Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is a good story that’s well told, thoroughly absorbing, and spectacular in terms of production values. Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance are wonderful, with the latter putting on a subtle acting clinic for the ages, and the former reminding us how consistently excellent he is as our American everyman. The screenplay often times tells when showing would have been enough, but that’s The Beard for you from time to time, and it’s interesting to note the screenplay involvement of the Coen brothers on this project. There’s nothing surprising in terms of the plot – the film is based on a true story so there’s not much that could or should have been changed, and while the film never becomes as suspenseful as it might have liked, there’s a reliable, old-fashioned quality that comforts the viewer with a sense of solid familiarity. Janusz Kaminksi, as usual, shows off his stuff as cinematographer, bathing the film in blues, greys, blacks, shadows, snow, and his customary shafts of blinding, white light streaming through windows; this film feels cold and shivery, with the extraordinary production design by Adam Stockhausen totally evoking the bombed out ruins of post WW-II Germany, just as the Berlin wall was being constructed. There’s a magnificent shot in this film of a character riding his bike along the edge of the wall, showing the hectic maneuverings of everyone involved on a political, military, and social level, as the camera catches small bits and pieces of visual information that helps to paint a portrait of impending sadness. The narrative focuses on a POW/spy swap between the Americans and the Russians during the peak of the cold war, and Spielberg, as usual, knows exactly how to get the proper mileage out of his studied locations, fantastic mise-en-scene, and performances that are never less than splendid. Bridge of Spies the sort of film that The Beard could have directed with one armed tied behind his back, and that’s not a knock, but rather, a statement that suggests supreme confidence with this sort of historically rooted material; this is his genre and he knows how to deliver the expected goods.
Podcasting Them Softly 