t overtly Communist.
It should be seen as no mere coincidence that The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was published in 1963, after decades of Western Intelligence being guided by a combination of real politik and Soviet influence through high ranking figures like Kim Philby. The Soviets could not have written a better foreign policy to undermine America and its allies as defenders of Democratic values. While le Carré, might never have seen the overt influence of Philby at the time, he touches upon how it must have been somewhere in the back of his mind in an article he wrote for Harpers Magazine about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Dissolve to a couple of years later and Kim Philby, once in line for chief, was also revealed as Moscow’s man. No wonder poor Leamas needed that stiff Scotch at London airport. The service that owned his unflinching allegiance was in a state of corporate rot that would take another generation to heal. Did he know that? I think deep down he did.
And I think I must have known it too, or I wouldn’t have written Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a few years down the line. — John le Carré Harper’s Magazine, April 2013
On the other end of the scale is the fiction of Ian Fleming, whose protagonist honors fidelity and country even when it doesn’t support him. Fleming’s James Bond and Felix Leiter are honorable men who serve their countries diligently and patriotically, but their loyalty and fidelity extend beyond nation and to all of their relationships. For all that Bond sometimes appears on the surface to be a man who flits in and out of sexual liaisons without any connection or commitment, and for whom all relationships are transactional, this couldn’t be further from the truth. His hardness is a ruse. He is a sentimental man capable of deep love. No excerpt demonstrates these character traits better than On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Early in the first chapter, we get a glimpse of Bond as sentimental.
To James Bond, sitting in one of the concrete shelters with his face to the setting sun, there was something poignant, ephemeral about it all. It reminded him almost too vividly of childhood—of the velvet feel of the hot powder sand, and the painful grit of wet sand between young toes when the time came for him to put his shoes and socks on, of the precious little pile of sea-shells and interesting wrack on the sill of his bedroom window (‘No, we’ll have to leave that behind, darling. It’ll dirty up your trunk!’), of the small crabs scuttling away from the nervous fingers groping beneath the seaweed in the rock-pools, of the swimming and swimming and swimming through the dancing waves—always. — Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
After this brief reminiscence, that establishes Bond’s humanity, he shifts into spy mode, but it is at the end of the novel [56 Year Old SPOILER ALERT] after we’ve seen him build a loving and committed relationship to Tracy that we see him as a truly loyal character. He’s loyal to country and to wife, but the events of the world remind him that as loyal as he is, his duty is never over. Those he love will be destroyed if he ever stops defending the world for even a minute, and so we get some of the saddest words written in a spy novel.
‘It’s all right,’ he said in a clear voice as if explaining something to a child. ‘It’s quite all right. She’s having a rest. We’ll be going on soon. There’s no hurry. You see—’ Bond’s head sank down against hers and he whispered into her hair—‘you see, we’ve got all the time in the world.’ — Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Cynicism with a dash of despair at compromise or loyalty with the risk of personal sacrifice, those are the tensions of spy fiction in the aftermath of Philby. This dichotomy has been extended to films based on this rich literature and it is into this rich milieu that Steven Soderbergh’s recent spy thriller fully immerses itself.
Black Bag’s Answer to the Fidelity and Loyalty Dilemma
Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag opens with a scene where it is revealed that a member of British Intelligence is compromised and is selling a dangerous top secret computer program called Severus. During this scene, there is a good deal of discussion about marital fidelity in which we learn that our protagonist George Woodhouse looks down upon those who view marital betrayal as an inevitable outcome of life in the Great Game. We also learn that George’s wife Kathryn is a potential suspect.
George and his wife both work for the agency, though in different roles. George’s role in SIS is strictly counter-espionage. His job is to root out those who might be betraying his country. Kathryn is a talented spymaster who has coordinated many missions and is hoping to someday displace the current Director Arthur Stieglitz. Their roles in the agency are perfectly complimentary to one another and include well defined power dynamics. Their personal relationship also has clearly defined expectations. When George returns home from meeting his boss, he notifies his wife that he wants to set up a dinner in their home to root out the culprit. It becomes clear in this conversation that, according to the agency, she is a suspect.
It also becomes clear where each state where their primary loyalties lie. As the couple engages in amorous activity, Kathryn asks George if he would ever lie to her. His response is that he would never lie to her. He asks her the same question and she responds “only if I have to.” This implies that his primary loyalty is to her and their relationship and that her primary loyalty is to something higher, perhaps the nation or the people but which is not implied in this scene. What matters is that the dynamic of her as leadership and him as what Michael Eisner would classify as a great partner in his book Working Together, which is to say George is an extremely capable person who makes it his job to facilitate the primary leader’s objectives. He may be loyal to the nation, but that is because he is loyal to Kathryn. Though it is implied he is more loyal to the truth than anything else, but so long as Kathryn wasn’t betraying her primary obligation.
It is in the relationship between George and Kathryn that Soderbergh’s strengths and weaknesses are on full display. In every non-romantic scene, the chemistry between George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) is undeniable. They are portraying people who understand and care about one another with casual assumed love that one finds in the best of marriages. Soderbergh uses this chemistry as the primary driver of tension for the underlying mystery. The audience worries what will happen if Kathryn is in fact the traitor.
This chemistry is undercut in the semi-intimate scenes where their appears to be a lack of comfortable intimacy. Instead there’s a kind of Skinemax softcore vibe to the scenes where one almost expects the score to shift from the wonderful composition created by David Holmes into a 70s porn pseudo-funk vibe. From the lighting to the camera angles, the depiction of the relationship shifts from romantic love to what feels more like a sexploitation film. It isn’t that Soderbergh cannot direct intimate love scenes. He’s done so in the past. The “What If” scene in Out of Sight is one of the sexiest scenes ever filmed, but that kind of chemistry is lacking here and a lot of that has to do with directorial choices such as lighting and camera angle.
Kathryn is not the only suspect that George has on his radar. The other key suspects are Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), and Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page). To make the web of intrigue more interesting, screenwriter David Koepp, has placed all of these suspects into three romantic pairs. Clarissa and Freddie are in a May/October (not quite May/December) relationship and so too are Zoe and James where who the May and October are is flipped.
The film plays out as a series of investigations, deceptions, and reveals bookended between two dinner parties thrown by George and Kathryn. The first dinner party sets the stage and incites responses from all the other participants, while the second provides the setting for the denouement. It’s a tightly written screenplay that is extremely well acted by all parties. I’ve been a fan of Regé-Jean Page for quite some time, though my fandom did grow five times larger after his performance in the Dungeons & Dragons film, and his performance here should get him some additional consideration for future spy roles.
The mystery, as I have said many times, centers on loyalty and whether one can truly be loyal to anything in the Great Game. To provide the film’s answer that question is to spoil the ride, but let it be said that there are a number of wonderful twists and turns in the film. Not twists and turns of information, rather twists and turns in character interactions as we see the relationships between the parties at play shift as new information is revealed. The sequence when George gives each of the suspects a polygraph near the end of the film is a high point for tension and the revelation of truth.
There isn’t a lot of gun wielding action in the film. In Black Bag, the action is all in the dialog and in finding out when, why, and how people lie in their relationships. The film posits that those in romantic relationships have the perfect alibi for when they want to cheat on their partners, they can merely claim they were on a Black Bag mission. Half of the players, including Kathryn, were on a Black Bag mission when the program was stolen. Who did the taking and will they achieve their goals or can there be loyalty? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out, but I highly recommend you do just that.