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A dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of a series of historic events, Bridge of Spies tells the story of James Donovan, a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on the near-impossible task to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Matt Charman and The Coen Bros.
Starring Tom Hanks and a whole lot of other people
Release Date - October 16, 2015
Looking forward to articles about the screenplay's creation.
I'm pretty sure the screenplay was had more affinity with the absurd notion of the cold war when the Coens were sole writers, and then Spielberg got in there and toned that down, perhaps made it serious, and I would bet Tom Hanks is now either an absent father or his father abandoned him or something related to that kind of thing.
Bridge of Spies Q&A with Spielberg moderated by PT (http://www.dga.org/Events/2015/Dec2015/BridgeofSpies_QnA_1015.aspx) (and an hour with Scorsese)
Wanting to watch the Q&A finally lit enough fire under me to get out of the house and go see this. The movie is fantastic - my favorite Spielberg since Catch Me if You Can at least. It's about actors, Actors, ACTORS. I couldn't believe the number of great faces in every single role. With PSH's passing I think Rylance has the most depth of any living actor now, and hope he'll step into more film work and provide us with the kinds of performances DDL supplies only every half decade. I saw Rylance in a taped version of Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up3M7WOPsg4) at the Lincoln Center archives a couple months ago and was blown away. Blown. Away. DDL has competition, really.
And not to get too political but it struck me for the first time how Spielberg somehow sees himself as carrying the responsibility of the "American Image". You can sort of measure the temperature of patriotism by tracking the tone of his films. I haven't thought too hard about this so maybe it's iffy but I certainly felt that sense from BoS, and going back to his post 2000s stuff I see it too. Never realized how timely each of his movies was before. I feel dumb for not having noticed this.
its a neat movie, but i still think it pales in comparison to even his last. its similar to lincoln because it loves the words, and its true, its concerned with whatever its means (/use to mean) to be american; due process, etc. its impossible to listen to the words without thinking of the coens, their wryness. in the above q&a spielberg talks about the story's need for irony, and yea, its here. rylance! looking forward to the next five years in which he appears in everything.
spielberg shoots and cuts in a way that no one does anymore. everything feels so well choreographed, whether its a sequence of shots (the plane crash!) or just a master where a couple of guys talk. i liked hearing in the q&a spielberg describe with glee coming up with shots the day of, like the footsteps stepping on the burnt bulbs.
kinda can't get past the kaminzski cinematography though. wish they went all the way and just made this one b&w.
Confession - I skipped Lincoln, which I should make up for. The Coen's involvement in the script seemed to help temper Speilberg's sentimentality here (only half a bookend this time!) and I liked most of the dialogue...this really felt like a classic American movie to me unconcerned with the now (thought it's obviously concerned with the now, thematically). Less showy "I'm Spielberg - here's my style and me throwing my weight around" and more in the vein of things like Marty, Inherit the Wind, From Here to Eternity -- stuff where the name of the director doesn't necessarily immediately leap to mind. A director doing his job and doing it well, slipping into the background. I was impressed by what I took as Spielberg's humility this go around in terms of letting the notes of the film play more subtly than usual. And I like his movies on the whole - but this felt like a real evolution in his style for me, even if incremental.
I agree the blocking was magnificent. Speilberg also mentioned an anecdote in one of those Q&A's about Soderbergh shooting multiple masters. A master from "this" angle" and then a reverse master, and then another and another. That had never occurred to me before. Interesting method.
I really, really didn't care for Munich upon its release and haven't watched it since, but Bridge of Spies is making me want to revisit it because my memory is linking that film to this as his most stylistically similar. I don't think I'll ever get over the sex-crying, though.
To be honest I didn't like Lincoln, but Munich you should go back to because it's actually stronger on subsequent viewings. I don't know why but I was never bothered by that sex scene, I was surprised when I realized it was "a thing".
Glancing at your post, this is what I read at first:
Quote from: Alexandro on October 21, 2015, 10:01:16 AMI didn't like Lincoln . . . but I was never bothered by that sex scene
Yikes. Some presidents, like one's parents, are best imagined to be chaste.
Quote from: Alexandro on October 21, 2015, 10:01:16 AM
Munich you should go back to because it's actually stronger on subsequent viewings.
Definitely will do.
One more trailer, the best of the bunch:
this isn't the first time spielberg's evoked saul bass as an indication of what's in store, and i don't think it's incidental that the poster very specifically apes two saul bass posters for movies starring jimmy stewart (vertigo and anatomy of a murder). this could have very well been titled Mr Smith... er, Donovan Goes to Berlin.
this felt like spielberg's The Departed, which is to say it's watching a master doing riffs on the kind of stuff they loved watching as a kid. in scorsese's case it's an unrelenting homage to gangster/crime movies of old, rendered with a modern aesthetic but filled with anachronistic genre tropes and references to films of that era (most notably the mini-recreation of the ending of the third man, for no real reason other than to do it because he wanted to). it plays like a cinematic mix tape. bridge of spies operates on the same level, at least for me, and i kind of loved every minute of it. everything from the coens immaculate ear for hollywood golden age dialogue, to the wholesome morality and optimism at the expense of "realism" or complexity, to an overall charm that oozes a love of that era of hollwood filmmaking that, as a fan of those kinds of movies, i couldn't help but be betwitched by. i especially loved that it achieved this sense of classic hollwood film while still flaunting a modern technical prowess and sensibility.
the lens i viewed the film through is probably a bit of a stretch but it made for a very sating moviegoing experience.
Just wanted to point out that the poster at the top is definitely fan-made but one of the official posters does nod to Bass so your point still stands.
http://www.impawards.com/2015/bridge_of_spies_ver3.html
Tom Hank's pores look like the dashboard of a luxury car.
it's tricky for me because Saul Bass has literally nothing to do with Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, which is by far my least favorite Frank Capra movie (by far), and what i do when i'm in the mood for old Hollywood is i watch an old Hollywood movie.
thought i'd maybe see this but now i don't know. should i have seen The Departed in theaters? i did, and who cares. i don't. i saw Hugo 3D twice and ftw.
see it.
its geopolitics and values are obsolete, but there's good stuff in it.
SOME MINOR SPOILERS
It felt like a minor film, even though I can't disagree with the praise in general. I felt it took too long to find it's groove and it was tame in it's portrayal of the public's disapproval of Hank's character and the general hate towards communism at the time.
And all the family stuff was completely unnecessary, particularly the final ten minutes, which are all about Tom Hanks the family man getting redemption for doing his job.
Yet it's true that Spielberg is master and he has fantastic instincts, so the film is a pleasure to watch just because of the way he blocks and cuts the whole thing. I think he was on a wild roll (if uneven) from Schindler's List to Munich, and since then it's been a lot of not so great films that are elevated endlessly by his craft.
^^completely agree, a minor film by Spielberg but still his craft is always evident.
I'll add this, the film has many comedic moments, Hanks has quite a few and the Russian spy in all his seriousness has them as well.
Quote from: Alexandro on November 02, 2015, 03:36:24 PMSOME MINOR SPOILERS
And all the family stuff was completely unnecessary, particularly the final ten minutes, which are all about Tom Hanks the family man getting redemption for doing his job.
I agree with that...I watched it again a couple weeks ago and the final scene on the train bothered me more.
SPOILERSOn the plane back to the US from Germany, after they've retrieved Powers in the swap, you have Powers imploring Donovan to believe him that he never talked. Powers needs the public acknowledgment of his integrity because the implication is that he broke under pressure after being captured by the Russians and doesn't have this integrity and peace in private. I don't know the details of the real story, if Powers actually did, but for the movie's sake this seemed to be pretty clear.
In contrast you have Donovan, who has been operating oppositely, tirelessly, and thanklessly, keeping his actions hidden even from his family because his behavior is influenced by his personal moral compass - coming from a place of it being the "right thing" to do.
The last train scene has American passengers reading a newspaper article about Donovan's involvement in the swap, glancing at him approvingly and smiling - different behavior than they displayed earlier on in the film in a similar train scene where they were reading about his representing the supposed spy and firmly disapproved. This second train scene where the passengers turn to his side really fucks up the theme of the movie, giving Donovan the thing Powers needed only because he lacked the integrity that Donovan had - Donovan shouldn't need societal approval given what we've been watching so far. This scene "confirms" that in the end Donovan did do the right thing after being doubted and maligned for his choices, but it weakens the idea that we should live by our own resolve, apart from the tyranny of the mob, even when it's most difficult.
That's my only quibble with this thing, but whatever, it's Spielberg.
SPOILERS
if i remember correctly, doesn't donovan hardly acknowledge the gesture from the woman in that second train scene, even seem a little embarrassed by it? it has almost no bearing emotionally and if anything is a pretty inconsequential bit of parallelism. i don't see how that moment thwarts the theme at large. just because he gets the approval of a stranger (and society) doesn't suggest donovan ever needed or sought it, or that that particular moment is when donovan is vindicated for his actions. that all happened on the bridge with abel. that he is celebrated for his actions is just an archetypal hollywood denouement, that kind of classic hollywood moralizing/patriotism, which is hokey and trivial but in keeping with the movie's general aura. i don't think it negates the thematic work at all. and really the payoff of any of that shit at the end of the movie is to see him go straight to bed in the midst of swelling sentimentality. i'd even go so far as to say that moment strengthens the notion of independent moral steadfastness and acting accordingly. the fanfare doesn't matter. he just wants to go to sleep in his own bed.
which is to say i'm fine with, even really like the way to movie ends.
SPOILERS
He does seem happy, if I remember correctly. He cares about what ignorant people think based on what the Truth of the Day is. Which...okay, fine, whatever the themes are, I guess every human would be proud to be seen as a hero. But the movie would be better without it, the scene seems to go beyond the character's pride...
This film hopped on too many recent bandwagons for it to be good. The first one being movies wanting to do too much with CGI matte painting, which made east Germany look like the town from Tintin. The second being serious historical movies doing pg-13 versions of these supposedly tense genre moments - for example when Argo, a movie in which nothing happens and really was just supposed to be a podcast - creates like for or five set pieces which all ended in misunderstanding or false scares. This film had a few moments of drummed up suspense that were too sanitized to get the job done. For example it wants to show what east Germany has to endure because the film has no confidence in the actual facts so it creates these little violent moments that have nothing to do with the plot except to remind the viewers how fucked up east Germany was, except all of that stuff was toned way down because Spielberg wanted a pg-13 rating so no one really bought it anyway. And it tries to piggy back off of those moments during the climax and tries really really hard to evoke some sense of thriller like danger when it really should be a character moment - like in spotlight or something.
When a masterful filmmaker gets materials like this, he can dazzle you with all kinds of themes and evocations, but there's a difference between this type of evocation and something that happens in a film like Phoenix...Speilberg has to hint and evoke and suggest and bury themes and scream history lessons and drum up music because he fundamentally doesn't trust the story to be solid or satisfying on its own.