Among the numerous pleasurable things I got to do over this past holiday period was a cinema visit.
I just love going to the movies, but as is the case with others of my favourite pastimes, I don’t get so much opportunity to indulge myself – or so I claim just to make me feel better about what may also well just be laziness, the sheer number of football games to watch over the length of a weekend, or a distinct lack of films that really interest me enough to, literally, “get me out of the house”.
The one I did see now is Bridge of Spies, Stephen Spielberg’s latest oeuvre and his 27th feature film as director. It is also his fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks who plays the lead role of attorney Jim Donovan here (and more on him later). Previous joint projects include Saving Private Ryan (1998); Catch Me If You Can (2002); and, best of all I think, The Terminal (2004) – very funny in an equally thoughtful and intelligent way. A winning formula.
Tom Hanks, born 1956, also has a remarkable track record of course outside his work with Stephen Spielberg. He won the Oscar for his lead roles in Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994), making him only the second film actor ever to be awarded that highest of honours in two consecutive years. For your next pub quiz: The first was Spencer Tracy, winning in 1937 and 1938. The following year, 1995, Hanks was not nominated again for his role as Commander Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, so the hat-trick eluded him.
To be fair, that film wasn’t really suited for highlighting the Best Actor in a Leading Role, winning “only” the awards for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, but at least it gave Hanks the opportunity to utter one of the most lasting one-liners in film history: “Houston, we have a problem.”
I remember renting the movie out on video (no DVD, Blue Ray, or “streaming” in those days) while on a family holiday in Florida and watching it with my kids in the evening after our return from a tour of Cape Canaveral. I swear that for years they thought “Houston” was the name of the character played by Ed Harris, the NASA Flight Director at Mission Control in Texas.
And why would they not? Being the well-brought up, respectful children that they were then, and still are today, they probably just quietly wondered why Commander Lovell was so rude to his colleague on the ground and didn’t address him as “Mr Houston”.
His actual name was Gene Kranz, based on the real-life Flight Director Eugene F. Kranz who worked for NASA from 1961 to 1994, overseeing both the first moon landing of Apollo 11 and the rescue of the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight.
Speaking of memorable one-liners (well, two-liners really), Ed Harris had this one:
“We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.” End of discussion.
He was nominated for the Oscar in the category Best Actor in a Supporting Role but didn’t win.
Tom Hanks has also worked with considerable success “behind the camera”: In 2001, he helped direct and produce the Emmy-Award winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and in 2010 he was executive producer of that other WWII miniseries, The Pacific. I believe I have mentioned these before here.
He shall be forgiven for his starring in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and its sequel Angels & Demons (2009), both after the eponymous best-selling novels by Dan Brown. Playing “Harvard symbologist” [sic] Robert Langdon, he is basically the urban and scholarly answer to Harrison Ford’s signature character Indiana Jones who preferred gallivanting through more far-flung, rural territories. Oh, and Professor Langdon does not crack the whip.
For those of you, however, who have been anxiously waiting over the last seven years for a third dollop of fast-moving action triggered by mysterious religious conspiracies threatening to rock the very foundations of Christianity and Western culture as we know it, I have good news as your agony is soon to end:
In December it was unveiled that Inferno will hit cinemas this year!
But Hanks shall equally be lauded for many other films that are less-well known, such as the title role in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), a hilarious persiflage on American politics in general, the shenanigans of Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson in Washington DC in particular, and his secret dealings in Afghanistan, arming the mujahideen against the Soviet invaders in the early 1980s, specifically. Well, we all know how that panned out.
Coming back to Tom Hanks’ latest film I’ve just watched, and before you lose your patience with me, note the wonderful rhyme of its title with the Bridge of Sighs, located in Venice across the canal Rio di Palazzo. It links the New Prison to the interrogation cells in the Doge’s Palace and owes its name to the romantic notion that convicts would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells.
No wonder then that we owe the English translation of Ponte dei sospiri to the arch-Romantic of all Romantics, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824) who visited Venice, aka La Serenissima, in the course of his extensive travels in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
Anyhow, coming back to Bridge of Spies, there is nothing even remotely romantic about its theme. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, it tells the true story of the exchange of Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy arrested in Brooklyn on 21 June 1957 and subsequently sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in the United States, against two young Americans – Gary Powers, the pilot of a U-2 aerial reconnaissance plane shot down over Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960 and held by the Soviet Union; and Yale graduate student Frederic Pryor, who ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall on 3 August 1961, the day it was built, and was arrested by the Soviet satellite regime in the German Democratic Republic.
A piece of trivia that I, as you will know by now, always find so hard to resist: The rock band U-2 named themselves after this aircraft type featured in the movie, and frontman Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson plays aforementioned Tom Hanks character Jim Donovan’s eldest daughter Carol. And she even has a scene all to herself, too. Neat, right?!
And no, I am not a U-2 fan.
The negotiations leading to the exchange of the prisoners were conducted by Donovan, a capable but pretty anonymous partner in an insurance law firm, who, if I understand correctly, stumbled into this truly historic role simply due to the fact that he was appointed Abel’s defence attorney by the American government when no-one else would volunteer to take on this very unpopular and thankless mandate.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or, from Donovan’s perspective: Recognize an exceptional challenge when it is unexpectedly thrown your way, embrace it, and come out on top.
“Have faith and pursue the unknown end.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 – 1935; American jurist and member of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932)
Actually, and returning to the great Lord Byron for a moment, come to think of it, in the case of Pryor, the “other” guy exchanged (for the U.S. Government, Gary Powell was the big prize of course), there was indeed romance involved as he made the mistake of going to the Soviet occupied part of Berlin on that fateful day to convince his German girlfriend to come to the western sectors with him on the spot – while it was still possible to do so without risking to step on land mines crossing a zone additionally sealed off by barbed wire, aka “The Death Strip”, and then physically climbing the Wall, exposing oneself to getting shot in the back in the process.
For Frederic Pryor, 28 years old then, it just boiled down to wrong place, wrong time. The things (young) men will do for love…
To quote Rod Stewart’s song “Some Guys Have All the Luck” (Camouflage, 1984), ironically:
“Some guys have all the luck
Some guys have all the pain
Some guys get all the breaks
Some guys do nothing but complain”
The eponymous “Bridge of Spies” by the way is the Glienicker Brücke across the river Havel which in this part of Berlin separated the Soviet sector from the West. The bridge was used several times during the Cold War for the exchange of captured spies who would dramatically walk across it from East to West and from West to East, respectively, meeting half-way without ever acknowledging each other, to be greeted by their friends and comrades (or not anymore – long before the advent of Facebook, people could be “unfriended”, arguably with graver consequences though) on the other side, whisked away to be “de-briefed”, and exposed to an uncertain future back home.
Abel and Powers crossed that bridge in the early hours of 10 February 1962; Pryor was simultaneously released at the even more famous Checkpoint Charlie in the city centre.
Visiting Berlin, the capital of reunified Germany since 1990, today, which I would urge everyone to do as it is both an interesting and fun place to go, you can hardly imagine the realities of a divided city and country during the Cold War, only a few decades ago. But of course you can still see all the historic sights and landmarks plus a section of the Wall that was not dismantled to serve as a stark memorial of those times.
“Stark”? Well, it is covered in graffiti art today.
Since we are heading into Hollywood’s awards season – the Golden Globes will be presented on 10 January, the Academy Awards, generally known as the Oscars, on 28 February – let it be known that Bridge of Spies has deservedly been short-listed for both these most prestigious of film industry accolades in a number of categories, with one highest (not lowest) common denominator: Best Supporting Actor.
Before I come to it, let me be on the record as saying Tom Hanks is one of my all-time favourite movie heroes, as per the above. There is simply no argument about his titanic stature, and from what I have seen of him in the media, in talk shows, and in other public appearances, he seems to be a very likeable, quirky, and down-to-earth kind of guy as well.
He collects old, mechanical travel typewriters and never goes anywhere without one. Yes, those actually were very much in demand in days gone by, but that is such a long time ago that they might as well have been used by the dinosaurs.
A propos of nothing, there are many theories on the reasons why that species died out – climate change, impact from meteorites, or a general inability to adapt and evolve.
Well, let it be revealed here and now: The simple truth is they were extinct because they collectively took up smoking. And don’t just take my word for it – I have the cartoon to prove it, too.
So, on to the Best Supporting Actor nominations for Bridge of Spies, and the true star of the movie.
It is British actor Mark Rylance in the role of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
Born in 1960 in Ashford, Kent, according to the usually spot-on Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) he has hitherto been “widely regarded as the greatest stage actor of his generation”.
In addition, however, even before Bridge of Spies he also already had a number of remarkable film roles to his credit, always in clever movies “with a twist”:
The Other Boleyn Girl (as Sir Thomas Boleyn) 2008 – a creative different take on the relationship between Henry VIII and Anna Boleyn
Anonymous (as Condell) 2011 – the story of the “real” author behind the works of a certain William Shakespeare
Days and Nights (as Stephen) 2014 – a modern version of Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, set in New England in 1984
The Gunman (as Cox) 2015 – an action-packed plot in which a mercenary sniper in the Congo becomes the target of a death squad himself years later
Wolf Hall (as none less than Sir Thomas Cromwell) 2015 – a TV mini-series adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s epochal novel published in 2009, the highly fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell at the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, The Observer named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". The book is the first in a trilogy; the sequel Bring Up the Bodies was published in 2012, and the literary world is waiting with bated breath for Part Three.
So now, Mark Rylance plays Rudolf Abel. Stephen Spielberg cast him for the role after watching his 2014 Tony-Award winning performance in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was the actor’s third Tony win, the most prestigious of “stage Oscar” awards, recognising performances in live New York Broadway theatre. The other two were for Boeing, Boeing (2008) and Jerusalem (2011). No other actor has achieved three Tony-Award wins. And looking at their intervals, there may well be something big to look forward to in 2017. Watch this space if so inclined.
As Frank Sinatra sang in one of his signature songs, New York, New York (recorded by him in 1979):
“If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere,
It's up to you, New York, New York"
In this role, Rylance takes the notion of quiet charisma to a new level. Speaking in a monotonous voice with a North England, borderline Scottish accent (historically accurate as Abel was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Russian parents and spent some of his school years in Scotland before returning to The Motherland), there is not one superfluous twitch of his face, not one distracting blink of his eyes, nor one spoken word too many in his performance.
And when at times his attorney Hanks/Donovan despairs with him and asks why he is not angry or anxious or doesn’t show any other emotions, he sardonically replies: “Would it help?”
Coming from stage acting, where if anything there needs to be a surplus exaggeration of volume and gesture and mimics, this cannot have been an easy transition for Rylance to make, but he has certainly mastered it impressively – the camera, as they say in the industry, loves him.
So much so that he will next play the title role in Stephen Spielberg’s new, 28th movie (if my counting is still correct), The BFG, a Phantasy genre film after a novel by Roald Dahl to be released this year. My font of wisdom on all things movies, IMDb has to say the following about it, explaining also the mysterious title:
“A girl named Sophie encounters the Big Friendly Giant who, despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kind-hearted soul who is considered an outcast by the other giants because unlike his peers refuses to eat boys and girls.” Bless him.
So as does the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie, in real life Mark Rylance is stepping up, graduating from supporting actor to top act. Of course, no matter how talented you are or how hard you work, at one point you will need a lucky break to reach the pinnacle of your chosen profession. If Stephen Spielberg on that evening in 2014 had not gone to watch Twelfth Night on Broadway, who knows.
But I also firmly believe that good things come to good people, quality in the end always prevails, and everybody gets what they deserve (positive and negative, by the way). So according to this optimistic world view, Rylance would still have taken that final step, it may just have been a little later.
On the other hand, looking around me, I also often feel compelled to say, “Life is not fair. And if they told you so, they were lying.”
Discuss.
Sometimes, if you do get impatient on your way up, a conscious change of careers can help.
Staying within the film industry for the perfect example, as a Hollywood actor, a certain Ronald Reagan never managed to progress from playing the roles of “The Lead Man’s Best Friend” to becoming “The Lead Man” himself. But then he went into politics instead, and the rest is truly history.
In either scenario,
“The way we are living,
Timorous or bold,
Will have been our life.”
Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013; Irish poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995)
And believe me, it is short.
I picked this up somewhere recently, and I’ve already shared it with some of you. I do think it makes for a good motto for the year just begun (it being too late already for New Year’s Resolutions):
Since I have spent so much time on this movie now, I have decided to create a new category – films with the word “bridge” in their titles.
And no, Bridge-t Jones Diary (2001) and Bridge-t Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) do so not qualify.
I have identified four others, the most recent previous one being The Bridges of Madison County (1995) – something for really die-hard fans of Clint Eastwood (who also directed it) and/or Meryl Streep, but otherwise rather melodramatic and altogether unremarkable I found.
The remaining three, and this is interesting while not really that surprising, are all movies set in World War Two. Especially in mechanised military conflict, of course, bridges play an important strategic role in allowing armies to advance or, if blown up in time by the enemy, not.
All three are very good but different, and since each one is top-notch, even I find it hard to rank them. So in chronological order, the short list is comprised of:
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Director David Lean. Starring William Holden, Alec Guiness, Jack Hawkins
The Bridge of Remagen (1969) Director John Guillermin. Starring George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara
A Bridge Too Far (1977) Director Richard Attenborough. Starring Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neil, Michael Caine
Just savour these twelve names.
And speaking of names: A sub-category could be movies with brothers Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges. If you want to get really serious about it, throw in their dad, Lloyd Bridges (1933 – 1998).
If you just watch one film with both brothers in it, please choose The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) in which they co-star with Michelle Pfeiffer. “Makin’ Whoopee” anyone?
Outside of war movies, however, we tend to have somewhat idealising associations with bridges.
Yes, sometimes we do burn them, metaphorically speaking:
“Think in terms of bridges burned
Think of seasons that must end
See the rivers rise and fall
They will rise and fall again
Everything must have an end
Like an ocean to a shore
Like a river to a stream
Like a river to a stream
It's the famous final scene
And how you tried to make it work
Did you really think it could?
How you tried to make it last
Did you really think it would?
Like a guest who stayed too long
Now it's finally time to leave
Yes, it's finally time to leave
Take it calmly and serene
It's the famous final scene”
Bob Seger, “The Famous Final Scene” (Stranger in Town, 1978)
But mostly we like to think we build bridges. And of course we cross them – when we get to them.
In the same vein, the contexts in which we use the corresponding verb, to bridge, are mostly, well, constructive.
We bridge differences. We bridge gaps. We bridge loans.
And we like bridging public holidays in order to get as much time off with as little investment from our annual vacation allowance as we possibly can.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work with the Junior Chamber of Commerce International, and their idealistic motto was “to build rainbow bridges”.
It doesn’t get any better than that, maybe short of American folk rock duo Simon and Garfunkel’s song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1969):
“When you're weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes,
I will dry them all
I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down”
Say what you will – timeless.
So the next time you enjoy one of those bridging days, why not have a “Bridge Movies” binge and maybe listen to Simon and Garfunkel as well as Bob Seger.
And while you’re at it, add the film The Graduate (1967) to your “watch list”. It stars a very young Dustin Hofmann as Ben Braddock who in the summer after his graduation from college finds himself torn between the wife of his father’s business partner, who becomes his lover – Mrs Robinson seductively played by Anne Bancroft – and her daughter Elaine, with whom he inevitably falls in love, played by Katharine Ross. Spoiler alert: Look out for the proverbial Famous Final Scene!
The Graduate was directed by Mike Nichols (1931 – 2014), and guess what, he also made Charlie Wilson’s War.
Now that’s what I call a perfect landing on which to end.
The one I did see now is Bridge of Spies, Stephen Spielberg’s latest oeuvre and his 27th feature film as director. It is also his fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks who plays the lead role of attorney Jim Donovan here (and more on him later). Previous joint projects include Saving Private Ryan (1998); Catch Me If You Can (2002); and, best of all I think, The Terminal (2004) – very funny in an equally thoughtful and intelligent way. A winning formula.
Tom Hanks, born 1956, also has a remarkable track record of course outside his work with Stephen Spielberg. He won the Oscar for his lead roles in Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994), making him only the second film actor ever to be awarded that highest of honours in two consecutive years. For your next pub quiz: The first was Spencer Tracy, winning in 1937 and 1938. The following year, 1995, Hanks was not nominated again for his role as Commander Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, so the hat-trick eluded him.
To be fair, that film wasn’t really suited for highlighting the Best Actor in a Leading Role, winning “only” the awards for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, but at least it gave Hanks the opportunity to utter one of the most lasting one-liners in film history: “Houston, we have a problem.”
I remember renting the movie out on video (no DVD, Blue Ray, or “streaming” in those days) while on a family holiday in Florida and watching it with my kids in the evening after our return from a tour of Cape Canaveral. I swear that for years they thought “Houston” was the name of the character played by Ed Harris, the NASA Flight Director at Mission Control in Texas.
And why would they not? Being the well-brought up, respectful children that they were then, and still are today, they probably just quietly wondered why Commander Lovell was so rude to his colleague on the ground and didn’t address him as “Mr Houston”.
His actual name was Gene Kranz, based on the real-life Flight Director Eugene F. Kranz who worked for NASA from 1961 to 1994, overseeing both the first moon landing of Apollo 11 and the rescue of the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight.
Speaking of memorable one-liners (well, two-liners really), Ed Harris had this one:
“We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.” End of discussion.
He was nominated for the Oscar in the category Best Actor in a Supporting Role but didn’t win.
Tom Hanks has also worked with considerable success “behind the camera”: In 2001, he helped direct and produce the Emmy-Award winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and in 2010 he was executive producer of that other WWII miniseries, The Pacific. I believe I have mentioned these before here.
He shall be forgiven for his starring in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and its sequel Angels & Demons (2009), both after the eponymous best-selling novels by Dan Brown. Playing “Harvard symbologist” [sic] Robert Langdon, he is basically the urban and scholarly answer to Harrison Ford’s signature character Indiana Jones who preferred gallivanting through more far-flung, rural territories. Oh, and Professor Langdon does not crack the whip.
For those of you, however, who have been anxiously waiting over the last seven years for a third dollop of fast-moving action triggered by mysterious religious conspiracies threatening to rock the very foundations of Christianity and Western culture as we know it, I have good news as your agony is soon to end:
In December it was unveiled that Inferno will hit cinemas this year!
But Hanks shall equally be lauded for many other films that are less-well known, such as the title role in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), a hilarious persiflage on American politics in general, the shenanigans of Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson in Washington DC in particular, and his secret dealings in Afghanistan, arming the mujahideen against the Soviet invaders in the early 1980s, specifically. Well, we all know how that panned out.
Coming back to Tom Hanks’ latest film I’ve just watched, and before you lose your patience with me, note the wonderful rhyme of its title with the Bridge of Sighs, located in Venice across the canal Rio di Palazzo. It links the New Prison to the interrogation cells in the Doge’s Palace and owes its name to the romantic notion that convicts would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells.
No wonder then that we owe the English translation of Ponte dei sospiri to the arch-Romantic of all Romantics, Lord Byron (1788 – 1824) who visited Venice, aka La Serenissima, in the course of his extensive travels in Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
Anyhow, coming back to Bridge of Spies, there is nothing even remotely romantic about its theme. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, it tells the true story of the exchange of Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy arrested in Brooklyn on 21 June 1957 and subsequently sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in the United States, against two young Americans – Gary Powers, the pilot of a U-2 aerial reconnaissance plane shot down over Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960 and held by the Soviet Union; and Yale graduate student Frederic Pryor, who ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall on 3 August 1961, the day it was built, and was arrested by the Soviet satellite regime in the German Democratic Republic.
A piece of trivia that I, as you will know by now, always find so hard to resist: The rock band U-2 named themselves after this aircraft type featured in the movie, and frontman Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson plays aforementioned Tom Hanks character Jim Donovan’s eldest daughter Carol. And she even has a scene all to herself, too. Neat, right?!
And no, I am not a U-2 fan.
The negotiations leading to the exchange of the prisoners were conducted by Donovan, a capable but pretty anonymous partner in an insurance law firm, who, if I understand correctly, stumbled into this truly historic role simply due to the fact that he was appointed Abel’s defence attorney by the American government when no-one else would volunteer to take on this very unpopular and thankless mandate.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or, from Donovan’s perspective: Recognize an exceptional challenge when it is unexpectedly thrown your way, embrace it, and come out on top.
“Have faith and pursue the unknown end.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 – 1935; American jurist and member of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932)
Actually, and returning to the great Lord Byron for a moment, come to think of it, in the case of Pryor, the “other” guy exchanged (for the U.S. Government, Gary Powell was the big prize of course), there was indeed romance involved as he made the mistake of going to the Soviet occupied part of Berlin on that fateful day to convince his German girlfriend to come to the western sectors with him on the spot – while it was still possible to do so without risking to step on land mines crossing a zone additionally sealed off by barbed wire, aka “The Death Strip”, and then physically climbing the Wall, exposing oneself to getting shot in the back in the process.
For Frederic Pryor, 28 years old then, it just boiled down to wrong place, wrong time. The things (young) men will do for love…
To quote Rod Stewart’s song “Some Guys Have All the Luck” (Camouflage, 1984), ironically:
“Some guys have all the luck
Some guys have all the pain
Some guys get all the breaks
Some guys do nothing but complain”
The eponymous “Bridge of Spies” by the way is the Glienicker Brücke across the river Havel which in this part of Berlin separated the Soviet sector from the West. The bridge was used several times during the Cold War for the exchange of captured spies who would dramatically walk across it from East to West and from West to East, respectively, meeting half-way without ever acknowledging each other, to be greeted by their friends and comrades (or not anymore – long before the advent of Facebook, people could be “unfriended”, arguably with graver consequences though) on the other side, whisked away to be “de-briefed”, and exposed to an uncertain future back home.
Abel and Powers crossed that bridge in the early hours of 10 February 1962; Pryor was simultaneously released at the even more famous Checkpoint Charlie in the city centre.
Visiting Berlin, the capital of reunified Germany since 1990, today, which I would urge everyone to do as it is both an interesting and fun place to go, you can hardly imagine the realities of a divided city and country during the Cold War, only a few decades ago. But of course you can still see all the historic sights and landmarks plus a section of the Wall that was not dismantled to serve as a stark memorial of those times.
“Stark”? Well, it is covered in graffiti art today.
Since we are heading into Hollywood’s awards season – the Golden Globes will be presented on 10 January, the Academy Awards, generally known as the Oscars, on 28 February – let it be known that Bridge of Spies has deservedly been short-listed for both these most prestigious of film industry accolades in a number of categories, with one highest (not lowest) common denominator: Best Supporting Actor.
Before I come to it, let me be on the record as saying Tom Hanks is one of my all-time favourite movie heroes, as per the above. There is simply no argument about his titanic stature, and from what I have seen of him in the media, in talk shows, and in other public appearances, he seems to be a very likeable, quirky, and down-to-earth kind of guy as well.
He collects old, mechanical travel typewriters and never goes anywhere without one. Yes, those actually were very much in demand in days gone by, but that is such a long time ago that they might as well have been used by the dinosaurs.
A propos of nothing, there are many theories on the reasons why that species died out – climate change, impact from meteorites, or a general inability to adapt and evolve.
Well, let it be revealed here and now: The simple truth is they were extinct because they collectively took up smoking. And don’t just take my word for it – I have the cartoon to prove it, too.
So, on to the Best Supporting Actor nominations for Bridge of Spies, and the true star of the movie.
It is British actor Mark Rylance in the role of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
Born in 1960 in Ashford, Kent, according to the usually spot-on Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) he has hitherto been “widely regarded as the greatest stage actor of his generation”.
In addition, however, even before Bridge of Spies he also already had a number of remarkable film roles to his credit, always in clever movies “with a twist”:
The Other Boleyn Girl (as Sir Thomas Boleyn) 2008 – a creative different take on the relationship between Henry VIII and Anna Boleyn
Anonymous (as Condell) 2011 – the story of the “real” author behind the works of a certain William Shakespeare
Days and Nights (as Stephen) 2014 – a modern version of Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, set in New England in 1984
The Gunman (as Cox) 2015 – an action-packed plot in which a mercenary sniper in the Congo becomes the target of a death squad himself years later
Wolf Hall (as none less than Sir Thomas Cromwell) 2015 – a TV mini-series adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s epochal novel published in 2009, the highly fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell at the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, The Observer named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". The book is the first in a trilogy; the sequel Bring Up the Bodies was published in 2012, and the literary world is waiting with bated breath for Part Three.
So now, Mark Rylance plays Rudolf Abel. Stephen Spielberg cast him for the role after watching his 2014 Tony-Award winning performance in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It was the actor’s third Tony win, the most prestigious of “stage Oscar” awards, recognising performances in live New York Broadway theatre. The other two were for Boeing, Boeing (2008) and Jerusalem (2011). No other actor has achieved three Tony-Award wins. And looking at their intervals, there may well be something big to look forward to in 2017. Watch this space if so inclined.
As Frank Sinatra sang in one of his signature songs, New York, New York (recorded by him in 1979):
“If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere,
It's up to you, New York, New York"
In this role, Rylance takes the notion of quiet charisma to a new level. Speaking in a monotonous voice with a North England, borderline Scottish accent (historically accurate as Abel was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Russian parents and spent some of his school years in Scotland before returning to The Motherland), there is not one superfluous twitch of his face, not one distracting blink of his eyes, nor one spoken word too many in his performance.
And when at times his attorney Hanks/Donovan despairs with him and asks why he is not angry or anxious or doesn’t show any other emotions, he sardonically replies: “Would it help?”
Coming from stage acting, where if anything there needs to be a surplus exaggeration of volume and gesture and mimics, this cannot have been an easy transition for Rylance to make, but he has certainly mastered it impressively – the camera, as they say in the industry, loves him.
So much so that he will next play the title role in Stephen Spielberg’s new, 28th movie (if my counting is still correct), The BFG, a Phantasy genre film after a novel by Roald Dahl to be released this year. My font of wisdom on all things movies, IMDb has to say the following about it, explaining also the mysterious title:
“A girl named Sophie encounters the Big Friendly Giant who, despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kind-hearted soul who is considered an outcast by the other giants because unlike his peers refuses to eat boys and girls.” Bless him.
So as does the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie, in real life Mark Rylance is stepping up, graduating from supporting actor to top act. Of course, no matter how talented you are or how hard you work, at one point you will need a lucky break to reach the pinnacle of your chosen profession. If Stephen Spielberg on that evening in 2014 had not gone to watch Twelfth Night on Broadway, who knows.
But I also firmly believe that good things come to good people, quality in the end always prevails, and everybody gets what they deserve (positive and negative, by the way). So according to this optimistic world view, Rylance would still have taken that final step, it may just have been a little later.
On the other hand, looking around me, I also often feel compelled to say, “Life is not fair. And if they told you so, they were lying.”
Discuss.
Sometimes, if you do get impatient on your way up, a conscious change of careers can help.
Staying within the film industry for the perfect example, as a Hollywood actor, a certain Ronald Reagan never managed to progress from playing the roles of “The Lead Man’s Best Friend” to becoming “The Lead Man” himself. But then he went into politics instead, and the rest is truly history.
In either scenario,
“The way we are living,
Timorous or bold,
Will have been our life.”
Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013; Irish poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995)
And believe me, it is short.
I picked this up somewhere recently, and I’ve already shared it with some of you. I do think it makes for a good motto for the year just begun (it being too late already for New Year’s Resolutions):
Since I have spent so much time on this movie now, I have decided to create a new category – films with the word “bridge” in their titles.
And no, Bridge-t Jones Diary (2001) and Bridge-t Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) do so not qualify.
I have identified four others, the most recent previous one being The Bridges of Madison County (1995) – something for really die-hard fans of Clint Eastwood (who also directed it) and/or Meryl Streep, but otherwise rather melodramatic and altogether unremarkable I found.
The remaining three, and this is interesting while not really that surprising, are all movies set in World War Two. Especially in mechanised military conflict, of course, bridges play an important strategic role in allowing armies to advance or, if blown up in time by the enemy, not.
All three are very good but different, and since each one is top-notch, even I find it hard to rank them. So in chronological order, the short list is comprised of:
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Director David Lean. Starring William Holden, Alec Guiness, Jack Hawkins
The Bridge of Remagen (1969) Director John Guillermin. Starring George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara
A Bridge Too Far (1977) Director Richard Attenborough. Starring Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neil, Michael Caine
Just savour these twelve names.
And speaking of names: A sub-category could be movies with brothers Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges. If you want to get really serious about it, throw in their dad, Lloyd Bridges (1933 – 1998).
If you just watch one film with both brothers in it, please choose The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) in which they co-star with Michelle Pfeiffer. “Makin’ Whoopee” anyone?
Outside of war movies, however, we tend to have somewhat idealising associations with bridges.
Yes, sometimes we do burn them, metaphorically speaking:
“Think in terms of bridges burned
Think of seasons that must end
See the rivers rise and fall
They will rise and fall again
Everything must have an end
Like an ocean to a shore
Like a river to a stream
Like a river to a stream
It's the famous final scene
And how you tried to make it work
Did you really think it could?
How you tried to make it last
Did you really think it would?
Like a guest who stayed too long
Now it's finally time to leave
Yes, it's finally time to leave
Take it calmly and serene
It's the famous final scene”
Bob Seger, “The Famous Final Scene” (Stranger in Town, 1978)
But mostly we like to think we build bridges. And of course we cross them – when we get to them.
In the same vein, the contexts in which we use the corresponding verb, to bridge, are mostly, well, constructive.
We bridge differences. We bridge gaps. We bridge loans.
And we like bridging public holidays in order to get as much time off with as little investment from our annual vacation allowance as we possibly can.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work with the Junior Chamber of Commerce International, and their idealistic motto was “to build rainbow bridges”.
It doesn’t get any better than that, maybe short of American folk rock duo Simon and Garfunkel’s song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1969):
“When you're weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes,
I will dry them all
I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down”
Say what you will – timeless.
So the next time you enjoy one of those bridging days, why not have a “Bridge Movies” binge and maybe listen to Simon and Garfunkel as well as Bob Seger.
And while you’re at it, add the film The Graduate (1967) to your “watch list”. It stars a very young Dustin Hofmann as Ben Braddock who in the summer after his graduation from college finds himself torn between the wife of his father’s business partner, who becomes his lover – Mrs Robinson seductively played by Anne Bancroft – and her daughter Elaine, with whom he inevitably falls in love, played by Katharine Ross. Spoiler alert: Look out for the proverbial Famous Final Scene!
The Graduate was directed by Mike Nichols (1931 – 2014), and guess what, he also made Charlie Wilson’s War.
Now that’s what I call a perfect landing on which to end.
No comments:
Post a Comment